for your order, Mr. Dempsey. I’ll make sure the flowers are lovely.”
She spoke with a little more enthusiasm than Colette deemed strictly necessary.
“Thank you,” he said, and shot Colette an enigmatic smile that she puzzled over for days.
CHAPTER
9
“When making sweaters and you’re off gauge, don’t worry! Fudge and smudge until it fits!”
—Joyce Renee Wyatt, designer and instructor
Lydia Goetz
Brad and I invited Matt and Margaret over for dinner on the first Sunday in March. It was my husband’s suggestion and I’m grateful he thought of it. After Julia’s attack, Margaret still wasn’t the same. Julia herself was back in school but refused to talk about what had happened, even to her mother. It was as if a giant boulder had crashed through the roof; everyone had to walk around it and pretend it wasn’t there. At any hint or mention of the carjacking, Julia disappeared into her room, plugged her iPod into her ears and zoned out for hours on end.
I knew this couldn’t be healthy and I was afraid Margaret’s response wasn’t, either. My sister wanted revenge and she wanted it badly enough to hound the authorities day and night.
I’d hoped that an evening out with Brad and me would help my sister put aside her anger, at least for a few hours. Every day she arrived at work tense and angry, snapping at me without provocation. Just that week, I’d asked her a simple question about an order I’d had her place for circular knitting needles and she’d yelled at me, saying she was a responsible adult and I’d made her feel like a child. I hardly knew how to respond to the unreasonableness of her attack. Thankfully, no customers were in the shop at the time.
Brad and I spent the afternoon shopping and then cooking. We make a good team on the domestic front—and in every other way. My husband’s a master at the barbecue, and we decided to grill chicken. I made a batch of potato salad, following a recipe Tammie Lee Donovan had given me. It has jalapeño in the mayonnaise, which provides a little kick. In addition to the potato salad, I doctored up baked beans with brown sugar and mustard and baked a carrot cake for dessert. It’s Cody’s favorite.
Unfortunately, it was still too early in the year to bring out the picnic table, so we planned to eat indoors. Our goal was a carefree, festive evening in the hope that Margaret and Matt would relax and enjoy themselves.
Brad had everything under control by the time my sister and her husband arrived. Although I see Margaret almost every day, I was shocked by her appearance when she stepped into the house that afternoon. Outside the familiar environment of A Good Yarn, I suddenly realized how haggard Margaret looked. She’s physically bigger than I am, a good four to five inches taller than my five-foot-two height and sturdily built. Compared to this nightmare with Julia, so little has truly frightened her over the years. Even when Matt was unemployed for months she kept it hidden from me. For all I knew at the time, everything was perfectly fine at home. Only when they were about to lose their house did she reveal that anything was wrong.
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