This time I chuckled. I liked that he had a sense of humorabout himself. He asked some more about the afghan and seemed to remember seeing it listed in a catalog he'd received for the silent auction.
'I wasn't planning to go to the fair, but you've changed my mind. Maybe we can meet up there. If you've caught up with your knitting.'
I gasped. 'Crocheting. They aren't the same, you know.'
'You're cute,' he said with a smile in his voice, before hanging up.
Who would have thought I'd end up so popular this time around? But it was too much to sort out now, so I threw all thoughts of my social life onto the back burner.
I wasted no time getting in touch with Will Hunter. He was his usual laconic self and didn't even question how I'd gotten his number.
'I am stunned and saddened by what happened to Natalie,' he said when I asked how he was doing under the circumstances. I wasn't sure he even knew who I was, until I brought up the book signing and his tone lightened. 'Oh, yeah, the bookstore lady. Love your place. I still have my hook and string.'
I went right for the order and asked if he would still be making his appearance on the agreed-upon date.
'It's all been kind of strange. My agent wanted me to go with another publicist, but I'm sticking with Ellen's husbandfor the moment. He seems like a know-the-ropes kind of dude. I'll tell him I'm going to do it, and you just cross wires with him for a confirmation.'
I couldn't very well say that even though Lawrence claimed he owed me an apology, he wasn't returning my calls. I told Will about the pressure to finish the auction donationand used it as an excuse to get the confirmation from him.
Instead of giving me the unequivocal yes I wanted, he picked up on the fair and started asking a lot of questions about it. I explained that it raised money for all kinds of animalservices, and I mentioned we were down to the wire to finish the afghan. 'We're assembling it the night before, at the bookstore.'
'I don't want to give you any more worries, so I'll just say yes for sure.'
I gave myself a high five of sorts. It was more like a high hook, since I'd been attempting to crochet during both phone calls. I discovered I still needed to give my full attentionto what I was making and had to unravel both times.
I had taken my promise to CeeCee seriously and been working on squares in every spare moment. When I got stuck cashiering at the bookstore, I crocheted between customers.Dinah came over, and we made squares and had Chinese takeout.
I was so focused on making parts for the afghan, I stopped thinking about Ellen and Natalie and who had reallykilled whom. There would be time enough for that when the auction was over.
Some of my grannies still ended up missing a corner and had to be unraveled, but most of them looked really good, if I said so myself. Most of all I loved watching a ball of yarn turn into something concrete.
The plan was, we'd all meet at the bookstore the night before the fair and work all night if need be to get the afghan assembled. But as it got closer and closer to the appointednight, one by one, as they came to Shedd & Royal to deliver their squares, the newbies begged off. The story was always pretty much the same: They had young kids and couldn't get out of mommy duty. In desperation, I had tried to get Meredith to help, but I kept getting her message machine and no call back.
The box of squares looked full as i carried it to the event area. I was setting things up for the long night ahead. I'd already brought in cardboard carriers of coffee and trays of cookies to keep us going. I set the box down on the long table and began to take the contents out, counting squares as I went. It was looking promising until I caught my breath. Some of the newbies' work had gotten pushed to the bottom. In all our rushing, no one had added the black borders to seven of their single-stitch squares. Not only that, but when I put them next to the rest of our work, they didn't match the quality. These must have been the first ones they made.
Adele joined me and looked over my shoulder. 'We can't use those,' she said, taking them out of the mix. We discussed what to do, and decided to wait until CeeCee got there, hoping she would bring more squares with her.
Sheila and Dinah came in together. They helped themselvesto cookies and coffee while we waited for CeeCee. She arrived late and without even an apology. When I explainedthe problem, she didn't seem to hear it the first time, and I repeated it.
I expected some kind of hysteria, but she just muttered something about how it would be all right. She'd whip up the needed squares now. She absently put down her things, took out a hook and several balls of yarn and began crocheting.
Adele nudged me and pointed. I couldn't believe my eyes. CeeCee, the queen of crochet, had missed a corner on the granny and didn't even seem aware it had only three. Adele put her hand out to stop CeeCee's hook. CeeCee gasped when she realized what she'd done, and then avoided everyone's gaze, obviously embarrassed. She threw the piece aside, not even bothering to unravel, and just started a new one instead.
Whatever had been bothering CeeCee had apparently gotten worse.
'Pink, we're not going to make it,' Adele said, shaking her head.
'Don't even say that. We can't fail,' I said, my voice risingin power. I looked at my watch. It was just ten. 'We have all night. C'mon, ladies, if we all make one square and some of us make two, we'll have enough. Then all we have to do is assemble it.'
'Pink, we're not putting it together with a sewing machine.It's a lot of work.' Adele had found an assortment of yarn and laid it on the table. I had just set out skeins and skeins of black, thinking it was all we would need. Sheila and Dinah put down their coffee cups and picked up their hooks. CeeCee's new piece seemed to have all its corners, but there was a certain speed missing in the delivery of the stitches.
'Do you want to talk about it, CeeCee?' I asked, watchingas she dropped the half-finished square and began anotherwithout seeming to be aware she hadn't finished the first.
There was a delay in her response. She looked at me, but her eyes were darting, as if her mind was elsewhere. 'No. Everything is just hunky-dory,' she said with an edge in her voice that clearly meant things weren't, but she wasn't goingto give details.
'Adele, you do know how to assemble the afghan?' I said.
'Of course, Pink,' she said, and began to explain that we would put it together in strips and then crochet the strips together.
She found CeeCee's map and began laying out the squares to see exactly where we were. A noise cut into my awareness. It took a few moments for me to realize it was a knock at the bookstore's door. Once everyone had arrived and the bookstore officially closed, I'd locked it.
I wasn't prepared for who was at the door. I opened it just as he was about to knock again.
'Will?' I said as he stepped inside. He looked around. I had turned off a lot of the lights, so it was kind of dim in the entrance. He handed me an advance copy of his book,
'Dude, I signed it to you, too,' he said. 'With publicists dropping like ants, I realized I better stay on top of my sh--stuff.'
'Okay,' I said. 'Is that it? You wanted to give me the book and tell me that?'
'No, dude, that is definitely not all of it.' His brow was furrowed, and his head bobbed up and down as if he was frustrated. 'I heard your SOS, and I'm here to help.' He pulled out a crochet hook and headed for the back.
Now I remembered I had made some comment about being worried we were cutting things too close and that we were meeting at the bookstore the night before the fair. I had never expected him to show up.
'Yeah, I've taken up the hook.' He leaned in close and dropped his voice. 'I'm trying to quit smoking, and that coaster idea works great.'
Adele almost swallowed her tongue when she heard he was here to help.
'So, how'd you learn how to crochet anyway?' she asked in a doubtful voice.
He disappeared and returned holding the same kids' kit I'd bought. 'I figured if the directions were simple enough for little guys, they'd work for me.' In order to prove himself,he pulled out a wad of string and made a coaster right in front of us.
'We need squares. Like this,' Adele said, holding up the ruby and white one Meredith had made.
'I can't do anything that fancy, but . . .' Will pointed to the array of classic granny squares, which
