Real Men Knit(15)
Once again, Errol looked at all the brothers, and it was then that Jesse could see the embarrassment as it bloomed across his features. He looked at Kerry and put his shoulders back before reaching into his bag and pulling out a small set of circular knitting needles and what appeared to be the beginning of a hat cast on, though Jesse could see he had gotten himself into a tangled mass of dropped stitches. “I think I’ve made some mistakes here and could use some help, so I was hoping there would be another class,” Errol said.
Kerry’s smile was warm and nonjudgmental as she gently rubbed the top of his head. “Yes, it looks like you do have a little bit of a mess here.”
She looked across to each of them, a hint of warning in her eyes before they softened. Lucas, then Noah, then Damian and finally stopping on Jesse. “But don’t worry, it’s just a few dropped stitches. In knitting there’s never a problem that can’t be fixed. It’s only yarn. Now, why not come back to the kitchen with me and let’s see if we can’t work this out.”
Jesse watched as the boy let out a breath and seemed to brighten, as if the weight of the world was lifted from his shoulders. He followed Kerry to the back, and Jesse could hear her as she gave the boy a snack and then began to patiently teach him how to fix his mess.
Jesse turned to his brothers. “Just give me a few months. Let me try to keep the shop open for a few months—six months to a year at most—and see if I can’t keep it afloat. The shop is our legacy, and one that meant too much to Mama Joy and the community to just let it go. Not without giving it a try at least. Hell, it’s our last name on the awning,” he said, pulling his hole card by bringing up the Strong name they all collectively took on when Mama Joy became their official adoptive mother.
“Yeah, but how can you do it alone? The fact remains that we all have jobs we still have to do. You said it’s our legacy—it wouldn’t be fair for you to be the only one working here, taking this on all alone,” Lucas said.
Just then Kerry stepped back into the main room with Errol. She walked the boy to the front door, letting him out with a wave, then flipped the lock. Turning to all of them, she looked at Jesse, then switched her gaze to Lucas, breaking the silence and rocking their world. “He won’t have to do it alone,” she said. “I’ll stay on and work with him, at least until he gets the hang of how the shop runs.”
Jesse blinked. The woman standing before him was Kerry, but suddenly she bore little resemblance to the quiet, shy Kerry who had always hovered in various corners of the shop, a shadow to Mama Joy. No, this woman was all confidence and intelligence underneath her curly twists and thick-rimmed eyeglass frames. He looked at her deeper. There was something new and different behind her all-knowing chestnut-brown eyes. The corner of her lips quirked up, twitched ever so slightly as if the secrets of the world were hidden behind their full lusciousness just itching to escape.
Wait. Luscious lips? Secrets? What was he thinking, and what was she talking about, staying on? This was Kerry. Their Kerry Girl. Why was she doing this? And how could he let her? She had just finished school—a few years late, but she’d received her degree and now had her own plans and dreams lined up. This was her chance to get out. To move on. Why wasn’t she taking it?
It was Damian who voiced Jesse’s concerns out loud. “Why would you do something like that? You’ve just finished school, Kerry, you’ve gotten your degree. Why would you put your plans on hold to help us?”
Kerry was quiet as she seemed to be thinking while she looked around the shop, her already soft brown eyes growing wistful and slightly sad before she focused back on them. The look she gave Jesse went through him and seemed to reach down deep, past his heart even, all the way to his soul, before she blinked and turned to Damian to answer his question. “Maybe it’s like you said. Maybe I’ve learned a lot more from Mama Joy than you all even know. And I think it’s time for me to share that before I take the next step and move on. I know it’s what she would have wanted.”
4
Shit! Dammit, and shit once more!
Kerry couldn’t believe what she’d committed to.
What if Damian was right? She found herself still wondering hours later as she made her way to her afternoon job at the community center. Though she didn’t want to admit it, she was putting a portion of her life on hold for their needs. Or were they her needs? Wait, who truly needed who in this convoluted situation?
The whole thing made little to no sense, and if she had any sense at all she would have just kept her trap shut and stayed out of their business. Mama Joy was gone. And during the woman’s life, though she had given lots of her time and energy to Kerry, Kerry had been just as good to her. It wasn’t as if there was some sort of karmic debt that she had to pay, so why was she still so intent on inserting herself into the Strong family’s life?
“The daughter I never had,” she’d heard plenty of times. Kerry knew she’d made Mama Joy happy in life. And now that Mama Joy was gone, in a way it did feel like Kerry had lost what was essentially a second mother to her. The woman had helped raise her in ways that her own mother hadn’t and maybe could not. But if she really wanted to make Mama Joy happy, she’d not hold her sons up in their moving on, and she also wouldn’t hold her own life up. She’d take her degree, go harder on LinkedIn, Monster, Indeed and every other redundant-ass app and site out there and up her job search. Kerry let out a huff. Not that she hadn’t already been doing that. But come on, it wasn’t like they were dropping dream positions from the sky into overdue do-gooder graduates’ laps.