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She marched to the door and held it open for him. “Thank you for everything you did today. I appreciate it, but I want you to go now.”
    He nodded. Without further argument, he walked to the door—and then hesitated. “Can we talk about this?”
    “No.” Her denial was flat.
    He nodded again, although he wished he could explain that hurting her was the last thing he wanted to do. Every time he was with Anne Marie, he realized how important she was to him. He’d learned a lot about life in his AA meetings, a lot about himself, too. He knew better, but he’d let his pride take over. Mel had gotten to him and he’d lashed back—with unintended consequences. Serious consequences.
    He had the distinct feeling that he’d just ruined whatever chance he might still have had with Anne Marie.

Five
    April 25
    My friend Lydia Goetz once told me there are two kinds of knitters in the world. Those who find tangled yarn a challenge and will spend hours restoring it and those who’d rather throw out the whole thing than deal with the mess. I haven’t quite decided which type I am. What I will say is that I feel like my life’s a tangled mess but instead of knotted yarn it’s my emotions. I thought I was over Tim. Completely over him. I assumed nothing he said would have the power to hurt me. I was wrong. When I heard him say the only reason he had anything to do with me was because of Ellen I actually stopped breathing. I was incapable of drawing in air—it hurt that much. It still hurts, and that angers me even more. I have emotionally removed myself from him.
    M onday afternoon, Anne Marie walked back from the French Café where she’d had lunch. As she crossed the street she saw that Lydia was inside A Good Yarn. Theshop was technically closed on Mondays, but Lydia was often there catching up on paperwork.
    What she needed, Anne Marie told herself, was a talk with a good friend, and there was no better friend than Lydia Goetz.
    Walking all the way through the bookstore, she came out in the alley behind the yarn shop. She knocked at the back door and a moment later, Lydia unlocked it, smiling when she saw Anne Marie.
    “Do you have time for a cup of tea?” Anne Marie realized she sounded wistful.
    Lydia’s shoulders relaxed. “I was just thinking that. Come on in.”
    Anne Marie followed her through the back of the store where boxes of yarn waited to be unpacked.
    “How did the move go?” Lydia asked.
    “So smoothly I could hardly believe it. I really appreciate Brad’s and the kids’ help.”
    “They loved it, especially Casey. She’s been moved from one family to the next all her life and never had more than a suitcase. She found it…interesting that two people could accumulate so much stuff.”
    Anne Marie groaned. “That’s not the end of it, either. I have an entire storage unit that still needs to be emptied.” The move to the apartment three years earlier was only meant to be temporary.
    While she was married to Robert, Anne Marie had left over a disagreement regarding children. She’d wanted a family and, as the father of a grown son and daughter, he hadn’t. When neither of them was willing to budge, they’d separated. To be fair to Robert, Anne Marie had agreed to no kids when she’d married him. Over the years, however, her feelings had changed.
    Unfortunately, Robert had remained adamant. No children. When they’d reached that impasse, she’d moved into the small apartment above the bookstore—her way of letting her husband know she was serious. She wanted a family. Children of her own.
    Then Robert had a heart attack and was gone, and with him, her dream of bearing a child. It was while she’d been dealing with her grief that she’d met several other widows; one Valentine’s night, they’d made those lists of twenty wishes.
    As one of her wishes—to do something for someone else—she’d volunteered at the local grade school and been paired with Ellen. Although she was doing well