Knit in Comfort Read Free Page A

hurt.
    â€œI’m home.” She called upstairs to her brood and got one weak “Hi Mom” in response, making her think back to not that long ago, when the sound of her voice catapulted the three of them downstairs in a thunderous tangle of eager legs.
    Maybe it was that long ago. “Vera?”
    â€œWatching TV.” Her mother-in-law’s deep voice sounded from the living room. Most warm nights they sat together on the front porch, but when Vera babysat, she’d knit in front of the set so she could hear better upstairs.
    â€œKids do okay?” Megan paused opposite the living room where Vera half-lay in Stanley’s recliner wearing her purple flowered housecoat, thick needles predictably busy.
    â€œKids were fine.” She didn’t glance up from the log cabin pattern of dark blues she’d chosen for her last blanket square, speaking as if Megan worried way too much about a little thing like her children. Given how Vera still fussed over her forty-one-year-old son, Megan figured her mother-in-law shouldn’t invest in any glass houses. “How was the group? Sally get her dress yet?”
    â€œGreat. Fun.” She was suddenly exhausted, the anything-can-happen mystery and romance of a summer night sucked out of her by David and now Vera. “Sally hasn’t, no, but she’s picked out the one she wants.”
    â€œNothing more exciting than getting married.” Vera pulled at the dark blue acrylic-wool blend; the thick yarn waggled, snake-like, across her broad stomach. “Happiest day of my life. Everything about my wedding was magical. The weather, the food, the guests—all perfect. And what came after, forty-six years…Not an hour goes by that I don’t miss Rocky.”
    Megan rubbed her hand across her forehead. Vera rewrote history, brushing aside facts like so much eraser dust. According to Stanley, at his parents’ wedding a surprise storm had soaked the guests on the way to the reception, where the maid of honor got so drunk she hiked up her gown and propositioned the groomon the dance floor. Vera’s marriage to Rocky Morgan had lived up to his first name, alternately sullen and tumultuous. Rocky finally died two years ago, after Vera had been wishing him gone several times that long; she’d moved into her son’s house almost immediately. Apparently, that was how things were done in their family. Vera had hosted Rocky’s mom for eight years after her husband died. Now Megan got Vera.
    â€œI better get Jeffrey and Deena to bed.” Megan climbed the stairs, stopping to pick up books meant for Lolly’s room and drawings meant for Jeffrey’s.
    â€œOh, Megan?”
    She backtracked down half the flight and leaned over the worn banister. “Yes?”
    â€œSome woman staying at the Quality Inn in Hendersonville called. She saw your ad at the Chit Chat Café. Wants to take a look at the apartment.”
    â€œReally?” Megan got that same hit of claustrophobic panic to her stomach as when Stanley announced his mother was moving in, only this time the intrusion had been her own idea. “Did you get her number?”
    â€œMo-o-om?” Her middle child, Deena, in that injured tone she’d perfected two years ago at eleven. “Will you pleez tell Jeffrey to stop—”
    â€œHold on, Deena. Sorry, yes Vera? The number?”
    â€œBy the phone in the kitchen. She wants you to call back tonight.”
    â€œThank you.”
    â€œJeffrey keeps singing another song while I’m trying to listen to this one.”
    Megan rolled her eyes and turned to her daughter, plump,dark and introverted as her older sister was golden, outgoing and athletic. “And?”
    â€œIt’s buggin’ me. He won’t stop.”
    â€œBoohoo, tattletale.” Jeffrey stood defiantly in the hall, a skinny, rumple-headed nine-year-old, spitting image of his father’s photos at that