“It’s a garland,” breathed Dakota. “A gorgeous knitted garland.”
“How unique,” added Bess, who admired the neatness of the stitches.
“Put this on carefully, now,” Gran instructed Tom, scooting over to the love seat in the far corner of the lounge to sit down and soak it all in. “Georgia and I spent years working on that garland, our international project. She’d send me the long knitted rectangle and I’d loop it in and sew up the ends. She and I always said we’d get the whole family together at a Christmas in Scotland, all of everyone. And now we have.” Gran beamed at the room, at her family.
“This is just what she wanted,” she concluded with satisfaction.
There was a heartbeat, and then another, when no one spoke. And then the timer on the oven beeped and everyone started busying about, setting the table and putting away the empty boxes. Each person took turns wrapping gifts in the sewing room and bringing them to the tree, while the rest of the house drank wine while they waited their turn and greedily devoured the butter tarts that Bess had been baking.
And even Gran said she liked them.
chapter thirteen
The coal-burning stove in the lounge was cooling, prompting Dakota to nestle under two of Gran’s afghans and wear a pair of her hand-knit multicolored slippers as well.
“Can’t let this Scottish chill into our bones, can we, kitty?” she murmured to Gran’s fat orange tabby, who was preoccupied with stalking half of a dropped shortbread cookie. Dakota had decided, after talking to Gran, that not only was she going to finish the sweater her mother began knitting for her father twenty-one years ago, she was going to wrap it up and give it to her dad on Christmas morning tomorrow. She wasn’t likely to get much sleep before the presents were opened, she realized, but she was determined.
She reached into her knitting bag for her circular needles, leaving most of the sweater to rest in the bag so the cat wouldn’t sit on it, stitching her knots one after the other. She wasn’t even certain her father would recognize the sweater, wasn’t sure if he ever knew Georgia was making it for him. But as Anita had said, her mother had planned to complete the piece, had planned to give it to James that Christmas if complications from the cancer surgery hadn’t gotten in the way. And now Dakota was going to do her work for her.
The cat jumped up to her lap, meowing for attention, batting at her circs with his paws. Dakota kissed the top of his orange head and gently placed him on the floor.
It was soothing, to be alone in the quiet of the tiny, dollhouse sized cottage. To listen only to the ticking of a clock and to knit in the glow of the indoor Christmas-tree lights. They hadn’t left any cookies for Santa, she mused, remembering how she’d slice up carrots for the reindeer with her uncle Donny, leaving a handful outside the farmhouse window in Pennsylvania.
She’d always had fun at Christmas when she was a little girl. Even though she was vaguely aware that Bess and Georgia didn’t connect, she never really felt it had anything to do with her. It’s not as though there were blowup fights, exactly, just a tense sort of formality when they spoke to each other. Which Dakota mainly ignored, content to wander about with Grandpa Tom and chat to black-and-white cows and observe Grandma Bess roll out pastry for tarts. The smells, the routines, the same old same old of their holiday habits, were what made the day special. And Georgia, although present, typically made herself scarce on Christmas Eve.
Dakota imagined she was behaving tonight just like her mother, no doubt, finishing up some last-minute garment the night before Christmas. Georgia never had much energy for her own projects, Dakota knew, too busy creating for everyone else. And yet she always had something homemade waiting under the tree, even something as simple as a barrette stuck into a knitted flower that Dakota could put in her hair.
She would do the sweater, she decided, and then she would sit her dad down for a discussion about Sandra Stonehouse. And this time, she thought, she would ask questions. And really listen to his answers.
Dakota finished a row and switched hands, starting again. Peri, she thought, would likely be doing a last check of the Walker and Daughter shop before racing down the steep stairs, her rolling carry-on bouncing behind her, to frantically flag a cab and obsessively watch the minutes tick by on her cell phone, hoping against hope not to miss her flight. How would it work if Peri went to Paris? What sacrifices would Dakota have to make?
She could end up more like her mother than she anticipated, she thought.
