Chapter 9 Hog #2
The summer light shone through her kitchen window, dust motes floating, and her hands—already showing the first tremors of age—steady and sure as they guided mine. This is your gift, she'd said, voice soft but certain. Nobody can take it from you. It's yours to keep.
"Connor?"
I blinked. The shop returned to focus—the shelves of yarn and Margaret watching me with patient concern.
"I'm here," I managed. "I'm listening."
The car outside finally started. The engine coughed, caught, and roared to life.
Margaret waited another beat, giving me time. "She was worried. Said you were already pulling away, making yourself smaller for hockey. Keeping the knitting separate, like it was a secret instead of a gift." She paused. "She made me promise that when you were ready, I'd offer you something real."
The weight of Gram's concern settled over me. Fifteen years ago, when I was fifteen and convinced hockey was everything, she'd seen what I couldn't see. Saw that I'd need this place. Need the anchor.
"Margaret—"
"I'm thinking about retiring, Connor. Three to five years from now.
" She gestured at the shop around us—the shelves of yarn and project samples hanging on the walls.
"I've been running this place for twenty-six years.
I'm seventy-three. At some point, I'd like to spend my winters somewhere that doesn't require an ice scraper. "
I tensed. "You can't retire. This place is—you're—"
"I'm tired, honey." Her voice was gentle. "And I'd like to leave while I still love it, not wait until I resent every minute."
"So what happens? You close the shop?"
"I'd rather not. Your grandmother wouldn't want that. This place mattered to her." She paused. "I'm hoping it matters to you, too."
I stared at her.
"I'm offering you teaching classes. Regular schedule, paid position. Profit-sharing after the first year. And eventually—when I'm ready—selling the business to someone who'd keep it going." She picked up her shawl and worked a few stitches. "Someone your grandmother trusted with her gift."
My brain stalled out. "You want me to—"
"Teach. Eventually manage. Maybe own, if you're interested." Her needles clicked. "You're good at this, Connor. Not only the knitting. You're a great teacher. You make people feel like they can learn hard things. That's rare. Your grandmother saw it in you when you were only eight."
"I'm just a guy who—"
"You're not just anything." Her needles stopped. She looked at me directly. "I made your grandmother a promise. I'm keeping that promise."
The words sat heavy in my lap, solid as Gram's old project bag.
Post-hockey income. A future after the Storm. A path that didn't end with my body giving out, leaving nothing but scars and memories.
What Gram had built, offered back to me with both hands.
"I don't know what to say."
"You don't have to say anything tonight. Think about it." She stood, gathering her things. "But Connor? Your grandmother didn't give you knitting instead of hockey. She gave it to you alongside hockey because she knew you'd always need both. She never asked you to choose—and I'm not either."
She paused at the door to the back room, one hand on the frame. "She just wanted to ensure that when your body finally told you it was done taking hits, you'd have something left that was yours. Something you built with your hands." She nodded at my split knuckles.
She left me sitting in her back room, surrounded by yarn and Gram's empty chair by the window.
My phone felt like lead in my pocket. Rhett's text still waited for a response.
Rhett: Need a rescue?
I stared at the screen until the words blurred.
What I wanted to type: Margaret just offered me Gram's inheritance, and I'm terrified I'm not worthy of it. What if I take the shop and fail? What if I prove her wrong about what she saw in that loud eight-year-old kid?
What I almost typed: She wants me to take over the shop. The one Gram loved. I don't know if I deserve it.
What I actually typed:
Hog: Can I come over?
The response was immediate.
Rhett: Yeah. Door's open.
I grabbed my coat and shoved my unfinished project into Gram's old bag. The worn canvas had darkened where her fingers had held it, thousands of hours of carrying yarn and needles.
Margaret was already gone—she'd locked the front door, and the CLOSED sign faced the street.
My Prius started on the second try. The heater blew cold for three blocks before warm air kicked in. Thunder Bay at night was quiet, streets empty except for the occasional truck spraying salt and the glow of the casino across the harbor.
Rhett's place was twelve minutes away. Twelve minutes to let the words spin in my mind. What Margaret had offered. What it would mean if I said yes.
Someone your grandmother trusted with her gift.
Rhett had stood in his father's workshop talking about making what his dad had left him into something more. Building something that mattered. He took what his dad had taught him and made it his own—maintaining and expanding it.
And here was what Gram had left me, offered to me with both hands. The shop she'd loved. The community she'd helped build. The gift she'd fought to keep alive in me, even when I was convinced hockey was the only thing that mattered.
Why was I terrified to take it?
Because it wasn't hockey? Because it was small and quiet, and the parts of me that most people couldn't see or value? What if Margaret was wrong? What if I wasn't ready? What if I never would be?
Gram had seen something in me—the parts she fought to keep alive.
The parts Rhett kept seeing and kept showing up for. Kept choosing.
I parked outside his building and killed the engine. Sat there with my hands on the steering wheel, knuckles white from gripping too hard, watching my breath fog the windshield.
The wheel was cold plastic under my palms, ridged where it had worn smooth from thousands of drives I'd taken. My right hand throbbed against it—the wrapped knuckles pressing into the hard curve.
My phone buzzed.
Rhett: You coming up or going to sit there in your car having an existential crisis?
I looked up. He was standing at his window, coffee mug in hand, lit from behind by his living room lamp.
Hog: The second one
Rhett: Come have your crisis on my couch. More comfortable
I exhaled. Just a little. Just enough.
I grabbed my bag—Gram's bag—and headed inside.