How to Knit a Heart Back Home Read Online Free PDF

one out back? If you have a Dumpster I could borrow, I’ll bring the rest of my mother’s junk and chuck it all in, once and for all. I just don’t know—” Owen cut himself off. She didn’t need to know what he was going through, dealing with the stuff Irene had just crammed in that storage unit with no regard to what he was going to have to deal with to get through it. He picked up the first box he’d brought in. “Thanks anyway.”
    “Wait,” she said, and her voice was softer now.
    “What?”
    “Fine, I’ll take them. But I can only give you . . . five bucks a box.”
    Owen turned, slamming the box back on the counter with more force than he’d intended. “Deal.”
    Lucy turned to open the register and Owen took a deep breath. They were only books. Goddammit.
    “How long are you staying, Owen?” Mildred called out from the table. Nosy broad.
    But he turned and gave what he hoped passed for a smile, and then deliberately didn’t answer the question. “Over at the Starlite Motel, on South Street.”
    Mildred gasped and pressed a beringed hand to her ample bosom. “I knew a man who caught something at that fleabag place that we don’t like to talk about in polite company. Why don’t you rent a place? A nice place?”
    “I’m not staying long.”
    The register slammed shut with a loud jangle.
    Mildred smiled, showing all her teeth. “Still, you should at least rent something better while you’re here. Good thing the parsonage is rented, Lucy, or you’d have to show it to him, wouldn’t you?”
    From behind him, Lucy said in too loud a voice, “Fifteen dollars! Here you go! Thanks for stopping by, please come see us again.”
    She slid the cash across the counter instead of placing it in his hand.
    “What’s the parsonage?”
    Mildred was up and moving over toward him. She was a force of nature, he could tell.
    “It’s in the back, here, past the little cemetery. Lucy rents it out, fully furnished, but she has a tenant now, don’t you, Lucy?”
    Mildred’s voice set Owen’s teeth on edge. It was as if she were rubbing it in—that Owen didn’t deserve to stay in a nice place in town. Yeah, he understood that. He always did.
    Lucy looked up at the high beamed rafters as if the answer were hanging there. “Well, she moved out last week,” she said, finally.
    Mildred’s look turned to one of concern. “Well, now, that wouldn’t mean that . . .”
    “So it’s available?” Owen asked.
    Lucy said, “I just usually don’t rent it to grown-ups.”
    This conversation was difficult for him to follow. “Excuse me? I’m thirty-five, but . . .”
    “I rent it to girls who are at the local junior college, usually. There’s a high turnover, but they’re nice. I’ve never . . .” She cocked her head to the side for a moment and surveyed him. “You’re a cop, right?”
    How did she know that? “Retired.”
    “You’re not old enough to be retired.”
    “Medically retired.” The next question would be whether he’d ever shot anyone. He fucking hated that question.
    “Huh.” She studied him some more. She didn’t ask the question. And then, just like that, he remembered.
    “You were Lucy Harrison.”
    “It’s the darndest thing.” A smile broke like sunrise across her face. “I still am.”
    “Well, women’s last names change all the time.”
    “Mine tends to remain stubbornly the same.”
    “Mine, too,” said Owen. “You were my tutor.”
    “You were really terrible in math.”
    “I was.”
    And then a blush slid across her cheeks, staining them a dusty pink. Owen had to curl his fingers around the lip of the wooden counter—the urge to reach out to touch the soft skin of her face was astounding. And it would have scared the crap out of her, rightly so, had he done it.
    Owen wondered if she even remembered that one kiss.
    Probably not. What teenage girl remembers some stupid guy who bails and never comes back? She probably didn’t remember that night at all. He did,