"What?" he asked.
"Nothing." I stepped close enough to brush sawdust from his shoulder. "You're doing great."
Chapter nine
Hog
The yarn slid through my fingers like it had somewhere better to be.
"Okay, so you're gonna insert the needle here—" I demonstrated the decrease stitch for the fourth time, holding the needles up so the whole circle could see. "Through the back loop, not the front. That's what gives you the—shit."
I dropped a stitch. My stitch. The one I was supposed to be modeling.
Edith Murillo looked at me over her reading glasses. She was seventy-six, had taught me half of what I knew about knitting, and had never let me get away with sloppy technique.
"Connor," she said, voice dry as Thunder Bay in January, "you've made that decrease ten thousand times. What's got you so distracted you're dropping stitches like a beginner?"
"Nothing." I grabbed my crochet hook from my notions kit—every knitter's emergency tool—and caught the dropped stitch, working it back up the rows until it was secure. My right hand protested—knuckles still swollen from last week's fight, split oneseeping slightly through the bandage I should've changed that morning. "Just tired."
"Your grandmother would've smacked you with her needles for dropping stitches." Edith's voice softened slightly. "She had standards."
Gram had been gone fifteen years, but sometimes I still caught myself looking for her in the circle—expecting her to be sitting in her usual chair by the window, laughing at something Edith said.
If she'd been alive to see me in a Storm jersey? She'd have told the whole circle before my first shift. Hell, she'd have knitted herself a Hawkins scarf and worn it to every game.
"She'd have smacked me for many things," I managed.
"True. But she'd also be proud you're still here. Still teaching." Edith adjusted her work—some complicated cable pattern that would hurt my brain. "She worried, you know. That once she was gone, you'd give this up. Told me so, near the end."
Her words made me blink. "She did?"
"Said you kept things separate. Hockey and knitting. Like they couldn't both be real at the same time." Edith's needles kept moving. "Worried you'd pick hockey and forget the rest."
The rest of the circle had gone quiet—attentive. They'd all known Gram. Watched me grow up in this circle, from the eight-year-old just learning to a hockey-obsessed teenager.
"I didn't forget," I said quietly.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I nearly dropped my needles trying to check it.
Rhett:Kids crushed their crossovers today. Mika says hi.
A smile spread across my face.
"There it is." Edith pointed a knitting needle at me. "That's the face. Someone texted him."
"It's—"
"The contractor?" It was Linda Simmons, Edith's best friend and worst enabler. "The one from theChroniclephoto?"
Fuck. That photo. Rhett and me on New Year's Eve.
"His name's Rhett."
"We know his name, dear." Margaret appeared from the front of the shop, carrying her own project—some complicated lace shawl that looked like spiderwebs and mathematics had a baby. She wore her usual uniform: a cardigan with approximately forty pockets and reading glasses on a beaded chain.
She settled into her chair—not Gram's old chair by the window, but close enough that I saw both chairs simultaneously. "Rhett Mason," Margaret continued. "Good family. His father taught him carpentry before the dementia got bad. Does excellent work—fixed my porch last spring."
"He's good people," one of the younger women added. I thought her name was Sarah. Or maybe Sandra. "Did my kitchen renovation. Showed up on time, stayed on budget, and didn't try to upsell me garbage I don't need."
