Stages of Grace - By Carey Heywood Page 0,68

as long now. I meant to ask you yesterday. How will I know when to stop?"

"If I make a scarf for myself, I try to make it long enough to loop around my neck a couple times. You can test it out using what you have so far."

"Thanks. I will."

"Grace, would you like to come with me to my knitting group today?"

"Sure! Is that okay?"

"Why wouldn’t it be?"

"I don’t go to church."

"That's fine. You don’t have to go to church, but if you ever want to, just let me know."

"Alright. I'd love to go with you today."

"Great." Kate gets up quickly, and I look at her in confusion. "I'm just going to call my friend to let her know I don’t need a ride."

I nod and finish my breakfast. After taking a shower and getting dressed, I pick up my knitting and sit in the living room while Kate gets ready. I try to wrap my knitting around my neck and can get it to go around almost twice but very tightly and with no excess. I get back to work, still counting each stitch. There is one row where I almost add an extra stitch, but I catch myself as I do and stop. The existing stitches that I'm knitting into sometimes fray and look like more than one stitch. That's what I have to watch for.

When Kate comes out, she seems surprised by how far I am on my scarf. "Did you stay up all night?"

"Not all night," I confess.

We take my car, and Kate directs me to her church. It's a large, white Spanish-style Catholic church.

"This is beautiful," I say as we walk in, taking in the stained glass windows.

"Thank you. Those windows are newer. We had to have them replaced after a hurricane five years ago."

We enter through a side door and go down a hallway past some bathrooms to a small room with a table and chairs. There are already a few women there either sitting, already knitting, or gathered by a second smaller table that has some cookies and coffee set out. Kate introduces everyone who is there to me. I'm surprised by how excited they all are to meet me. It’s clear she has been speaking of me frequently during their weekly meetings. She directs me to one end of the table and gets settled while I snag a plate with some cookies. As more ladies flow in, they all come over to Kate to meet me. It’s cool to see how proud she is to show me off to all of her friends.

Kate had finished her shawl last night, and it goes with maybe five other completed projects to be used for the parishioners. The group makes mostly shawls for people in their church who are either struggling with an illness themselves or of a family member and for family members who may have recently lost someone. Once a month, their priest will come and pray over the completed shawls. They're supposed to represent an embrace of God's love. I wasn't raised in any structured religion but feel I could have been comforted in having something like that after losing my parents so suddenly.

Making my scarf is fun, but the idea of giving someone comfort during a difficult time is speaking to me, it feels like something I have to do. I want to make one as soon as I can. I'm not able to do much knitting during the meeting. All of the ladies want to hear about me and the move. I do my best to answer their questions, even when they start asking me about my nonexistent love life. My thoughts drift to this morning where I had again checked my phone for a message from Jon. Part of me thinks I'll never get one and that I should move on. It's just easier for me to hold out hope.

I have to laugh when they start asking me about Ryan. He appears to have a following amongst the knitting ladies. I bite back a smile as Kate explains he had given her a ride here a couple of times, and one time, walked her in carrying something. He made something of an impact on the ladies who were there. They want to know anything I know about him and just about swoon when I tell them he offered me a job on our drive from Cleveland. At this point, Kate adds that he took me out dancing when I