Kate Jacobs by The Friday Night Knitting Club - [The Friday Night Knitting Club 01] Read Free Book Online Page B

cuddles and apple pie an
All-American (and part Scottish) kid hopes for, either. Without a doubt, it was
the dread of the "I told you so" that really spurred her to take up
Anita's offer that day in the park. What amazed her most about her mother—always
distant, often preoccupied—was just how much she could yabber .
Georgia took after her father in that regard, ever so slightly suspicious of
idle chatter. But her mother seemed to possess endless energy to make her
irrefutable—within the family, at least—pronouncements. Such as "People
who tell their children they love them every day are just phonies."
(Georgia made it a point to tuck in her daughter, even now that she was twelve,
with words of love and cheeks covered with kisses.) Or "Boys who give you
expensive presents are just hoping to get you into bed." (Well, James had
always been a big one for flowers; maybe Bess was on to something with that
one.) Still, there was a reason why Georgia hardly ever saw the woman. The
trouble was, she didn't see her dad too often because of it.

Her parents' marriage was one of those strange matches that left friends and
neighbors curious about the connection, whispering on the way home. "What
do you think he sees in her?" the farm friends might ask. "What do
you think she sees in him?" the prim church ladies would say to their
husbands after coming by for a Sunday tea. Georgia suspected her mother fell
for a lilting accent before she realized the man and his deep voice came with a
newly acquired farm. With chickens and cows and crops. Or maybe she thought it
would be easy to convince her stocky, dark-haired boy to give up on the land
and head to a big city, not realizing the earth was Tom Walker's first love. As
for her father, maybe he had fallen for Bess's attractive figure or perhaps,
ever practical, suspected the brisk efficiency hiding within.

Tom had been Georgia's touchstone growing up, a quiet man sitting in the corner
after supper, sneaking her a gentle smile over the corner of his newspaper even
as her mother went on about her little girl's misdeeds and all the lessons she
needed to be taught. Still, he never interfered. Just about the only thing her
father had insisted on when she was a girl was that the family go over to
Scotland every three years or so. The trip, to his mother's farm near Thornhill , not far from the small city of Dumfries, was a
great expense for them at the time. Her mother would harp, all the while, on
the new washing machine or sofa she couldn't afford to get as they squirreled
away the funds for the journey. Then, more often than not, he was unable to
accompany them, asked by a neighbor to help with a late harvest or struggling
with equipment in need of serious repair. For Georgia, those fall days, after
the crops were done, were glorious—pulled out of school for two (or sometimes
three) weeks to tramp about in the fields with her granny, her feet toasty in
her rubber boots and her hand held tightly by the older woman. In the
afternoon, they'd rake up the coals and get the heat going in the small stove,
sitting in just their socks on the two-seater sofa. Those were the times when
her gran would take out her big bag of knitting—a holdall she'd sewn herself of sturdy canvas, and closed by
means of several snaps—and pull out the small needles that were Georgia's and
Georgia's alone. Their first lesson was all about the garter stitch, sliding
the right needle behind the left, Georgia's six-year-old fingers fumbling, her
eyes rolling as she forgot which hand was which. And then when Gran tried to
switch it up with purling, putting the right needle in front of the left! One
way, then another way—ridiculous. She clearly remembered throwing the needles
across the room in frustration, stitches falling off and the yarn unraveling,
the cats—Gran always had several kitties around the house—chasing the wool in
delight. And she hadn't forgotten Gran's quick hand
on her bottom—just enough to get