The Knitting Diaries Read Free Page B

room all to myself and a closet, and that I’ll make new friends. But I like my old friends. I don’t want new ones. Baxter doesn’t want to move, either. I told my dad I’d rather stay here and he said I might not like the new house now but I will later. He said I’d still have my friends on Blossom Street. Mom said that, too…. I’m not sure she really wants to move, either, because she’s been knitting a lot and she knits real slow when she’s worried about something. She doesn’t think I pay attention but I do.
    T im decided he shouldn’t have come to the house—not yet. Ellen had said Anne Marie was signing the final papers that day, so it was probably too soon. In their visit the previous weekend, he’d spent a lot of time reassuring his daughter that the move would be a good thing. He wondered how successful he’d been.
    More than anything, Tim wanted to help Ellen make a comfortable transition to her new neighborhood. He’d picked up a plant for the yard, which he’d set on the porch. But the housewarming gift was just an excuse, and Anne Marie had seen through it right away.
    Anne Marie.
    He’d blown it with her, handled the situation between them poorly. His AA sponsor had repeatedly emphasized the importance of honesty, but Tim had been afraid that if he told Anne Marie he was engaged to Vanessa, she wouldn’t let him see Ellen. Because his daughter meant everything to him, Tim had been afraid to take that risk. He’d have had to be blind not to see that Anne Marie was falling for him but he hadn’t acknowledged it. Instead, he’d delayed telling her the truth, which was a passive—and dishonest—way of encouraging her.
    Knowing her better now, Tim understood that Anne Marie would never have used the fact that he was involved with someone else as a pretext for keeping his daughter away from him. The irony was that his engagement hadn’t lasted very long once Ellen—and Anne Marie—became part of his life.
    Tim could hardly bear to think of his troubled past, his wasted years. Thank God for his family’s support. It’d been an act of tough love for his parents to step back and allow him to self-destruct. As a parent himself, he knew that couldn’t have been easy. But when he’d finally hit bottom, his family had been there, waiting. His mother and father were the first ones to offer him guidance and practical help.
    They’d gotten him into a rehab center and from that moment on he hadn’t looked back. He’d been sober ten years now. It was while he was trying to make restitutionto the people he’d hurt that he learned he might have a child.
    The discovery had shocked him, thrown him into a tailspin. That day was the closest he’d come in all those years to taking a drink.
    Just after he’d entered rehab, Candy, the woman he’d been living with, had attempted to contact him. He’d ignored her phone calls once he became aware of them. He wasn’t permitted to receive any outside calls while in rehab; the only reason he even knew she’d tried to reach him was the multiple messages she’d left on his cell phone. When he got his cell back, he deleted each one without listening. Candy belonged to his old life and he was starting fresh.
    Later, she’d written him, but Tim wanted nothing to do with her, so he’d tossed out the letter, unopened and unread.
    Not once did he suspect she might be pregnant.
    Nine years later…he’d sought out Candy’s mother to repay the money they’d stolen from her in order to buy booze and drugs. Back then, all Candy and Tim could think about was the next hit, the next drink. Time melded together, hours, days, weeks. Often he didn’t know or care where he was or who he was with, as long as he could get drunk or high.
    After rehab, Tim had wanted to repay the old woman and apologize. If he was ever going to become the man he hoped to be, that meant restitution. So he went to see Candy’s mother. What he found was the house empty and listed for