“There you are.” Dakota turned around to see Bess, in a thin cotton housecoat, standing in the doorway of the lounge. “I thought we’d forgotten to turn the tree off,” she said, coming over to sit beside her granddaughter.
“I’m making a present,” Dakota explained. “For my dad.”
“Aren’t you tired?”
“I need to do it,” she said. “It’s from my mom. I mean, she was making it when, you know.”
Bess glanced away quickly, then took a breath and returned to the conversation.
“She liked to create, your mom did. It’s one of the ways she wasn’t like me,” said Bess. “But that shop was something. Never really saw it until the memorial service. Never had much cause to go. And yet there was so much to see, all those colors of yarns and on such a busy street. I nearly got hit by a car as I crossed the street.”
“You’re not a city girl, Grandma,” said Dakota. “That’s okay.”
“Oh, I wasn’t always itching to live with cows, that’s for certain,” said Bess. “I had my own city aspirations once.”
“Maybe that’s where Mom got it, then,” said Dakota, still working up her rows. “You planted the idea when she was little.”
“When she still listened to me, you mean?” mused Bess. “Maybe. I used to tell her stories some nights, if I wasn’t too tired. Running a farm is hard, hard work. And I had two kids and a husband who required attention as well. I never felt I had the luxury to slow down.”
“I feel that way a lot,” agreed Dakota.
“Well, let me give you some advice, then,” said Bess. “Don’t be so afraid of messiness in life. I always was. Worried about having extra work to do. Or not feeling appreciated. But you know what? The mess isn’t going anywhere anytime fast. The world doesn’t stop if you take a break. And I wish I’d been more of a pest and found a way to ingratiate myself with your mother.”
“It wasn’t so bad, Grandma,” said Dakota, reaching out to reassure her. She couldn’t remember ever having a conversation with Bess when they weren’t working on a chore together. She wasn’t like Anita, ready to listen over a cup of coffee, or like Gran, who always knew just what to say. Bess was more distant, and yet Dakota could see that now she wanted to be a part of things as well. She just didn’t know how to go about it.
“It wasn’t so good, either, Dakota,” said Bess. “I’ve spent years reconsidering my relationship with my daughter, and I finally think I’ve figured it out. I’m going to listen first and open my own mouth second.”
“Uh, Grandma, isn’t that a little . . . challenging to do now?”
“Sometimes it is and sometimes it isn’t,” said Bess. “It helps me to recollect some of the disagreements your mother and I had, to try and see it now from her point of view. Some days a fresh insight hits me quite clearly and I feel I know her better somehow. Makes me a funny old woman, doesn’t it?”
Dakota shrugged.
Bess reached out an arm to stop Dakota from knitting.
“All my life I held back, thinking it was safer that way,” said Bess. “But let me tell you, holding people at arm’s length doesn’t make you love them any less, and it doesn’t make it any easier when something happens. It just means you miss out on the chance to get to know them. You remember that, Dakota. It’s always easier to keep to yourself, but it’s not always for the better.”
“Want to learn how to knit, Grandma?”
“I might be too old now,” said Bess. “It’ll probably be a waste of energy.”
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“Nah,” said Dakota. “It’s just a way to spend some time together.”
“But it’s the middle of the night,” reminded Bess, pursing her lips.
Dakota leaned over. “Live a little,” she whispered, before reaching into her knitting bag for an extra pair of oversized bamboo needles.
“These are 35s,” Dakota said. “They’re like training wheels.”
Bess wrapped her hands around the needles as Dakota put aside her knitting and, her arms around her grandmother, showed her the motion of picking up stitches. Then she did a slipknot, cast on several short rows, and, hand on hand, demonstrated to her grandmother how to stitch. After a few moments, Dakota picked up her circs and the two women sat together in companionable silence.
Tom ambled into the lounge, his gray hair poking up.
“Bess, it’s half past two,” he said sternly. “You haven’t even come to bed.”
“I know,” said Bess, feeling more relaxed than she had in ages. “But Dakota is teaching me how to knit.”
