The Sweethearts’ Knitting Club (7 page)

How he wanted her!

But he’d blown it. Kissing her the way he had. Out of anger and hurt. It was stupid and it was pathetic. He’d seen that ring and he’d lost his cool.

It bothered Jesse that Flynn saw him as a criminal. He wanted to tell her the truth about Trainer, but pride held him back. If she’d really trusted him, if she really had known him as she claimed, she wouldn’t for one second have believed that he was selling cocaine. After watching his mother destroy her life with the stuff, he wanted nothing to do with drugs. Flynn should have known that.

But the gun was yours.

Yes, right, the gun. The thing that had tacked extra years to his sentence. He’d gotten it to scare off Trainer. God, he’d been such a dumbass kid with no clue.

And if Flynn couldn’t see Trainer for who he was
deep down inside, well then, he was wasting his time trying to recapture their once budding love.

What was he doing here? Why had he come back?

For one thing there were his feelings. He hadn’t expected such an odd mix of hope, longing, regret, shame, revenge, and need.

That was starkest of all.

This hungry, insatiable need for her. He hadn’t expected this level of burning, yearning when he saw her again. It muddled his head, fogged up his brain.

He needed sex. That was the cure. But he couldn’t make himself just go pick up some random woman, no matter how strong his physical urges. Flynn was the one his body craved. Flynn was the one who boiled his blood, hardened his cock. Anything else, anyone else would just be a pathetic stopgap measure.

So what now? What was he going to do? He wanted her, but only if he could have her as his own, totally, completely, forever. But she was engaged to Beau Trainer.

A smart man would walk away. Go to a new town, meet a new girl, start a new life. But when it came to Flynn, when had he ever been smart?

Jesse grunted, hardened his jaw, tightened his fists on the handlebars. So Flynn had gone and gotten herself engaged to that bozo Trainer. He shouldn’t be surprised. It didn’t matter. It didn’t affect his plans one whit. They weren’t married yet.

In fact this was better. When he stole Trainer’s fiancée from him, one half of his plan for revenge would be complete. He tried smiling, but it didn’t fit on his lips.

Flynn wasn’t a pawn and he didn’t want her getting caught in the crossfire between him and the sheriff.

Sheriff.

Jesse snorted. What a joke. If only the town knew the real Beau Trainer and what he was capable of, they’d be shocked to the core. If they knew what he’d done, they’d impeach him. And that was precisely what Jesse was counting on. Beau Trainer was gonna pay for stealing Jesse’s woman and his life, and he was gonna pay big.

Patsy sat knitting on the top floor balcony of her old Victorian house on Market Street, gently swaying in the rocking chair passed down from her maternal grandmother. It occurred to her—not for the first time—that she had no daughter to pass it down to. From this vantage point, she could see the lake and the sandy beach where families flocked on the weekends.

Colorful sailboats glided past the swimming area. In the distance, jet boats pulled skiers, paddleboats and canoes rocking in their wake. Kids with fishing poles sat on the docks, kicking their bare toes in the water, completely carefree. A red-tailed hawk flew over the tops of the pecan trees in her front yard calling
kreeee, kreee, kree, kreeeeeeee
.

Overhead, the ceiling fan rotated lazily. Mozart spilled from the mp3 player. A glass of iced cham
omile tea with fresh honey and a flickering aromatherapy candle called Serenity, which smelled of fresh linen, lilacs, and sea salt, rested beside her on the small wrought-iron table with a mosaic tile top.

From the outside, her life looked quite peaceful. From the inside, it was a different story. Hence the calming aids of beautiful view, inspirational candles, uplifting music, and busy hands.

She knitted continental style, holding both the yarn and the needle in her left hand, picking the stitches through with each loop. Everyone else in the knitting club knitted English, but her French grandmother—the same one who’d given her the rocking chair—had taught her this method and she’d seen no reason to change, even though her friends claimed their method was easier. The trick to continental style was in the way you kept the yarn slightly taut. This required winding the thread over her left pinkie finger and her left forefinger. She liked the tradition of continental style. It made her feel connected to the past. And in a life where she’d lost so much, it was a feeling she treasured.

The music, the water, the tea, the candle, the rocking chair, and her knitting slowly unraveled the nerves she’d jangled last night by driving past the fire station. After seeing Hondo, she hadn’t slept a wink. Finally, at dawn, she’d gotten up and driven over to the Alzheimer’s Care Facility to check on Jimmy.

It hadn’t been one of his better mornings. The minute she’d walked in the door with a basket of fresh-baked cranberry muffins, Jimmy had started screaming, “Help! Help! Police! Police! She’s trying to poison me!”

She tried everything she knew to soothe her addled husband but his agitation escalated to the point where the nurse had finally asked her to leave. She’d come back home and taken a fitful nap. Around noon she’d gone down to the Teal Peacock to check on the new girl she’d hired for the weekends. Business was steady. A few locals dropped by to visit, several of them buzzing about Kathryn Trainer’s annual Memorial Day party. Patsy hadn’t been invited. Ever since Clinton had arrested Jesse, Patsy and Kathryn’s relationship had gone from politely cordial to iceberg cold.

