LUKE.
"It looks like nothing happened," Chloe said as we gazed out at the waterfall by moonlight. "Everything is just the way it was before."
The portal to beyond the mist was gone. Isadora was finally banished for good. Karen had found peace at last with our daughter, and unless I missed my guess, Gunnar would be watching over them the same way he watched over Chloe. The Falls, the pool of water beneath it, the trees surrounding it, they all looked the same as they had before.
But I knew that was another illusion because nothing would ever be the same again.
Including Chloe and me.
She had claimed her place in the world tonight, and now I had to do the same.
I sucked in as much air as the cracked ribs would allow and swung for the stands.
"A couple nights ago you asked me a question."
Next to me, she went very still. "About staying on as chief."
"And I didn't answer you."
"I remember."
"I want to answer you now."
She let go of my hand and wrapped her arms around her chest. "I think I know the answer."
"I don't think you do."
She turned slightly and met my eyes. "The last couple of days have pretty much been hell."
"No argument here."
"So don't say it. Tomorrow you can tell me but not tonight."
"My answer won't change."
"I know," she whispered. "Just give us tonight, Luke."
"I'm staying."
"What did you say?"
"I said I'm staying."
Her beautiful golden eyes widened in surprise. "Are you crazy? After everything that happened?"
"You're here," I said. "That's all I need to know."
"Your family," she said as a loopy smile lit up her face. "Boston. Your friends. Our life will be here, Luke. This is my destiny."
"Trying to change my mind?"
"Trying to make sure you understand what you're saying."
"I understood it the first time you turned me into a Ken Doll." I tried to pull her into my arms, but the broken ribs had other ideas. We settled for linking hands. "We'll have a lifetime to figure it out."
Sometimes the future is so clear, so obvious, that you wonder why it took you so long to see what had been in front of your face all along. I belonged here. Maybe not in the same way Chloe and the rest of the villagers did, but this was where I was meant to be. One day they'll understand. I'll still be here when they do.
There were no fireworks overhead. I didn't get down on one knee and offer up a sparkling diamond. We were both battered, bruised, broken in ways big and small, muddy and exhausted, but none of it mattered. This was where we had been headed since I first saw her through the window of the old church and fell in love with a knitter who just happened to be a sorceress-in-training.
Sometimes even a cop had to quit asking why and just roll with it. All the logic in the world, all the reasons why this could never work, none of it mattered. Logic didn't stand a chance against that feeling deep inside your heart every time you thought of her.
When that happily-ever-after ending comes knocking at your door, you answer. It was that simple.
Someday your grandkids will thank you for it.
EPILOGUE.
CHLOE.
Did you ever have the feeling you were exactly where you were meant to be? I'd lost that feeling for a while, but now it was back and the future seemed ours for the taking.
I'd knitted my boyfriend a sweater and we'd lived to love another day. If that wasn't magick, I didn't know what was.
"I think I can repair the damage to your sweater," I said as we slowly followed the path away from the waterfall.
"Or you could knit me another one."
"There's an idea," I said. I'd knit him a thousand sweaters, each with a strand of my hair knitted in if it meant we'd be together forever.
I didn't have the energy left to transport us back to town and Luke didn't have the strength to withstand it. I worked a little magick along his rib cage to dull the pain but I wasn't a healer. We would need Lilith for that and maybe one of Janice's tisanes to help him sleep.
There would be problems ahead. We were still a divided town. But at least now we would have the luxury of time to work out our differences. Despite all that had happened these last few days, I felt happier and more hopeful about the future than I ever had before.
Isadora knew me well. She knew where I was weakest. She understood in her own way the loneliness I'd carried with me all my life.
She had found the best way to break me but she hadn't counted on love.
She hadn't counted on Luke.
And I guess up until tonight, neither had I.
But he was still here, still standing next to me, still willing to stand up to whatever forces were unleashed against us.
"We'll get through this," he said and I nodded my head, unable to speak over the rush of love inside my chest. "You'll win the town back to your side. You're not alone anymore."
He reached for my hand across the darkness, and I held on tight as we stepped into the clearing near the cemetery.
"I can't wait to get home," I said, looking over my shoulder at Luke. "We'll get you cleaned up. I'll make us a big breakfast and then-"
He stopped and the expression in his eyes almost made my knees buckle.
"You're hurt," I said, my heart pounding. "Don't go all guy on me and start pretending everything's okay. Sit down on that bench over there and-"
"Chloe." It was there in his voice, his eyes, the way he reached for my hand across the darkness and I knew before I turned around that Isadora had the last laugh after all.
Sugar Maple was gone.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
There are many reasons why I wish I could talk to my mother one more time. Every day I find myself wishing I could pick up the phone and share some silly piece of gossip or get her take on what's happening in this fractured world of ours. Lately, however, I've been wishing I could sit down with her and talk about The Argyle Sock.
I found the sock in her tiny sewing basket a few months after she died. The sock is perfect. I remember sitting on the edge of the bed and peering at the stitches through my tears. The construction of it was beyond me. All of those tiny stitches. Those toothpick-tiny double points. Little bobbins of thread-thin yarn. And the instruction booklet circa 1952! What treasures. The sock represented magic to me. A home kind of magic, which is really the only kind that's important.
Why hadn't I ever asked her to teach me how to use double points? Why did she drop sock knitting? My father was just a few weeks away from his own end at that point, and all he could remember was that he loved the homemade socks and wore out pair after pair of argyles. He seemed to remember commenting that the spots where she darned the heels gave him blisters and she tossed a ball of yarn in his general direction and quit sock knitting then and there.
It wasn't until I ventured back into knitting in August 2003 that I began to look at The Argyle Sock with a critical-and more knowledgeable-eye. The cuff and leg were done flat! Who knew? The red diagonal line was duplicate stitch! How did I miss that the first time around? The rest is clearly circular knitting. What even stitches she created. I couldn't find a slip or mistake anywhere.
I always was awed by my mother's knitting, both her approach to it and the finished results. She wasn't a slave to patterns. If an improvement or design change occurred to her, she gave it a shot. If it didn't work, she ripped it out and started all over again. No angst. No fears. (Meaning, not at all like her hyper daughter who lived in fear of public knitting humiliation.) I remember most clearly the gorgeous Aran fisherman's cardigan she made for me when I was maybe nine or ten. It took her all summer and was ready to wear on the first day of school. I loved it so much I wore it despite the 80-degree weather that day! A big gorgeous ivory-colored sweater with front patch pockets and bone buttons. I loved it more than any other article of clothing before or since and even incorporated it into some of my books along the way. (I guess that was my way of holding on to it even though it's long gone.) The funny thing is I'm not sure I ever told her, really told her, how much I loved that sweater she made for me. She read the books with the references in them. She knew that I held every single item she ever knitted or crocheted or embroidered or hooked for me in the highest esteem. But did I ever tell her how I felt about that sweater? How I can still see it in front of me, feel the stitches beneath my fingers, all these years later?
I hope so.
Titles by Barbara Bretton
LACED WITH MAGIC.
CASTING SPELLS.
JUST DESSERTS.
JUST LIKE HEAVEN.
SOMEONE LIKE YOU.
CHANCES ARE.
GIRLS OF SUMMER.
SHORE LIGHTS.
A SOFT PLACE TO FALL.
AT LAST.
THE DAY WE MET.
ONCE AROUND.
SLEEPING ALONE.
MAYBE THIS TIME.
ONE AND ONLY.