Patterns in the Sand (13 page)

 

 

Voices in the outer room and the sound of Birkenstocks on the wooden floor signaled Willow’s arrival. Nell smiled to herself, strangely comforted by the fact that Willow had, in fact, come.

 

 

Willow walked down the steps and looked around the room. Her dark hair flew in wild tangles around flushed cheeks. Her voice was tentative. “Mae said I should just come on back.”

 

 

“That’s exactly what you should do. Welcome, Willow.” Nell put her knitting down and walked across the room to give her a quick hug. She wasn’t quite sure yet if Willow was a hugging kind of person, but no matter. Living in the Endicott guesthouse for almost a week and fainting on Nell’s kitchen floor surely granted Nell some kind of hugging rights.

 

 

Willow allowed the embrace, but Nell could feel the tension in her small frame. She was tight as the spring on Pete and Cass’ lobster traps. Nell held her apart and looked into deep black eyes.

 

 

“You’ve had quite a day, sweetie. Come, sit, and have a glass of Birdie’s pinot grigio. It will cure all what ails you.”

 

 

Willow’s brows lifted into an impromptu line of bangs. “I think it might take a whole case to do that, Nell.” She sat down beside Izzy and dropped her backpack to the floor. She looked around the room again.

 

 

“This is the first time I’ve seen this room without a crowd of Izzy’s customers milling around.” She took in the windows opening to the sea, the clean white walls and bookcases filled with books, magazines, an iPod playing soft strains of an old Melissa Etheridge song. The heavy wooden table, pocked from needles and scissors and the press of pencils on patterns, stood in the middle and Willow walked over to it, running her fingers along the surface.

 

 

“What a friendly place. It makes me want to curl up and never leave. I know why Purl loves it here.” She looked over at the sleeping cat on the window seat. “I think I want her life.”

 

 

“The Seaside Knitting Studio is a welcoming refuge for Sea Harbor knitters,” Nell said.

 

 

“Even the UPS guy likes coming back here and having a cup of coffee,” Cass added. “Though making coffee isn’t exactly Izzy’s forte, but the man in brown doesn’t seem to mind.”

 

 

“Quiet, Cass,” Izzy said. “Mae has pretty much taken that over. Our coffee has vastly improved.”

 

 

“Well, this whole place is cool,” Willow said.

 

 

As if on cue, Purl, having bided her time on the window seat, moved across the room and leapt up into Willow’s lap.

 

 

They all laughed. Purl to the rescue, breaking the awkward tension of a room filled with questions but dealing with pleasantries to cover it up. “Well, it looks like our Purl wouldn’t mind a room-mate,” Birdie said. She leaned over and poured Willow a glass of golden pinot. “And here you are, my dear. We don’t have a case at the ready, but one glass is a fine start.”

 

 

“So . . . you want to come in on Saturday and talk to folks?” Izzy asked, pulling out a pair of buttery yellow socks that she was knitting up as a demo for the next Sumptuous Socks class. “We get so many people in here on Saturday that we wouldn’t need to advertise.” Tentacles of soft yarn trailed across her lap.

 

 

Purl looked over with interest, then settled her head back on Willow’s lap.

 

 

“I dunno, Iz. I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

 

 

Nell watched as Willow reached over, as knitters do, and touched the squishy cashmere socks. Her face registered the pleasure of fingers on exquisite yarn.

 

 

“Willow, we’re friends here,” Nell said. “You’re safe.” The words came out without thought.

 

 

But the effect on the young woman—curled up like Purl, her Birks abandoned on the floor and her T-shirt sporting a faded image of the Beatles—was unexpected.

 

 

Willow’s forehead wrinkled first, and in the next instant, huge tears filled her black eyes and began to roll down her cheeks in rivers, dripping from her chin and dampening the worn shirt.

 

 

The four women leaned slightly forward, each ready to take away the sorrow that filled the young woman’s eyes.

 

 

“Dear,” Nell said.

 

 

Izzy’s arm instinctively wrapped around her shoulders.

 

 

Willow looked at the four women surrounding her like a fortress. “I didn’t kill him,” she said.

