The Sweetgum Ladies Knit for Love - By Beth Pattillo Page 0,14

“I agree with Camille. Love is sacrifice. You do for others because it’s the proper thing to do. The Christian thing to do,” she added for emphasis. “I’m sure we’ll enjoy the books, Eugenie, but I’m not much of a believer in romantic love.”

Eugenie hardly knew what to say. Those were the last words she would have expected to hear from a woman who’d been recently widowed.

“What should I do for my first project?” Merry intervened, and for once Eugenie was grateful to her for taking the conversation off in a new direction. She swallowed against the disappointment that gathered in her throat. When she’d made out the list, she’d been so sure the theme would be popular with the group. After all, who didn’t like to read a good love story? She’d been so caught up in her own romantic happiness, she realized, that she hadn’t given enough thought to how the reading list would be received by the others.

“Romeo and Juliet might be a challenge to come up with something. Can you knit a doublet?” Merry asked Eugenie with a smile. “That would be authentic to Shakespeare.”

“You can make whatever you like. As long as you use garter stitch,” Eugenie replied. “That’s the assigned stitch for the book.” She’d wanted to start simple since Hannah was still a beginner, and garter stitch was the easiest—the basic knit stitch back and forth with no variation. Hannah should be up to the challenge, at least when it came to the knitting. Eugenie looked around the group once more and wondered if any of them were up to the challenge of pondering the meaning and the mystery of love.

Time would tell, she thought, not without a fair amount of apprehension.

Maria pulled her mothers ancient Cadillac to the shoulder of the road and rolled to a stop beneath a stand of sweetgum trees. Night had fallen, but there was still the faint reminder of a sunset in the western sky. The two-lane road came to an abrupt stop a mile farther on. Fitting, probably, that her family’s ancestral home sat on a dead end at the edge of Sweetgum Lake.

She opened the car door and stepped out into the night air. As always, she could breathe in the scent of the land and instantly feel calmer. Spending her days cooped up in the five-and-dime had never been her dream, but her father had chosen her for the job before she’d even finished high school.

Maria sighed. Painful. That’s what she would have said if Eugenie had gotten around to putting her on the spot about her definition of love. It was painful. Whether the person you loved was alive or dead didn’t make a difference. Presence and absence were different sides of the same coin.

Maria walked beneath the stand of trees at the edge of the road and then followed the rise until she stood at the top of the hill. Here, the trees fell away, and she could see a good distance in all directions despite the falling darkness. To the east, back the way she’d come, were the church steeple and the water tower. To the south, rolling hills dotted with the occasional house and barn. To the west, she could make out the dark curve of Sweet-gum Lake. Faint lights pinpointed the windows of her family’s home near the shoreline.

More than thirty years. She’d lived in the white two-story clapboard house all her life. Now it was sorely in need of a coat of paint, but in her childhood it had been pristine. In those days the five-and-dime had provided for the family—if not abundantly, then at least adequately But those days, like her father, were gone. Her memories might as well be buried in the Sweet-gum Cemetery alongside him.

Change was in the air, not only because of her fathers death, but also because of the life-changing decision she had made in Jeff McGavin’s law office.

Maria could handle change. Or at least she hoped she could. Daphne, her older sister, was far too gentle to take charge of the family and her mother too much of an overwrought hypochondriac. Stephanie, the youngest, couldn’t even be counted on to show up at the store on time. With her father gone, the responsibility fell on Maria. All it required was the sacrifice of almost everything she loved.

She took a deep breath, drinking in the scents of the night. Eugenie’s “Great Love Stories in Literature” might lure her into thinking that Prince Charming