Tourist traffic motored along Market Street, headed for Marina Beach. A silent ambulance was in the convoy, more than likely on the way back from transporting a patient to Fort Worth. Was Hondo behind the wheel? Patsy’s fingers quickened at her knitting.

Once upon a time this whole area had been affluent residential homes. Houses on one side of the road; the lake, piers, beach, and marina on the other. Now it was zoned as a commercial area, with only a few houses like hers left. Most of the Victorians had been converted into businesses. A bed-and-breakfast next door to the right. A law office beside that. On the other side was an exercise studio, and behind it, the Carriage House (which had once been an actual carriage house), an elegant four-star restaurant, open only in the evenings Thursday through Sunday. Across the street, a set of new townhouses had been erected on the waterfront, blocking part of her view of the lake.

The ambulance was hung up at the red light at the intersection of Graffon and Market. She nar
rowed her eyes to see if she could make out who was behind the wheel, but her vision just wasn’t what it used to be and the windows were tinted. It could be Hondo.

Her needles clacked as she remembered the way he’d waved at her last night. How long had it been since they’d acknowledged each other’s presence? Old history weaved its way through her brain along with the smell of Texas Joe’s Barbecue from down at the end of the block.

In a blink, she was seventeen again, sitting on her canopied bed in this very house, listening to the new Rolling Stones album,
Let it Bleed
, and crying her heart out because her period was three weeks late. Between the music and her sobbing, it had taken a few minutes for her to hear the pebbles smacking against her window. She’d dragged herself off the bed, swiped at her eyes, smearing mascara tracks over the backs of her hands, and stumbled to the French doors leading out on to the balcony.

The minute she saw Hondo standing on the side lawn in his Jefferson Airplane T-shirt and cut-off blue jeans, fresh tears sprang to her eyes. How was she going to tell him that she might be pregnant?

“Patsy?” he said, alarm in his voice. “Are you okay?”

She’d shaken her head. “No.”

“I’m coming up.” He’d grabbed for the trellis.

“Shh, my folks are in the living room watching
Hawaii Five-O
. Remember what happened last time?”

The last time her seven-year-old sister Phoebe had caught them kissing on Patsy’s bed. She’d
threatened to tattle, but Patsy bribed her with promises of a new Barbie. Her parents disapproved of Hondo because he lived with his trash collector father in a trailer park by the river, and they’d forbidden her to see him. The upper-crust Calloways judged people not on who they were, but on where they came from and what they did for a living. Patsy wasn’t so narrow-minded. She knew people couldn’t help the family they were born into. She wondered how her folks would react when they found out she was carrying Hondo’s baby.

You don’t know for sure yet
.

Hondo scaled the railing onto the balcony like Romeo coming after Juliet. He held his arms out to her and she sank into them. He squeezed her tight. “What’s wrong?”

She broke the news. He didn’t get angry. Instead he swung her up in his arms and twirled her around. “Why are you crying, silly? This is wonderful, wonderful.”

“But I wanted to go to college,” she’d sobbed. “You wanted to go to college.”

“We can still go,” he said. “We can do this. I’ll go to school during the day, work at night.”

“Doing what?”

“Whatever I can get.”

“How will we pay for an apartment? A baby? College tuition?”

“We’ll get grants, loans,” he’d said optimistically.

“We need help, Hondo.” They both knew help would not be forthcoming from his father. “We have to tell my parents.”

“Let’s wait,” he said, “until you know for sure.”

She nodded; he kissed her and told her not to
worry, that he loved her and everything would work out fine. Then he’d slipped off into the darkness, the sound of his happy whistling floating back to her on the night breeze. She and Hondo were having a baby. For the first time she smiled. Imagined a miniature Hondo calling her Mama and giving her sticky-faced kisses.

If only she’d known then what she knew now. Patsy closed her eyes. Mozart played on as a tear slid wetly down her cheek.

A week later, the family doctor who had delivered her confirmed that she was pregnant. She hesitated calling Hondo. She was still trying to figure out how they were going to break the news to her parents. She was in line at the school cafeteria, an egg salad sandwich, bottle of Yoo-hoo, and a package of Cheetos on her lunch tray.

“Patsy,” he whispered, “can we talk?” The look in his eyes was one of pure fear. Nothing had ever scared her so badly.

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

He’d taken the tray from her hand, set it down, pulled her from the line. Putting his hand to her back, he guided her into a quiet corner. Her heart was thumping, panic spread through her like a wildfire. Instinctively she’d curled her hand around her belly. The baby was the size of a pea, but already she was trying to protect him.

“What’s happened?”

He tugged an envelope from his pocket and handed it to her. She opened up the letter, saw the word “drafted,” and the next thing she knew she was in the principal’s office with the school nurse
waving a vial of ammonia underneath her nose.

She convinced Hondo they should elope; surely they wouldn’t send him to Vietnam if he had a new wife and a baby on the way. He told her he wasn’t a coward. That he didn’t run away from his responsibilities.

