Page 57 of Some Kind of Haunted

Cleo sighs, but she’s grinning. “What, are you like those Witch Mountain twins?”

“Something like that.” Especially for me and Logan. “Speaking of twins, I was hoping I could come by the airport sometime and meet your grandmother. Formally. I’d just love to hear about Amelia from her own twin sister.”

Cleo’s expression goes carefully blank. “Yeah, maybe. Sometime. I’m not sure she’s up to it right now. Talking about Amelia hurts too much. But I’ll let you know.”

It feels like a brush-off, but also plausible, because who would want to talk about their dead twin they loved very much? If Harrison can’t bring himself to talk too much about Amelia—or couldn’t until today—I can’t imagine how bad it must be for her actual twin.

Grief here in Midas seems to be a lot of pretending it doesn’t exist, and since I always assumed that was why Dad didn’t talk about Mom much, it’s comfortable. Familiar. “Okay.”

Cleo walks with me down the alley to the little house. She stands in the doorway, surveying everything in her quiet way. Logan isn’t here, so I leave him a note of where I’ll be. Then I grab my knitting project from my room and we walk back over to the store together.

Once we come in through the back, Cleo all but pushes me inside the main part of the store. Nora is flitting around the room, mostly focused on the long table where a group of women are clustered around with happily patterned knitting bags and mounds of brightly colored yarn and half-knitted projects before them. Sips are arranged down the center of the table.

There are four older women I don’t recognize sitting at the table already. Three of them are clustered together next to each other, heads inclined toward one another. The other one sits off to the side, her chin up almost in defiance.

I decide immediately that she’s my people, trying so hard to pretend like it doesn’t matter that she’s been excluded.

The front door opens. To my surprise, Marleen strides in with a very obvious project bag, a foamy bit of neat stockinette visible on top. This is some kind of knitting project. Marleen is clearly a knitter.

I don’t know why this surprises me—I know anyone can be a knitter and I think everyone should be a knitter—but it does. I did not expect to see Marleen at the Knit and Sip.

She nods at Cleo, then does an amazing impression of someone who just doesn’t see me standing there. Again.

And again, it doesn’t particularly feel mean or pointed, just weird.

She moves to the table and sits between the trio and the lone woman.

One of the trio leans toward her, her white hair gleaming in the overhead light. “Marleen, tell me it isn’t true.”

“What isn’t true?”

Everyone is fussing with their knitting projects. I see a beautiful fade, probably a sweater. There’s a colorwork yoke that I recognize as one of the popular patterns that everyone was wearing at the Rhinebeck Sheep & Wool Festival last fall. I see some delicate lace on what I think is a shawl. I see a pile of mittens and the start of a double-pointed needle cast on that suggests matching hats are in the offing. I’m dying to see what Marleen is knitting up, but she’s still settling into her seat.

Cleo moves forward to take a seat, so I follow suit. Next to the lone woman, of course. I smile at her as I pull out my fun little stash-busting cowl.

My new friend is not impressed with me. She looks down her nose at me, in fact.

That one woman from the trio is still leaning toward Marleen. “Braxton told me Jack is taking the scotcheroo off the menu.”

Marleen’s lips firm.

“It isn’t true,” another woman from the trio says, but she’s looking at Marleen like she’s afraid it is.

“It can’t be true,” the third woman asserts. She’s the one with the mittens. “The scotcheroo is a staple.”

Marleen says nothing to the trio of women.

“It’s good it’s off the menu,” the solitary woman says with a sniff. “A dessert as big as your head is a decidedly bad decision, and a waste besides. We shouldn’t encourage people to eat like that.”

The trio gasps. This must be sacrilege. And since I’ve decided I have an affinity for the lone woman and her shocking opinions on scotcheroos, I decide to add what I’m sure will be more sacrilege. “What’s a scotcheroo?”

Every single pair of eyes in the store turns to me. Slowly.

There is shock. There is horror. The solitary woman who disapproves of the giant scotcheroo puts a hand over her heart as if I’ve personally wounded her.

“We’ll get you one tomorrow,” Marleen says gruffly. And this is the first time she has spoken to me or acknowledged my existence since that very first day, when she did not kick Logan and me out of the diner for not waiting to be seated.

And I am starting to wonder if I am very, very, very slowly earning this woman’s approval.