“That’s new,” he said, knowing his wife had refused to learn from his mother and then waited, without saying a word, for her own daughter to offer to show her. Which never happened.
“She’s not bad,” said Dakota. “I cast on for her, and she’s doing up her first scarf.”
“I am?” said Bess. “I didn’t realize. Well, it might have been a gift for you, Tom Walker, if you’d just minded your own business.”
“And I’m finishing up a present for my dad,” said Dakota, finally lifting the bulk of the sweater out of the knitting bag, almost the full back attached to her circs. The turquoise stripe running down the length looked even more retro than before.
“It’s beautifully knit,” said Bess. “But the color. It’s seems a bit out of step.”
“My goodness,” said Tom, looking at the knitting carefully. “I’m sure I’ve seen this before. Did you tear out your mother’s blanket to make this?”
“Huh?” asked Dakota. “It wasn’t a blanket. I just found it among her UFOs.”
“That’s an unfinished object, Tom,” said Bess. “Dakota’s been teaching me all about the knitting-isms. Knitters are punners, apparently. Ewe’ll love it.”
“I see,” said Tom, amazed at his wife’s behavior. She reminded him a bit of when she was young. He pointed to Dakota’s knitting. “That’s shaped like a blanket.”
“It’s part of a sweater, Grandpa. You make the different pieces and put them together? Though it was next to impossible to find this pale turquoise,” Dakota explained. “I don’t think there’s much call for the color. So I really had to search. Because Mom didn’t leave much extra yarn with it. That wasn’t like her at all—she always saved the right amount of yarn with whatever she was working.”
Tom was certain now where he had seen this pattern before.
“My guess is that she used it for something more important,” he said. “And I’m pretty sure it’s in one of the boxes that James sent up to our place after the funeral.”
“I never looked into those,” admitted Bess. “But maybe I should.”
Georgia stocked her extra change in a glass jar, her homemade savings plan supposed to leave her enough to buy Christmas gifts for Dakota.
“She’s a baby,” her mother had said over the telephone when Georgia boasted about her hopes. “She won’t even know.”
Still, Georgia collected her dimes and pennies, dipping into the jar sometimes when she was low on money for diapers. Or when Dakota had that bad cough and she had to pay for that pink syrup that the baby spit up for each dose. She was always meaning to pay back her jar loan but never had quite enough left over to make up the difference. Still, she considered her financial planning a success when she rolled up her coins in the middle of December and exchanged them at the bank for thirty-seven dollars.
Anita offered to take Dakota for the afternoon, and Georgia enjoyed the freedom of an afternoon alone, walking down the street without a heavy diaper bag on her shoulder. She went to three toy stores, comparing prices, squeezing the talking dolls, and admiring the stacks of games that went as high as the ceiling. It seemed there were a lot more toys than there were when she was a kid, and that didn’t seem that long ago, thought Georgia. In the end, though, she went home with as much money as when she started, carefully tucking it into her sock drawer and thanking Anita for watching her Dakota.
“I couldn’t decide,” she said. “I want to get her something just right.”
“She really will be happy with a cardboard box,” Anita said, tickling Dakota. “She’s barely a year and a half. Anything colorful will catch her eye, and then she’ll be on to something else.”
“I know,” said Georgia, who wasn’t entirely convinced. “But I only got her a rattle last year. How dinky is that?”
“Well, you certainly brought back an entire toy store with you,” said Anita, nodding to the stack in the corner.
“Between you and my dad, Dakota is not going without,” said Georgia.
“And your mom,” said Anita, as Georgia shook her head. “I’m sure she’s pushing that cart down the aisle of the superstore. I don’t think your dad knows as much about Barbies as you give him credit for.”
Later, when the baby was napping, Georgia whipped out her journal. She’d always kept a notebook—a different color so she could tell them apart—in which she wrote down everything, from her secret thoughts to her favorite pizza toppings. Old filled notebooks were stored in a box in the closet, along with some photos, her high-school yearbooks, and random crap from the James era. That’s what she ought to do this Christmas, she thought, purge her old life. She carried in a chair so as not to wake the sleeping baby and clambered up to take down the box from the top of the closet. There were a lot of remnants of her life with her baby’s father.
