How to Knit a Love Song Read Online Free

was dark, and she couldn’t make out exactly what it was she was seeing, but she knew it wasn’t good.
    To her left, a window with its blind drawn. She reached her hand around to release the catch. The blind flew up and a little light filtered into the room. It looked to be a decent-sized living room. Abigail could only imagine that there was furniture in it somewhere, but the room was completely hidden by old cardboard boxes, some looking much the worse for wear, piled almost to the ceiling, on and in every available space, save for a narrow pathway through them.
    Abigail moved forward. It was the only thing she could do.
    She picked her way among boxes. Once through the first room, she was in what must have been a kitchen at some point but that was now filled with huge, black trash bags. Again, only a narrow path led through the room, and branched out at the back.
    One direction led to a bathroom, also full of black trash bags, only the sink and commode exposed. When she pulled back the dark shower curtain, she found the bathtub itself filled with trash bags.
    Damn. Did the water work? Abigail twisted the sink faucet. There was an ominous clanking under the cottage and the pipe shook, but nothing happened. She peered into the toilet. There wasn’t any water in the bowl.
    She flipped the light switch to get a better look. Nothing. Great.
    There was a small window over the tub covered with a thick green curtain. When she pulled it back, enough light came through to allow her to lift off the lid of the toilet tank. The whole mechanism inside appeared rusty but completely dry.
    There was no water.
    There was no power.
    Where the hell was she going to sleep tonight?
    A hotel down the road might work, but she’d seen No Vacancy signs on every one she’d passed on the drive. This was a beach community, after all.
    And there was no way she was staying with that guy. Even if he asked her, she couldn’t trust him farther than she could throw him. Who knew what he was capable of, especially when he was this mad at her?
    Abigail put her hand on the towel rail to steady herself. She would find something good about this place if it killed her. This was the opposite of what Eliza’s spare, spotless San Diego independent-living apartment had been. Abigail fought despair. No. Not till she’d seen the whole cottage.
    Another path just outside the bathroom led to what must be a small bedroom, also full of boxes and bags.
    She battled her way back through the house, trying not to think about the scurrying noise she heard in the kitchen. It was a rodent of some sort, she knew that, but her heart raced nonetheless.
    She took a deep breath and stepped over a low box, pushing past three bags.
    In the living room, Abigail moved box after box to clear a path just the size of her hips. The boxes weren’t heavy, but she noted that they were obviously full of something. She was too apprehensive to look.
    A narrow, winding staircase stood in the far corner of the front room. She took the steps carefully, testing each one with half her weight before committing to it. At the top, her head poked up into another small room.
    Oh. This room was different.
    It was all light—windows on all eight sides of the room. An old-fashioned cupola. From up here, Abigail could see a sliver of the ocean over the tops of the trees. The fog was moving out for the day, and the sky was a silvery gray, dotted with scudding white clouds.
    A battered green love seat sat sentry in the middle of the room. A lamp covered with a multicolored glass lamp shade rested on an ornate table next to the love seat. There wasn’t enough room to really move around—almost every bit of floor space was taken up by those black plastic garbage bags, as well as odds and ends of furniture, but it was nice furniture, pretty things that Abigail knew Eliza had loved.
    The wooden floor had been painted the same dark green as the trim outside, years and years old by the look of the scuff