 

 

“Of
course
you didn’t,” Birdie answered in a tone that would have melted a prosecutor in one robust swoop. She handed Willow a tissue and repeated her words like a mantra, impressing it on each of them. “Of course you didn’t kill him.”

 

 

Willow took the tissue and shook her head. “I couldn’t have killed him. I wouldn’t have done that.”

 

 

She brushed the tears from her cheeks with the tissue, her head shaking from side to side to emphasize the truth to her words. And then she looked up, a calmness slowly returning to her body. “I wanted to kill him. I’ve wanted to kill him my whole, entire life.”

 

 

The women stared at her: Izzy from behind her cranberry cashmere sock and Birdie from the cast-on row of another soft cap—this one a bright canary color designed for a child. Nell set her finished gauge in her lap next to the balls of yarn that she could already picture Willow wearing.

 

 

No one said a word. They waited silently for Willow to continue.

 

 

Purl looked up into the tearstained face of the woman whose lap she had claimed and purred loudly.

 

 

Go on, it’s okay
, she seemed to say.

 

 

Willow looked down at Purl and her voice grew strong again.

 

 

“I couldn’t have killed him. He was my father.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 13

 

T
he dam had burst, right there in the middle of Izzy’s back room. Once Willow began talking, the words poured out.

 

 

“My mom met him in college. At least he was in college. And that’s where he left her, too—in Madison, Wisconsin, in a walk-up apartment, a crummy studio that didn’t even have a window. It was the only place my mom could afford. He just walked off into the night. Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am. At first my mom told me she was in college, too. But later, one of my friends told me that she heard my mom never went to college. She got mad at my grandma one day and she and a friend ran away to Madison. She was still in high school. When she got pregnant, her friend called my grandparents and told them where they were. They showed up in the middle of the night and took her back to their farm near Green Bay.”

 

 

For a moment there wasn’t any sound except Purl’s purring. Finally Nell leaned forward, her thoughts jumbled as she tried to fit this new version of Aidan Peabody into the man she knew.

 

 

“So . . . did he . . . Aidan . . . know where she’d gone?”

 

 

Willow’s narrow shoulders lifted, then dropped. “I don’t know.”

 

 

“Did you know your father’s name?” Izzy asked.

 

 

“No, not until a couple months ago, after my grandmother died. For my whole life I heard about the man out there somewhere who had ruined my mom’s life. That’s what my grandparents said over and over and over. And when my mom died, Grams said that he had killed her.”

 

 

It was Izzy’s turn. “Killed her? Aidan Peabody killed your mom?”

 

 

Willow hesitated a minute before answering, as if she were choosing her words with care. She shifted on the couch and looked at Izzy. “Not like that. He didn’t use a gun or a knife or poison. But he destroyed her life, Grams said. He took her soul.”

 

 

“How old were you when your mom died, Willow?” Birdie tucked her glasses up into her hair and set the cap down on the table.

 

 

“I was six, but I remember it. It was cold out, and I remember the wind blowing through the cracks and making the shutters creak. I was scared that night. Then my mom came into my room and kissed me good night. She said she loved me. And I never saw her again. My grandparents didn’t think I knew what happened that night. They told me it was time for the angels to take my mom to heaven.

 

 

“But everyone knew what happened—you know how small towns are. I heard neighbors and kids on the school bus talking. I knew. My mom went out that night and she got drunk, and her car crashed into a tree. My grandparents never got over it.”

 

 

Nell resisted the temptation to wrap the young woman in her arms. At that moment, Willow’s pain seemed as acute as if she had lost her mother that very day.

 

 

Willow looked at the cap Birdie was knitting and touched the edging. “It’s so pretty, Birdie. I’d like to make one, too. Grams had cancer.”

 

 

“Well, my dear, of course you will make a cap with me,” Birdie assured her.

 

 

“It looks like I’ll have time.” A flash of anger lit Willow’s eyes, fighting against the sadness. “I wanted to leave. I don’t even know why I came. I guess . . . I guess to see this . . . person. To tell him how awful he was. How he killed my mom. He needed to know what he did. He just needed to know that. And then I was going to get as far away as I could and put my life in order. But then . . .” Willow paused.

