Knit in Comfort by Isabel Sharpe Read Free Book Online

above her head. “Mmm, is that coffee?”
    Megan’s smile drooped. She thought she’d been clear about supper being the only meal she’d offer. “Would you like a cup?”
    â€œI’d love it, thank you.” She brought her arms down, smiling and more relaxed than the day before, when she’d been all nervous energy and draining excitement. “Just tell me where it is, I’ll help myself.”
    Megan started toward the house, ashamed to have been so grudging about a cup of coffee. “It’s in the kitchen. I’ll show you.”
    â€œYou don’t have to—”
    â€œIt’s no trouble. This way.” Megan stepped into the house and into the kitchen.
    â€œGood morning.” Vera, up already, shuffling in her green flowered robe and pink terry mules, fissured heels slipping sideways off the soles.
    Grand Central Station this morning.
    â€œDid we wake you?” Megan reached into the cupboard for Stanley’s favorite mug, the biggest one they had, to scold herself for feeling so inhospitable.
    â€œNo. I was up reading. I can’t sleep worth a nickel anymore.” She nodded to Elizabeth. “Getting old is not for sissies.”
    â€œBette Davis.”
    Vera lowered herself stiffly into the chair, letting go the last few inches so she thumped down with her trademark loud sigh.
    â€œI’m sorry?”
    â€œBette Davis said that.”
    â€œThat is such a pretty dress, Elizabeth. Megan, why don’t you get something like that? It’d look real cute on you. Get Stanley to buy you a dress next time he comes home, he’s always buying you things. Something with some color in it. You’re always so drab.”
    â€œWe have better things to spend our money on, Vera. Do you take anything in your coffee, Elizabeth?”
    â€œBlack is fine.” Elizabeth walked around the kitchen touching everything in reach like a child—the china plate on the wall, Jeffrey’s black and red drawing of a battleship, the basket of still-unripe peaches. “This house is so nice.”
    Vera raised her thin brows. “I’ll show you the house I grew up in. Now that was a house. Built by a retired ship’s captain who was sick of the sea in, oh, let’s see, can’t remember the date exactly…”
    â€œHere’s your coffee, Elizabeth.” Megan thrust it out to her.
    â€œA little weak I’m afraid. New machine I’m getting used to.”
    â€œThanks.” She took a sip, looked surprised and set the mug down on the counter, went back to touching. The bunch of mint in the glass on the sill; the tile backsplash; the butcher-block holder for Megan’s knives; the vase of peonies with a doily underneath, leaving her mark everywhere. “Okay, now you have to tell me exactly where you got this lace. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
    Megan set Vera’s coffee down in front of her, then turned and began putting together plates of homemade biscuits, sliced plums and her own strawberry jam. All these questions. Let Vera answer how she would.
    â€œI made that.”
    â€œ You did? Wow!” Elizabeth gently pulled the doily out from under the vase and trailed a reverential finger around its edges. Her hands were smooth and elegant, not yet showing the ten-dons and veins that had turned Megan’s middle aged. “Tatting? Is that what you call it?”
    â€œAh, no. No no. This is Shetland lace, it’s knitted.”
    â€œKnitted!? You knitted this?”
    â€œYes, ma’am.” Vera was practically floating out of her chair with pride.
    â€œWith what needles? Size zero?” Elizabeth laughed as if she thought she was making a hilarious joke, and held the lace up to the window for the light to come through its delicate design, transferring shadows of the trellis diamond center and wave edging onto her face.
    â€œI used double zeros.”
    â€œ Double zero