Big Sky Reunion. Charlotte Carter

      Then he might stick around for a while.

      Chapter Two

      Head down, her footsteps as slow as a desert tortoise, Melinda left Knitting and Notions to walk the short distance to Aunt Martha’s house.

      She hadn’t spent long in the shop after Daniel left. Realizing how much needed to be done to get the store up and running was a daunting prospect. First, a top-to-bottom cleaning would be needed, followed by rearranging the stock and ordering new yarns and notions. Advertisements would have to be created and placed in the local biweekly newspaper, flyers made and posted around town about classes and special activities.

      To make the shop a profitable venture, she’d have to attract customers not only from Potter Creek and its five thousand residents, but from the surrounding area, as well. Which meant she’d be competing with shops in Bozeman, less than an hour away.

      Daunting was an understatement.

      For as long as Melinda could remember, Martha had lived in a small one-story stucco house facing Second Street, directly behind the shop. The large backyard used to be a riot of color during the summer, roses in full bloom, morning glories scampering up a trellis, beds of purple iris and lilac bushes. Ten years ago Melinda had helped her aunt put up jars and jars of vegetables she’d grown in her garden, most of which she’d given to the church’s food pantry to help the poor.

      Now the yard had gone scraggly and overgrown. Only the indestructible morning glories struggled onward and upward, covering the trellis with bright blue flowers.

      The house looked as ragged as the yard with its chipped paint and dangling window screens.

      Guilt punched a hole in Melinda’s chest. A knot tightened in her stomach. So much had changed in the past ten years. She should have kept better track of her aunt’s situation instead of focusing only on her own problems.

      For three agonizing years, she’d devoted her life, day and night, to Jason. The last two she’d rarely left his side or thought of anything but his well-being.

      The steps wobbled as she walked up onto the porch where a wicker slider sat, dusty and abandoned.

      In the kitchen, which featured a circa-1950 chrome-and-Formica table and a white tile counter, the dishes she’d washed after their lunch sat drying on the drain board. From the living room, she heard the sound of the TV playing.

      Aunt Martha sat in her favorite wingback chair, the remote control in her hand, her walker right next to her chair. Her collapsible wheelchair was in the front entry if she needed it.

      “Hello, Mindy, dear. Did you pick out some yarn while you were in the shop?” Due to the stroke, the right side of Martha’s mouth didn’t work quite right and her speech was slightly slurred. Her hair had long since gone from the blond of her youth to silver-gray, and her face was lined from a lifetime of Montana sunshine and hours of hearty laughter.

      “Not today. I brought along a sweater I’ve been meaning to finish for ages. I’ll work on that first.” She picked up the newspaper Martha had dropped on the floor and set it on the coffee table. “Anything I can get for you?”

      “No, I’m fine. I don’t want you to trouble yourself over me.”

      “That’s why I’m here, Aunt Martha. Have you done your afternoon exercises yet?”

      “Oh, pshaw, child. Those therapists at Manhattan Rehab purely wore me out. I’m taking today off.”

      Frowning, Melinda picked up the rubber ball her aunt was supposed to squeeze multiple times during the day and handed it to Martha. “You aren’t going to be able to knit a stitch if you don’t get your strength back in your hands.”

      Martha looked up over the top of her glasses at Melinda. “You’ve turned into a bossy little thing, haven’t you, child?” With a funny twist of her lips, and considerable effort, she held out her hand for the ball.

      Melinda placed it in her palm. “Now squeeze.”

      Martha did as instructed.

      Sitting down in the floral-print love seat, Melinda stretched out her legs. She wiggled her toes in her sandals. She wasn’t wearing polish on her toenails and idly wondered if Daniel had noticed.

      Rejecting the thought, she sat up straighter, pulling her feet closer to the sofa.

      “Before your stroke, were you still teaching knitting classes?”

      “Oh, my goodness, no, dear. Young people don’t seem so interested in knitting these days and most of the ladies who used to come into the shop have either died or moved into an old folks’ home in Bozeman or Manhattan. Unless someone called for something special, I’ve hardly opened the door for the past year or so.”

      Which explained both the obstinate key and the disarray in the shop. Melinda puffed out her cheeks on a long exhale.

      “I was thinking… I thought I might reopen the shop.” She chose her words carefully. Her heart stuttered in the same uncertain rhythm. “Maybe stay in Potter Creek permanently.”

      Eyes widening and a lopsided smile creasing her cheeks, Martha said, “That would be so nice, dear, but are you sure you want to be stuck in a small town like Potter Creek? There isn’t much for young people to do here.”

      Then why had Daniel stuck around?

      “You remember, I was managing a knitting and needlework store until—” her voice broke and she struggled to keep a tremor from her lips “—until Jason got so sick.”

      “That poor little boy. I was so sorry—”

      “The shop built up a really nice clientele,” she hurried on, unwilling and unable to talk about her son. “Mostly women, of course, but quite a few young mothers. Even some teenagers. The classes were filled all of the time and we kept adding new ones.”

      Moving her right arm awkwardly, Martha put the rubber ball in her lap. “Is that what you’d like to do with my shop?”

      “After your hospital social worker called me about your discharge plan, I got to thinking about the shop and how much you’d taught me that summer I visited. I wouldn’t do anything with the shop without your approval.” She did need to keep busy, though. She couldn’t go on wallowing in self-pity and isolating herself from human contact as she had for the past six months.

      Using her left hand, Martha lifted her right hand and brought them both to her chest. “Praise the Lord! I’ve been praying He’d give me a sign of what I should do. Now God has answered my prayer and sent you to me.”

      Slanting her gaze to the worn and faded Oriental carpet on the floor, Melinda shook her head. “I don’t think I’m God’s answer to anything. But I do need to work, Aunt Martha.” Regret and grief nearly choking her, she lifted her head. “I’m broke. I had to declare bankruptcy last month.” Enormous medical bills had taken every dime she’d received after her husband’s death—a death benefit from the defense contractor who’d employed him as a civilian truck driver in Afghanistan. An IED had blown up under his vehicle. Even then, she’d still owed thousands of dollars for Jason’s care. She’d had no choice but to file for bankruptcy and start over again.

      Alone.

      Desperately trying to stitch her life back together again.

      “I’m so sorry, Mindy. If I’d known…”

      She tried to shrug off her aunt’s sympathy, but it felt like ice picks were being jammed into her spine one after the other, cutting off the messages from her brain to her muscles. The pain paralyzed her.

      “Of course you can run the shop, dear. I won’t be of much help, but I’m sure you have some wonderful ideas.”

      The tension drained from her shoulders. The tightness she’d been holding in eased and her facial muscles relaxed.

      She had a job