“What about me and the baby? Aren’t we your responsibilities too?”

Finally, he’d agreed to an elopement. He took all the money he’d been saving for college out of his bank account and bought plane tickets to Vegas and made plans to leave in the middle of the night. Patsy was climbing down the trellis when her father caught them. He’d come out on the porch with his shotgun in his hand. Threatened to shoot Hondo for defiling his daughter. The ensuing row had been frightful and angst-ridden.

In the end, they’d lost. Hondo went off to boot camp and then on to Vietnam. Her parents had pushed for her to go down to Mexico and see “a special kind of doctor.” Patsy was aghast that they would suggest such an abortion, and she refused their south-of-the-border solution. She was having Hondo’s baby whether they liked it or not. It was only years later that she found out from Jimmy Cross that her family doctor had violated patient confidentiality by telling her parents she was pregnant. The very next day, her father had paid a visit to a crony of his on the draft board, with Hondo’s name on a piece of paper in his pocket.

When she was six months along, news came that Hondo was MIA, presumed dead since the rest of his battalion had been wiped out. She’d mourned
him with the tortured grief of a brokenhearted teen. The only thing that kept her sane was the thought that at least she had a part of Hondo growing inside her. Then Jimmy Cross had come courting. His family had some money, although not as much as the Calloways, and he was pre-law at Texas Christian University. When he asked her to marry him, Patsy said yes. She needed someone to help her care for the baby, and she was desperate to get out of her parents’ house. Jimmy was a good man, if somewhat bland, and he didn’t seem to mind that she was having a dead man’s baby. They married on her eighteenth birthday.

On New Year’s Eve 1970, Patsy went into labor. Twenty-seven hours later, a stillborn son was delivered with severe complications. In order to save her life, the doctor had been forced to perform a hysterectomy.

Three years after that, Hondo was discovered in a POW camp, starving, fever-ridden, and strung out on heroin.

Patsy swallowed, looked over at the trellis still twined with ivy, and her heart ached for the girl she’d been, for Hondo, for their sweet lost child.

The crunching sound of tires on gravel brought her fully back to the present. The ambulance had pulled into her driveway. Her heart fluttered, equally apprehensive and hopeful.

The ambulance door slammed closed and Hondo walked around to the side lawn just as he used to do all those many years ago. He sank his hands on his hips, pushed his sunglasses up on his head, tilted his chin up at her. “Afternoon, Patsy.”

“Hondo,” she said. They’d barely spoken a dozen words to each other in as many years. They stood there staring at each other. The litter of their past was an ocean between them.

“There’s something I think you should know,” he said.

She walked to the balcony railing, told her stupid heart to stop pounding so rapidly. “What’s that?”

“Jesse’s come back to town. He’s staying with me and I’ve loaned him the money to buy the Twilight Theatre.”

Clinton and Kathryn Trainer owned the largest house in town. Every time Flynn visited, she felt like she was being granted an audience with the King and Queen of Twilight. The mansion, built in 1910 by Beau’s great-great-grandfather, sat high on a hill above the lake. From this lofty perch, five generations of his family had sat on their back porch looking down on the town.

Going to the mansion always set Flynn on edge—she was terrified of making some unforgivable faux pas, like using the wrong fork with the wrong course, or grabbing her dinner companion’s water glass by mistake—but this evening was especially nerve-wracking. Beau escorted her up the wide flagstone walkway, possessively tucking her arm through his. They arrived thirty minutes ahead of the appointed party start time of eight
P.M
. in order to break the news of their engagement to his parents before officially announcing it at the party.

Flynn wore the same emerald green, sleeveless
taffeta dress she’d worn last year and hoped Kathryn wouldn’t remember. She hadn’t had the time or the money to buy something new.

A housekeeper greeted them at the door. “Take a chair in the sitting room,” she invited. “I’ll let Mrs. Trainer know you’re here.”

“Thanks, Carmen.” Beau smiled and guided Flynn to the sitting room crammed with expensive antiques and elaborate paintings of dead Trainer relatives.

The grandfather clock ticked loudly in the silent room as Beau helped himself to bourbon and branch water from the wet bar in the corner. He wasn’t much of a drinker under normal circumstances, but he’d often hit the hard stuff whenever he visited his folks. Even as leery as Flynn was of alcohol, she couldn’t blame him. Clinton and Kathryn were a bit hard to swallow without some kind of mellowing agent.

“You want a club soda?” he asked. It was what she usually drank when being entertained at Chez Trainer. “Or maybe, just for tonight…” He held up the bottle of bourbon.

“Tempting…but I’m good.” Flynn eased down on the hard-backed settee, pressed her knees together, and tucked the fingers of both hands underneath her thighs.

“Darling, you’re early,” Kathryn Trainer said, sweeping into the room in an expensive designer frock perfectly tailored to fit a figure just a shade above anorexic, and made a beeline for her son. She bussed both his cheeks. “Make me one of those, will you?”