Page 64 of Falling For You

And the tea parties. Birdie handed her a tiny plastic cup the first time and Andy didn't know what to do with it. But she kept showing up. And somewhere around the third or fourth time, I walked past Birdie's room and heard her doing a voice. Low, growly, and very serious for a stuffed bear who apparently only drank chamomile. Andy looked up at me in the doorway and turned red, but she didn't stop.

Birdie started calling her Mommy Andy. I don't know exactly when it happened. One day it was just there, like Birdie had decided and that was that. I waited for Andy to redirect it, but she didn't. She just answered to it.

"That's pretty."

She was standing at the sink scrubbing a pan from breakfast when I noticed the necklace. A small camellia pendant on a gold chain, resting against her collarbone on top of her shirt.

"Oh this?" She glanced down and touched it. "It was my mom's. It's how I keep her close. I usually wear it under my shirt."

I stood up, crossed the kitchen, and wrapped my arms around her waist. "It looks pretty on you."

She smiled. I kissed her and sat back down.

I thought about that. A necklace from her mother, worn against her skin for years. I wished Birdie had something like that from Lillian. Six years old, and my daughter had photographs and stories from Barb and a father who tried every day to fill a space he didn't have the shape for. But she didn't have anything Lillian's hands had touched and meant for her.

"Wyatt? Is there something wrong?"

"I was thinking about Birdie." I ran my thumb along the rim of the mug. "Wishing she had something like that from her mom."

Andy turned off the faucet, dried her hands, and sat down across from me.

"Lillian was making a sweater for her," I said. "She started it when she found out she was pregnant. She never finished it." I looked at the table. "It's been in my closet for six years. I can't throw it away. I don't know what to do with it."

She reached for my hand. "Can I see it?"

I took her to the bedroom. Opened the closet and lifted the sweater off the shelf. I handed it to Andy.

She held it in both hands. Ran her thumb along the edge where the needles were still threaded through the last row Lillian ever worked. Then she turned it over and studied the stitches like she was reading them.

"What if we finish it?"

"Finish it?"

"We could ask Barb to teach us."

She said it like it was simple. Maybe it was. Six years I'd been staring at that sweater, and it never once occurred to me to finish it. Andy held it for two seconds and found the answer.

"Yeah," I said. "I think that's a good idea."

We asked Barb the next day. She held the sweater for a long time without speaking, then she put on her glasses and studied the stitches.

"I can teach you both," she said. "One side each."

"Really?"

"But nobody touches the real thing until I say so." She folded the sweater carefully and set it on the table. "This is too important to be ruined by a dropped stitch."

Andy took to it faster than I did. Her hands were steadier, her tension more even.

"It's the smaller fingers," I said.

She didn't look up from her needles. "It's because I'm better at following instructions."

I started bringing my practice yarn to the firehouse. Between calls, I sat in the common room with a pair of needles and a ball of yarn, working the same stitch over and over until it stopped looking like a knot.

"Are you making that for Birdie?"

Travis dropped into the chair next to mine. Knox was at the counter. A couple of the guys were on the couch. They'd all seen me doing this for the past few shifts. None of them said a word about it. They knew it was Lillian's sweater. They knew what the yarn meant. These were men who gave each other grief about everything from haircuts to how long someone took in the bathroom, and not one of them had made a joke.