 

 

“But then he died,” Nell finished.

 

 

Willow swallowed around the lump in her throat and looked up. “He’s still ruining my life—isn’t that the best part? The police said I can’t leave, not for a while. They don’t believe me, of course. They think I killed him.”

 

 

“Do they know Aidan Peabody is your father, Willow?”

 

 

Willow shook her head again. “I didn’t tell them. I was so mad that they would think I could kill someone that I didn’t tell them anything.”

 

 

“Sometimes the police have a problem sorting through things—that’s true enough,” Cass said. She’d been plenty annoyed with the Sea Harbor force when they took weeks to find the man pilfering her lobster traps the summer before. She leaned forward, her elbows resting on her knees and her eyes, nearly as dark as Willow’s, looking at the other woman. “But they’re not bad guys, Willow. We don’t have a lot of murders around here. They try their best.”

 

 

“And, sweetie,” Birdie added, her voice laced with common sense, “Aidan’s death made you a relatively well-off young woman. In the law’s eyes, that’s a pretty strong motive for murdering the man. You need to face the facts that they are looking at. And then we need to show them that they are wrong.”

 

 

“I didn’t know he had a penny. And I don’t much care. I told the police that. In a way it makes it worse that he had money.”

 

 

It
did
make it worse, Nell thought, a lot worse. Though not in the way Willow meant. She was probably imagining how helpful that money would have been growing up—to her mother and to herself. To her, it was just another black mark on her father’s soul. “You’ll have to tell them that Aidan is your father, Willow. If you’re sure about that?”

 

 

“I’m sure. I wasn’t at first, not until I saw him. When I was closing up Grams’ house I found some things—newspaper clippings, pictures, things that my mom had hidden away in the attic because my grandmother would probably have burned them. Grams hated this man so much, it just ate her up inside.

 

 

“I knew my father probably had some artistic ability—my mom couldn’t draw a stick figure, but I doodled and painted from the time I could hold a crayon. Anyway, the clippings were about a show a while back, and there were several people on it. I don’t know how my mom got it. But I did some snooping, went through every scrap of paper. I found some notes with the name ‘Peab’ in them. I guess they called him that in school. Peab.” Willow said the name as if she were holding it, examining it, then throwing it away. “For some reason, Mom saved them.”

 

 

And hid them from her mother
,
who would have burned them.
Nell wondered about the origin of the anger in Willow’s small frame against a man she never met. Was it from her mother . . . or perhaps from a grandmother—an angry bear revenging her wayward young?

 

 

“So the paper trail finally brought me here. The fact that I had a loose connection here—” Willow nodded slightly at Izzy. Her hint of a smile was warm. “That would be you, Izzy—that e-mail you sent me a while ago, though I never thought I’d be using it this way. When I got it, I was so happy—thinking someone who lived on the ocean liked my art—or even just knew about it. It was like a ticket to the world. I’d never been out of Wisconsin—but my art had. And someone had seen it. And liked it.”

 

 

“Liked it a lot. Nell and I both did. That’s why I e-mailed you.”

 

 

“I could tell you liked it by what you said. I don’t know why exactly—but that note was the best thing. I kept it. Read it when things got bad with Grams. I thought maybe, just maybe, I’d someday get out there and get to see the ocean. Maybe meet the two nice ladies who took time to look at my art. And then write me about it.”

 

 

Willow paused and picked up a ball of Izzy’s cashmere yarn. She touched it carefully, like a delicate flower.

 

 

Birdie and Nell continued the click of their needles, Birdie’s hat narrowing as she neared the top. Nell’s sweater now had a first row and soon the moss stitch would appear, lovely ribs on the wide band. The only noise in the room was the click of their needles and Purl’s soft purr.

 

 

Willow went on.

 

 

“Knowing about your store somehow made it easier to show up here. I know small towns. Everyone knows everything. If I had a reason for being here, maybe people wouldn’t wonder about why I’d come or notice me. It would be easier.”