Tight Knit Page 7

  “I’d like that,” Lara said. “Are you okay to come, Dad?”

  “Yeah. I think that’s a nice idea. We’ll bring her leftovers.”

  When Lara pulled into April’s driveway, the garage was open and her friend was inside, working beneath the rows of LED lights as the last streaks of sunlight faded outside. Hammer in one hand, she waved with the other as Lara got out of the car and joined her in the garage.

  “I didn’t expect to see you tonight,” April said. “Not that I’m not happy to.”

  “Sorry to drop in on you. I started working on something and forgot I was out of felt markers. I’d go buy some, but the store is closed by now. Do you have a spare I can borrow?”

  “Probably. Check in one of the bins behind you.” April looked her up and down, and Lara suddenly felt self-conscious. This was supposed to be a quick late-night trip, but maybe she should have at least changed out of her pajama pants before coming over. April wasn’t quick to judge, but she sure seemed aware of Lara’s appearance now, and it made Lara wonder if she looked as bad as she felt. “You’re working this late?”

  Lara shrugged. “I lost track of time. Haven’t been sleeping much.”

  “I can tell. You look tired.”

  “Yeah. Bad week.” Lara turned around to hide the bags she was sure were under her eyes. April’s garage was a functional storage unit, with shelves lining the walls and bins lining the shelves. Each section was labeled: Toys. Winter clothes. Craft supplies. Lara pulled that one down and focused her mind on sorting through the various shears, tape measures, and needles.

  “Is that article still bothering you?” April asked. A metallic ringing echoed in the small space as she resumed her hammering.

  “No. Well, yes, but I’ve got other problems too.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  Lara pricked the pad of her index finger on a loose sewing pin. A small dot of red blood bubbled up from the surface, no bigger than the pinhead. Lara licked the blood away before it stained anything and soothed the wound with her tongue. “There’s not much to talk about. My grandmother is sicker than we thought. My dad couldn’t even bear to visit her until I made him go with me the other day. Which made her happy, but still. It sucks. We can’t do anything to help.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. Did you find the markers?”

  April’s words manifested a fresh pack near the bottom of the bin like a magic spell. “Yeah, thank you.” Lara pocketed the package and stood to put the bin back on its shelf.

  “You’re welcome to stay if you want,” April said, her hammer filling the gaps between her words. “You can keep me company. Help if you want to.”

  Lara was so wrapped up in herself that she hadn’t even noticed what April was doing. She was standing next to a flatbed trailer, and while that didn’t seem too out of the ordinary, Lara quickly realized that April didn’t own a truck, let alone have a reason to keep a giant flatbed stored in her garage where her minivan should be. “What’s this?”

  “A parade float. The Harvest Festival is coming up.”

  Jesus. April was such a soccer mom. Lara wished she was organized enough to find the time and the emotional capacity to care about things like parades. April made being happy and busy at the same time seem so easy. “What are you making a float for?”

  April pointed, and Lara crossed the garage to read the sign attached to the end of the trailer. Tight Knit.

  “Tight Knit has a float?”

  “Yup! I got it approved and everything. Didn’t you hear?”

  Lara had not heard. She had a sneaking suspicion that Glenda would bring it up the next time they spoke, though.

  “How do you do everything all the time?” Lara asked.

  “I wish I knew myself.”

  That was Lara’s favorite thing about April. She did things. No matter how much she had on her plate, she never let herself cave under the pressure. Lara couldn’t handle criticism. Lara couldn’t stand up to people like Roger and Paige. April was a stronger person. Lara would kill to have half of her drive.

  “I want to do something for my grandmother,” Lara decided. If April could find time to be a mom, counsel Lara, organize clubs, and build parade floats in her spare time, then Lara could give up a bit of her own time to do something special for her grandmother’s last days. “I just don’t know what.”

  “She wanted to come to Tight Knit, right?” April asked. “Maybe we could host a meeting in her room.”

