A Good Yarn (Blossom Street #2)(7)

“Perhaps I’ll do that.” Elise’s schedule was nearly empty and she was looking for ways to fill it. So far, she’d joined a readers’ group that met once a month at a branch of the Seattle Public Library, and had volunteered to fold church newsletters. A strong supporter of the local blood bank, she’d also volunteered to handle the desk every Monday morning until noon.

“Would you like to sign up for the sock class?” Lydia pressed. “I’m sure you’d enjoy it.”

Again Elise’s spirits lifted at the other woman’s friendliness. “Yes, I think I would.” She opened her purse and removed her checkbook. “How many will be in the class?” she asked as she signed the check.

“I’d like to limit it to six.”

“Has there been a lot of interest?”

“Not yet, but I only put the ad in the window Tuesday morning. You’re the first person to join.”

“The first,” Elise repeated, and for reasons she could only guess at, being first gave her a sense of pleasure.

She decided to buy those flowers for Aurora, after all.

CHAPTER 3

BETHANNE HAMLIN

It wasn’t supposed to be like this, Bethanne Hamlin lamented as she pulled into the driveway of her Capitol Hill home. The house, built in the 1930s before it was deemed unsafe and unfeasible to use brick on top of an earthquake fault, had been her dream home. She’d fallen in love with it the moment she saw it. The short steep driveway ended at the basement garage. Concrete steps led to a small porch, and the front door was rounded, like the door to a fairy-tale cottage, she’d always thought. A gable jutted out from the second-floor master bedroom. The window seat there overlooked the entire neighborhood. Bethanne had often sat in that window and read or daydreamed. It was in this beautiful home that she’d once lived her perfect life. Her fairy-tale life…

She turned off the engine and sat in her five-year-old Plymouth, searching for the resolve and the strength to enter her house with a smile on her face. Taking a deep breath, she slid out of the car, reaching into the backseat for her groceries.

“I’m home,” she called out as she opened the front door, doing her best to sound cheerful.

She felt relief when silence greeted her.

“Andrew? Annie?” She placed the grocery bag on the kitchen countertop, filled the teakettle and set it on the burner. Before the divorce she’d never been much of a tea drinker, but in the last year she’d become practically addicted, drinking two or three pots a day.

“I’m home,” she announced a second time. Again, no response.

After a few minutes, the kettle began to whistle, and she poured the steaming water over Earl Grey tea bags in the ceramic pot that had once belonged to her grandmother. Then she carried it to the breakfast table.

Sitting in the small alcove, she tried to make sense of her life. Tried to make sense of everything that had happened to her and her children over the past two years. Nothing felt right anymore. It was as if the seasons no longer followed each other in proper succession. Or as if the moon had suddenly replaced the sun…She still had trouble understanding what had happened—and why.

It’d all started sixteen months earlier on the morning of Valentine’s Day. The kids were awake and banging around inside their bedrooms, getting ready for school. A little earlier, when she could hear Andrew and Annie squabbling over the bathroom, she’d thrown on her housecoat and started down to the kitchen to make breakfast. Then, as she reached the door, she’d noticed her husband sitting up in bed, knees bent, face in his hands. Bethanne’s first thought was that Grant had the flu. Any other morning, he was already up and dressed for work. He loved his job as a broker for a successful real estate company. He earned enough so that Bethanne could stay home with the children; from the time Andrew was born, and Annie thirteen months later, she’d felt the children should be her career. Grant had supported her decision. He liked having her home, accessible to him and the children, and appreciated the elegant business dinners she frequently prepared for him and his colleagues.

“Grant?” she’d asked, completely unsuspecting of what was to follow.

He’d looked up and Bethanne had read such pain in his eyes that she sat down on the bed and placed her hand on his shoulder. “What is it?” she’d asked gently.

Grant couldn’t seem to speak. He opened his mouth as if to begin, but no words came.

“Mom!” Annie shouted from the bottom of the stairs. “I need you.”

Torn between her husband’s needs and those of her children, Bethanne vacillated, then squeezed Grant’s arm. “I’ll be right back.” Actually it took ten minutes, and both kids had left the house by the time she returned.

Grant’s position was unchanged when she walked into the bedroom, his expression just as bleak.

“Tell me,” she’d whispered urgently, her mind whirling as she wondered what could possibly be wrong. Grant had been to see the doctor for a physical the week before; everything seemed fine, but there’d been the routine tests. Perhaps Dr. Lyman had found something and Grant was only now able to tell her. She sat down next to him again, the mattress dipping slightly under her weight.

“It’s Valentine’s Day,” Grant had announced in a voice so hoarse that he didn’t sound like himself.