I resigned myself to the only alternative left to me, unless I wanted to take a long drive off the peninsula, which I most certainly did not. I had to go to Hole in the Wall Pizza, the most depressing food emporium in the Western world. Since my return, I’d discovered by dint of experimentation that their Greek salad was passable—if you didn’t mind limp lettuce and picked your way around the pinkish tomatoes, which were as hard as baseballs and about as tasteless. As long as you didn’t order any “extras” like grilled chicken on the salad, your meal was likely to be edible. I’d made that mistake once, and whatever it was on that salad, it wasn’t chicken.
I called in my order. The owner had a passel of adult children who all seemed to work in unpredictable shifts. Each one had a unique spin on the Greek salad, and I wondered what I would get. Then I went downstairs and walked out into the parking lot, headed to my mom’s house to pick up my car, which I kept in her garage.
Just as I passed the Dumpster, my sister, Livvie, cruised into the parking lot in her ancient minivan. “You ready?” she called.
“Ready for what?”
She pantomimed an exaggerated sigh. “For the Sit’n’Knit. Don’t tell me you forgot.”
I had. I had completely forgotten the Sit’n’Knit. “It’s been a crazy day,” I answered.
“So I’ve heard.”
News of the body in the walk-in would be all over town. But that wasn’t the only reason I’d forgotten the Sit’n’Knit. Livvie had decided if I was going to stay in Busman’s Harbor permanently, I needed to make friends, and she’d put herself in charge of the operation. I wasn’t so sure. I had a new business and a new boyfriend, and I could have immersed myself entirely in those endeavors. But Livvie didn’t think that was healthy, and when Livvie had strong opinions, things usually went her way.
I stood outside her car, looking at her in the light of the dash. My rebellious little sister had grown into a gorgeous twenty-eight-year-old woman, with a strong face, chiseled cheekbones, a straight nose, and long auburn hair. She was expecting her second child in February, almost ten years to the day after she’d given birth to her first. While I’d gone on to prep school, college, business school, and a job in Manhattan, Livvie had stayed in Busman’s Harbor, married her high school sweetheart and raised a child.
I’d always been the good girl and she the wild one, but in the decade since the birth of my beloved niece, Page, somehow our roles had reversed. Now I was dating the bad boy with a past and she was the stable wife and mother. In that time, our ages had reversed as well. Now she was the older, wiser sister and had taken to bossing me around. Or at least trying.
I wasn’t so sure about the Sit’n’Knit. It was conceived as counterprogramming to Sam Rockmaker’s poker night and was roughly composed of the wives and girlfriends of the men who played in the game. For the most part, the women were married and had children, and the talk tended toward colic and daycare. I wasn’t bored by it, but despite Livvie’s best intentions, it made me feel even more like an outsider.
I started to make my excuses. “I don’t think I can go tonight,” I said.
“Get in the car.”
“No, really. I’m so terrible at the knitting.”
“It’s not about the knitting, Julia.”
“I haven’t eaten. I called a Greek salad into Hole in the Wall.”
“We’ll pick it up on the way.”
Game. Set. Match. I still wasn’t used to losing to my sister. I went back to my apartment and grabbed the bag that contained my knitting things. As I climbed into Livvie’s minivan, I said, “What I’m really worried about is everyone grilling me about the body in the walk-in.”
“It’s not always about you, Julia,” Livvie said, stepping on the gas.
*
After we picked up the salad, we drove halfway up the peninsula. Livvie turned off the highway and bumped carefully down a dark lane toward the home of this week’s hostess. I was glad I wasn’t trying to find the place on my own. Finally, we turned into a circular drive and saw warm lights shining from every window of a large, Cape Cod–style house. When we got out of the car, I caught one of my favorite aromas—wood burning in a fireplace nearby.
We entered through a breezeway between the house proper and the garage into a spacious mudroom. Following Livvie’s lead, I left my work boots in a line of similar footwear and padded into the house in my socks.
As soon as I entered the kitchen, I realized the house was newly built, not an old Cape. What I’d taken as the second floor was actually an illusion. The rooms on the main floor soared to the roofline, full of windows and skylights that must have made the house bright even on a winter day.
Most of the knitters were already there, drinking mulled wine from blue mugs around the kitchen island. The evening’s hostess, Kendra Carter, greeted me warmly. Then she took the pitiful to-go container of Greek salad and deftly emptied it into a green-trimmed soup bowl. As she did this, I apologized for not eating before I came.