  Maybe. Lara doubted the nursing home staff would even allow that many visitors at once. Plus, Betty would be able to come to all the Tight Knit meetings she wanted once she was back home. “I don’t know. That doesn’t feel personal enough. Glenda and the other women from Tight Knit are already throwing her a party. I want to do my own thing.”

  “I’m sure you’re gift enough for her, Lara. She loves you. I doubt there’s a nicer thing you can do for her than simply spending time with her while you still can.”

  Lara was planning on doing that regardless. It didn’t feel like a gift. “Yeah. I’m sorry I bothered you,” she said morosely. “Thanks so much for the markers. I think I’m gonna head home and let you get back to your float.”

  April’s smile was soft. “Come over anytime you need to, Lara.”

  The one thing Perry had over Oklahoma City was the quiet. At night, the streets were empty, and the sky was clear enough to see stars shining in the periphery, even as Lara kept her eyes locked on the road on the drive home. She could drive forever, back to Oklahoma City or even across state lines, if only she had the time.

  When Lara arrived home, she was more aware of the ticking of the grandfather clock in her quiet house than ever. It was a pretty thing, a deep brown mahogany that refused to be bleached by sunlight or dust. The more Lara stared at the face of it, the more she could see her own great-grandfather’s face reflected back at her, the hands ticking away like the whiskers of the mustache on his itchy lip. She had been so young when he’d died that she barely remembered him. Would she start to forget her grandmother in a few years too?

  She picked up her knitting and tried to resume her work, telling herself it would be a distraction. But work carried deadlines, and the passing of time was something Lara did not want to think about. She didn’t want to think of what would happen to Betty in a few months, or less. Or what would happen in a couple of weeks if she couldn’t keep up with her orders. Or what could happen in a few days if that article got any more traction. The holidays were coming up, and the negative press was messing with what should be her busiest time of year.

  A sudden jerk at the work in her hands made her look down.

  “Hey, Rocket.”

  Rocket head-butted Lara’s hand, purring vigorously and plopping his body atop the half-finished cat sweater draped across Lara’s thighs. Lara scratched him behind the ears, welcoming the intrusion.

  “You don’t want me to work tonight?”

  Rocket closed his eyes in bliss. His ears drooped back as Lara massaged the top of his scalp.

  “Are we calling it an early night? Did you have a long day too?”

  Rocket’s purring slowly faded out, replaced by the quiet of his deep breathing. The gentle rise and fall of his chest was a comfort, even if his bony feet digging into Lara’s leg was not.

  As she set her work down on the coffee table, her gaze caught on something. Paige’s business card. She had meant to throw that away.

  Something compelled her to keep staring at Paige’s stupid, smug face. Her stupid, bragging title as the owner of “Perry, Oklahoma’s Only Newspaper,” named after herself, no less.

  It would be so easy to throw the card away and pretend that Paige no longer existed like she’d been doing for the past four years. Except she couldn’t. Not when doing the Hometown Heroes contest would be the perfect gift for her grandmother. Not when Betty was on her deathbed.

  This time, when Lara picked up her phone, she dialed Paige.

  CHAPTER 7


  In a perfect world, Lara would look out at the sea of customers and spot her best friend waiting at their regular table. Instead, when her eyes locked onto their usual spot in the corner, Paige was the one staring back at her. She waved Lara over enthusiastically, as if she couldn’t discern whether or not Lara had seen her, despite the fact that Lara was staring directly at her.

  Lara nodded her head in the direction of the line, signaling that Paige could wait two more minutes while she got coffee.

  Paige responded by holding up not one coffee cup, but two.

  There went Lara’s chance at two more minutes of peace.

  With a sigh, she slowly strolled to the table and took a seat opposite her tormentor, who cheerfully passed her one of the cardboard cups.

  “You still like pumpkin spice, right?”

  Lara wanted to say no just to spite her, but it wasn’t like Paige was wrong. Her addiction to pumpkin-flavored caffeine and her promise to treat Paige with at least a modicum of human decency won out over the instant urge to argue.

