Valise in the Attic Read Free Page A

compensate you,” she said.
    “I wasn’t worried about that,” Alice said. “I’m just not sure I’m good enough at silk ribbon embroidery. I still consider myself a bit of a newcomer to it. When will you be ready for me to do it?”
    “Oh, probably not for another month,” Stella said. “This pattern is very involved, and it’s only one of the projects I’m working on.”
    “OK,” Alice said. “I’ll do some practice projects before then and make sure I’m capable.”
    “That’s a beautiful scarf,” Kate said, lifting the edge of Annie’s crocheting. “I love that shade of pink.”
    “It’s for my granddaughter,” Annie said. “She’s fallen in love with some book character who only wears pink. So I thought this fluffy pink yarn would make her a perfect scarf.”
    “Does anyone even need a scarf in Texas?” Vanessa asked as she stepped into the group and sat next to her mother in Peggy’s vacated chair. Vanessa sometimes took part in different needlecrafts through the teen group the Hook and Needle Club had started.
    “Only about one month a year,” Annie admitted. “But she can wear it when she visits me here too.”
    “Are they coming up for Christmas?” Mary Beth asked.
    Annie sighed. “Not this year, and I’m not going there either. The airfares are simply out of our league. Right now we’re hoping to make a nice long visit when the children are out of school for the summer. Something long enough to justify the cost of getting here.”
    “I hate flying at Christmas,” Alice said. “The weather up here makes every flight more of a hope than a sure thing. And the crowds!” She shuddered and picked up her cross-stitch.
    “So you’re not flying off for some romantic rendezvous with a certain dashing photographer?” Gwen asked.
    “I’m not even flying off for a painful rendezvous with a certain crabby mother in Florida,” Alice said with a laugh. “You guys are stuck with me for Christmas.”
    “We should do something together,” Annie said. “We should have a party.”
    “We could have it here if you want,” Mary Beth said. “I’m stuck here for Christmas too. My sister and niece are going to Europe for Christmas. It’s magazine business for Melanie, but I do think she’s trying to unbend a little and build some bridges with Amy.”
    “I have to bow out,” Gwen said. “Christmas is always crazy for us. It seems like John does a million networking things over the holidays.” She sighed. “It’s why I was hoping for a little vicarious romance. How about you, Annie? Are you and Ian doing anything?”
    Annie felt her face grow warm. “Not as far as I know,” she said. “The mayor doesn’t plan his calendar around me.”
    “Of course not,” Alice agreed solemnly, and the group laughed again. Just when Annie thought the heat in her cheeks was ready to ignite, Kate asked her another question about her crocheting, and the conversation shifted again.
    The rest of the meeting passed quickly. As Annie folded the fluffy pink scarf carefully around the crochet hook, she marveled at how quickly meetings passed now. She’d sat through more than one coldly awkward meeting when she’d first come to live at Grey Gables. She had wondered if she’d ever fit in the small community. Now she couldn’t imagine life without the warm friendships of the Hook and Needle Club.
    Before she left the snug little shop, Annie opened the cute plastic canvas shark kit, and Mary Beth got her started on the stitches she needed. The shop owner had been right. It was easy, and she had the first piece of the shark mostly done before she stuffed the little kit in her project bag and headed back out into the cold.
    After the meeting, Annie gingerly crossed the street so she could stare into store windows. She still had a list of last-minute Christmas presents, mostly for the people she could never buy well for. LeeAnn’s husband, Herb, was on the list. In the past, she’d bought him a tie,