Until I'm Loved Again

What's Wrong with Elenor?

Harper

"Heya, gorgeous gorgeous girl!" Sylvia's bubbly, happy voice sung out on my cell phone speaker. How she always had so much energy I could never understand.

"Hey Sylvia. What's up?"

"So. Um. Remember like a year ago when I covered your butt and hosted the College and Career Christmas Party at my house and I told you that you owed me a huge favor, and that I wasn't afraid to cash in my favors?"

Oh boy. This was going to be a doozy, I just knew it. Sylvia had warned me this day was coming. I winced as my mind spun, trying to imagine what she was about to ask me.

"I remember... hit me with it."

"I need you to learn to knit."

I waited, trying to figure out the punch line, or the catch, or where on earth she was going with this. I wasn't artistic, or crafty, or a DIY kind of girl. At all. The kids in Sunday School laughed at my macaroni necklaces, and I don't think my mom ever kept a single coloring page from my entire childhood.

A knitter I was not.

"That's a pretty hefty request, Sylvia. I'm assuming there's a good reason for this?"

"There is, but it's long."

Pulling my blanket up a little higher, I reached over to my desk to grab my coffee cup and said, "Okay, well, it's Saturday, and I'm literally drinking coffee in bed and rereading Anne of Green Gables for the seventeenth time. So tell me a story, Sylvia."

"Okay. See, my bestie for life recently moved to town. When I say bestie for life, I mean our moms were pregnant at the same time. Our birthdays are a month apart. We practically lived together. Homeschooled together. Got in trouble together. We planned each other's weddings. The whole nine yards."

Sylvia was talking a mile a minute, and I was trying to figure out what this had to do with the most outdated craft known to mankind.

"She moved to town, and she's having a hard time settling in. There's no knitting store anywhere for fifty miles, and that's kinda her thing right now. So I thought I could get a few people together and we could start a knitting club, and have it at her house, and that way she can make some friends!"

"That's really sweet of you to want me to join your knitting club... which I totally will, by the way. If that's what you want."

"It is."

"Okay. But why not just invite her to church, or bring her to Lunch Club, or plan a girls weekend?" Something about Sylvia's explanation didn't make sense.

Sylvia didn't answer for a moment, then I heard a sigh and the sound of furniture being dragged across the ground. I could imagine her pulling her foot rest closer to her rocking chair, and setting her feet up on it.

"Okay. Here's the truth. Elenor is... a little weird."

I waited for more. Sylvia wasn't good with silence, and tended to fill it without being asked.

"Elenor is... there's no nice way to say it. She's a hermit."

"Oh."

"And when I say hermit, I mean, she moved to town four months ago and she hasn't left since she moved in."

"...Oh."

"She has her groceries delivered. She works from home. She logs onto the livestream at church, but she never leaves the house, and she has no friends except me.

"I'm at my wit's end, Harper. I don't know what else to do! She's so fun, and clever, and hilarious, and used to be so social. But these days... well, she went through some stuff, and I don't want to say, because it's not my story to tell. But it's like she's lost... she's dying from the inside. And I can't reach her." Sylvia's voice grew thick and broke near the end of her sentence, and I felt my own eyes get hot.