  She took the cup. “Thank you.”

  Paige had to shove a notebook aside to make space for Lara to set down her cup. The table was small, and Paige was using its full surface as a workbench. The printed-off pages and notebooks were all upside down to Lara, but she could make out her name on a few of the sheets. Paige was clearly doing her research.

  “How many hours did you spend Googling me to find all this?”

  “A few,” Paige admitted. “What can I say? I’m dedicated to my work. We both have that in common.”

  Lara took a sip of her coffee. Just the perfect amount of sweet. Paige had remembered she liked two packets of sugar. Somehow, Lara found this supremely annoying. Paige swished a swig of coffee around her mouth. It took her longer to swallow than it should have. This, too, was somehow infuriating.

  Lara’s fingers itched to curl into a fist, but she gave them something productive to do instead. The cool relief of metal soothed her palm as she dipped her hand into her pocket and gripped the cylinder. “I found this.” Lara held up the lighter, a counter offering to the coffee.

  Paige’s smile of recognition was instantaneous, as if jolted by a spark of electricity. “Cinderella!”

  Lara stared blankly as Paige reached across the table to snatch the lighter from her hand. “You named the motorcycle babe on your lighter Cinderella?”

  “Yeah. Get it? Cinder. Fire.” Paige pushed down on the ignition and stared into the flame like a caveman seeing fire for the first time. With a release of the button, the heat was gone, but Paige’s smile remained. She pocketed Cinderella, trapping her in the castle of her coat pocket with old receipts and lint as the evil stepsisters. “I can’t believe you kept this.”

  Great. Paige had missed a half-naked woman on a piece of plastic more than she’d missed Lara.

  “I didn’t keep it,” Lara said pointedly. “I found it in a box of old junk I don’t want anymore.”

  “Thanks for giving it back and not throwing it away.”

  God, Paige was clueless. Lara almost had thrown it out. Clearly, she should have, and she cursed herself for not following her instincts. “You’re welcome.” The sarcasm was heavy on her tongue. A swig of pumpkin spice washed it away and strengthened her resolve, despite the temptation to grab the stupid lighter out of Paige’s pocket and set her stupid mountain of papers on fire before walking out.

  Paige sorted through Mt. Daley officiously. “We should get to it, yeah? I have to record you, if that’s okay.”

  A pocket voice recorder came out. Paige pressed a few buttons, and its red light glowed ominously, pulsing as it awaited Lara’s words.

  “So, tell me about your work.”

  “Really?” Lara asked. “That’s your opening line? Wait. Can you be a little more vague, please?”

  Paige scoured her notes, visibly startled. “Lara—”

  “Everything you need to know about my work you have in your notes right there. I’ve said it all before, and you’re not going to find out anything new by asking me general questions like that. I thought you knew how this journalism thing worked?”

  With a bit of hesitance, Paige set down her paper. “I guess it’s been awhile since I’ve been able to write my own stuff. It seems like all I do is management nowadays. But still…” Her tone grew firm. “Most of my subjects over the years have been more than happy to answer the general questions. It’s usually all people prep for. If you get too specific at the start, you catch them off guard, and then you don’t get anything good out of them.”

  “Well, I’m tired of answering the same questions over and over again.”

  Paige was silent for a moment, chugging her coffee as if it wasn’t still molten. Maybe all those years of smoking had numbed her throat to the burning sensation. Or maybe she was just that desperate for caffeine. She did love her morning cup—and her morning cigarette. Lara had always been there to hand her both.

  “This is just an initial profile piece,” Paige said. “These are the types of questions I’m asking everyone. We’ll get into the deeper stuff if you make it to the next round.”

  The last thing Lara needed was someone digging deeper into her life, especially for a contest publicized across Oklahoma. Although, to be fair, her sense of threat was unfounded. Even Lara’s most basic Tweets would get more readers than any Oklahoman newspaper article. It wasn’t like she was going to be chosen as Perry’s Hometown Hero anyway. She just needed to do this one candidate interview to make her grandmother happy and to restore whatever shred of dignity she had left in the mind of Perry’s residents. She could survive a round or two of interviews before happily being voted out of consideration.

