Page 32 of The Sandy Page Bookshop

And then it was all hands on deck. The big table Leah had brought from her own house was moved from its storage spot in the old kitchen to the middle of the gleaming floors in the new studio.

Brad and Lucy collected various chairs from around the house to sit around it.

Even Ethan rolled up his sleeves, helping Luke haul in a rocking chair (you can never have too many reading seats in a bookstore!

Leah insisted) that Lucy had never seen before.

“That’s a gift, from my house,” Mrs. Shipman explained, proudly. All faces turned in her direction. “I asked Luke to help me deliver it. I figure if I have a comfy chair here I’ll feel more at home when I teach my classes.”

Classes , Lucy noted. As in the plural. Mrs. Shipman wasn’t going anywhere.

Together, Lucy and Leah worked to fill the cubbies with artful collections of supplies: stacks of canvases for the Paint and Sip scheduled later that weekend, tubes of acrylics that went into trays, brushes that went into coffee cans.

There were sponges and palettes, pencils and scissors, yarns and needles, and baskets for all of it.

By the end, with some aesthetic rearranging by Brad and once more by Leah, the studio looked like a cross between someone’s family room and a middle-school art class.

“Perfection,” Mrs. Shipman said, and Lucy couldn’t disagree.

The buzz of activity at work was enough to take her mind off of Jep’s note and the lawsuit and Ella who could now use a spoon but still wasn’t talking.

But each day when Lucy grabbed her bike from the side of the shop where she’d left it, the worries found her there.

They rose up on the sidewalk in front of her, like invisible ghosts, and trailed her the whole way home.

“Are you staying for the knitting class?” Mrs. Shipman asked her at closing time.

Lucy hadn’t planned to, but suddenly she wanted to do nothing more. “Yes,” she said “I am.” Her father would be at the motel all night. Her mother would be worrying over hospital bills. Anything was better than going home to the still house on Bay Street.

The knitting class turned out to be a tea party, not unlike Lucy’s teddy bear story time.

Only the stuffed animals were little old ladies, and one little old man who’d thought it was a book club but stayed anyway, and a middle-school girl with her mom.

And there was real tea, this time. Leah tiptoed about the group with steaming mugs as Eudora led an introductory lesson in simple stitches.

Lucy learned the knit stitch as well as the garter.

At first the yarn kept slipping on her needle.

It was hard to keep the right tension in the fiber.

Too many times Lucy’s stitches appeared on her needle by accident.

But she eventually got the hang of it, and soon she had two rows of sort-of-crooked V’s with only a few glaring holes.

“You’re a natural!” Mrs. Shipman beamed, coming around to inspect her pupil’s work.

Most of the knitters were not total beginners.

Lucy suspected they came to chat and sip.

One woman asked if there were any donuts to dunk.

Lucy thought that was pushing it, but Leah made a note.

At the end, when Leah called time, everyone milled about the store before Leah slowly herded them for the door. No one wanted to leave.

The sky was almost pitch-dark, not great for riding a bike across town.

Lucy had promised her parents she’d get a ride, but Leah seemed worn out and her house was on the opposite side of town.

Brad had left before the class started. There was no one to ask.

She went around the side of the house and grabbed her bike.

She was just wheeling it down to the sidewalk when Mrs. Shipman came out the front door with her bag of knitting.

“Oh! You scared me.” She laughed, then took one hard look at Lucy and her bike. “You can’t ride home in the dark.”

“It’s okay,” Lucy lied. “I don’t live far.”

“With all the tourist traffic? You’re likely to get mowed down by some New Yorker in an SUV.” She patted the handles of Lucy’s bike. “Put this back around the side of the house. I’ll take you home.”

“But you walk,” Lucy said. She’d seen Mrs. Shipman come in breathless and hot enough times to know.

She watched as Mrs. Shipman rummaged around in her knitting bag and pulled out a set of keys, which she dangled in the air between them. “Because of all my supplies, tonight I drove.”

Lucy was relieved for the ride. But as soon as they got in the little sedan and started down Main Street, she had her doubts.

Mrs. Shipman was a wreck. She gripped the wheel, pumped the brakes, and one time shot around a rotary faster than Lucy knew she meant to.

Thankfully they pulled up to Lucy’s house in one piece.

“You can drop me here at the mailbox,” Lucy offered.

She didn’t like Mrs. Shipman’s chances of backing out of her narrow driveway.

“My pleasure.” Mrs. Shipman squinted at the mailbox illuminated by her headlights. “Hart. What a lovely name.” She paused, thinking. “Now, why does that name sound so familiar?”

Lucy froze. She knew why, but she wasn’t about to say so. “Thanks for the ride!” she said, hopping out of the car. Before Mrs. Shipman could say another word Lucy was jogging across her yard, praying she didn’t put two and two together.