She lifted up a sealed envelope that he’d mailed, holding it up to the light to see if she could read anything through the paper. Nothing legible, certainly. Georgia tucked her little finger under a corner of the flap, daring herself to open the note.
“Nah,” she said, tossing it back into the box. “If I had a fireplace, I’d burn it,” she declared, remembering how her father, Tom, had taught her and Donny to burn their letters to Santa Claus in the fireplace, just as he had done during the Scottish Christmases in his childhood.
Georgia rummaged through the rest of the contents, coming across a needle raggedly broken in two. The sweater! That’s what she had. She could take all the remaining yarn—not like she was ever going to finish now that he’d hightailed it outta here—and make something for the baby. A blanket, she decided. Her baby never needed to know what the yarn was intended for, and she didn’t plan to tell her. Instead, she’d have the most unique camel-and-turquoise striped baby afghan, better than anyone else’s on the playground. She ducked under the bed, grabbing a garbage bag in which she had a few projects waiting, the sweater shoved down to the bottom. She considered tearing out what she’d made of the sweater already but opted to leave it as is, an unfinished chunk existing as a reminder of the foolishness of believing in a future before it was certain.
She wouldn’t make that mistake again. She wouldn’t focus on anything but making a life with her daughter.
As for the thirty-seven dollars? Well, thought Georgia, she’d just use that to start Dakota’s college fund.
chapter fourteen
She always felt like a kid on Christmas morning, the overpowering desire to upend her stocking and hunt for chocolate balls causing her to sit straight up in bed.
“Wake up, sleepy,” said Gran, attempting to rouse the lump of Dakota next to her, her mouth open and a mostly finished camel-and-turquoise sweater gathered under her arm. “You’ll miss the holiday.”
Gran hummed to herself as she ran a brush through her soft white hair, then chose a very special green cardigan with white snowflakes.
“I made this one a lifetime ago,” she said, though Dakota’s breathing indicated she
was hardly awake. “It was Tom Senior’s favorite. I wear it every Christmas.”
The tradition of it all was part of what made Christmas so magical, even though it had been decades since she was a little girl with a stocking at the end of her bed.
Gran knew, without question, that she’d awaken and put on this very cardigan that she only wore this one day a year, and she knew she’d race to the kitchen to put in the turkey she’d carefully ordered, and she knew she’d pour a last coating of brandy on the Christmas cake she’d been soaking for weeks (and a wee drop in a glass for herself), and she knew that she’d attend eleven a.m. services at the Presbyterian church in Thornhill, and she knew that the cousins from both sides would come over to eat her Christmas lunch in the rose-wallpapered dining room. She knew that she’d get out the good china with the border of leaves and vines, and the sturdy silver she’d been polishing for weeks, the table extended into the hallway with the wooden leaves she kept wrapped in cloth at the back of the coat closet and the extra chairs gathered up from the kitchen and the bedrooms, the stool that sat in front of her sewing machine commandeered for the youngest member of the family. She knew that they’d take turns snapping one another’s gold-foiled Christmas crackers, twisting the tube apart so the goodies inside would tumble out and they could eat Christmas lunch properly, with colored paper crowns mashed down onto their heads to keep from sliding off as they read aloud the jokes and sayings from the printed tidbits of paper inside the cracker. And she knew her family would bow their heads to listen to Glenda Walker commence to say a grace for the food before the entire clan dove into the best meal of the next 364 days.
There’d be presents, and chocolates, and fancy nuts still in their shells, the cousins’ little ones taking turns operating the heavy wooden jaws of the nutcracker until one of them dropped it on a toe, and there’d be the requisite crying but no parent would get mad and say, “I told you so.” No, there would be only hugs, and little shared smiles among the adults, and no prohibitions on desserts. “It’s Christmas,” someone would say every few minutes, justifying another snack or a catnap or just an excuse to give a peck on the cheek and a bit of a squeeze.