  “I’ll hold you to that. You’ve disappointed me too many times, Paige. At least make this good.”

  “Hey, I pulled through for you on the Tight Knit advertisement,” Paige said.

  “Only so you could get on my good side and use it as leverage to get me to do this article for you.”

  “Is that why you’re doing this?” Paige asked. “I ‘got on your good side’ that easily?”

  “Definitely not.”

  “Why, then?” Paige asked. She scrunched her brow, genuinely contemplative. With the steam of the mug wafting in front of her face, she looked wistful, engaged, like a poet on the brink of brainstorming her next great line.

  Lara didn’t owe her any answers. “Does it matter why? I’m doing it. Don’t make me change my mind.”

  Paige held her hands up in defense. “Fine.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Lara asked, feeling a bit more vindictive. She had to admit it was kind of a power rush. Paige was letting her control the conversation. “You want to win some silly contest that badly?”

  “No. I’m doing it for Perry.”

  Why was Lara not surprised? “For Perry? Really? Talk about cheesy.”

  “It’s not cheesy. I mean it. Paige continued, “We hear all this news about the big places in the world, Los Angeles, London, Dubai. Even local news stations are full of the same segments that are on every other national and international news channel known to man. The world is never going to care about places like Perry. We’re the only ones who care, and we deserve to celebrate that. We may not have Nobel Prize winners or mass shootings every week, or the world’s best basketball team, but we have people like Nancy Carmichael, who sends gift packages to veterans all over the county every Christmas. We have people like Jason McCormick, an eighth-generation locksmith who knows more about the history of lock picking than any other person on this planet. We have people like you, who have turned their passions into businesses that help customers all over the world. Perry has so much to offer. It’s right in front of our faces, and we don’t even let ourselves see it because we’re taught that all we’re ever allowed to be is a blank space on a map that’s never going to be big enough to deserve a marker. Even you bought into it. That’s why you moved away, isn’t it?”

  “Do you
really think that’s our problem? That we’re anonymous to each other? Everyone who lives here knows too much about Perry. That’s the problem. The fact that Jason McCormick can trace his lineage back that far is ridiculous. The fact that people know who he is in reference to some ancient relative he’s never met is exactly what’s wrong with this place. Everyone’s been here for so long that it’s common knowledge the Jacobsons hate the Mackles, but no one remembers why they hate each other anymore. It’s the fact that Nina from the mall cafeteria will forever be known as the little girl who broke her arm trying to climb the McDonald’s sign, even though she’s, like, fifty now and has lived an entire life apart from that. It’s the fact that ever since I was in kindergarten, no one wanted to talk to me because every five-year-old in town somehow knew that my grandpa was an alcoholic who ran over a kid.

  “I’ve spent every single day of my life wishing that I could be anonymous, and the only time I’ve ever felt like that was in Oklahoma City. And, yeah, maybe Oklahoma City isn’t L.A. or London, but it’s big in comparison to Perry. There were so many people. There was so much going on that no one ever gave a shit about who I was or what I was doing. Not the people I went to class with in college. Not the people who lived in the apartments next to me for years. News stations cover the big cities because there’s so much news happening that no one will ever be able to tell it all. If you want to be a blank space on a map, move to L.A. If you want to feel famous or celebrated or important, move to Perry, Oklahoma.

  “That’s why you decided to stay here, isn’t it?” Lara pressed. “Couldn’t make it as a journalist in OKC and decided to stay in Perry because there wasn’t any competition? Because you could finally be the best at something?”

  Paige clenched her jaw. “I came to Perry because I fell in love with you. I stayed because I fell in love with the city too.”

  “If you actually loved me, you would’ve come back to Oklahoma City with me.”

  There it was. Out there in the open. There wasn’t enough space for the truth at their cluttered table, but it shoved its way between them anyway. Paige was quiet.