Dropped Stitches Christmas [Love Inspired Series]

"I have no dress except the one I wear every day. If you are going to be kind enough to give me one (a wedding dress), please let it be practical and dark so that I can put it on afterwards to go to the laboratory."--Marie CurieIt was a good thing Marie Curie was dead or her ears would have been ringing from all of the indignant protests when Rebecca read this quote to us years ago. The four of us--Marilee Davidson, Rebecca (Becca) Snyder, Lizabett MacDonald and me, Carly Winston--were sitting in a small room at the hospital with Rose, our counselor. Rose is the one who asked us to bring the quotes. It was almost Christmas and we were having our second meeting of the Sisterhood of the Dropped Stitches. Rose had been looking for a more cheerful place for us to meet, but we were content in that hospital room with its bad lighting, plastic chairs and the smell we could only hope was disinfectant. There weren't many regular places where we felt we belonged, not with our balding heads and our talk of chemo. That's why Becca brought us this quote. She said we were afraid to attract any attention to ourselves, just like Marie Curie had been on her wedding day.I'm sure Becca thought that I would be completely horrified that any woman would ask for such a go-nowhere wedding dress. But she was wrong. I might have been the only one sitting in that hospital room who had actually given the beauty queen wave to a crowd of people instead of just to her own mirror, but I absolutely knew there was more to life than clothes.Madame Curie's compelling research, like our cancer, stripped away most of the natural pleasantness of life until just one thing remained. For her that one thing was the cure; for us it was the disease. At times like that, pretty clothes weren't worth a moment's thought.I'm twenty-four, by the way, and I'm the second oldest member of the Sisterhood of the Dropped Stitches. On the surface, we're a knitting group. In reality, we started to meet as teenage cancer patients and that, more than the endless skeins of yarn, is what has kept us together for more than six years now.Being in the Sisterhood gave us great courage, and we're trying to use that courage to take back our lives. We all know cancer put us a step or two behind most people our age. But what the others in the Sisterhood don't know, and I'm just starting to realize, is that I'm not just a step or two behind; I'm walking backward down a whole different street. I need courage more than anyone else in the Sister-hood, because I haven't been open with anyone.I should have told the Sisterhood my family secret years ago. But secrets can be seductive things. A small secret, and it was a small secret at first, doesn't seem worth telling. Then it becomes a big secret and becomes too hard to tell. Now I wonder what they will think of me if they know I'm not the person they think I am.It was the end of November when the Sisterhood started to meet that first year. I remember when we introduced ourselves, and I said I lived in San Marino. If you know the area, you know it's very upscale. It takes lots of money to live there and, when I said I did, the others assumed I had it made with a trust fund and a servant or two. Which was cool, I let them think that. I didn't tell them that I only lived there as an unwelcome guest, along with my parents, in my uncle's house.My uncle is rich, but I'm blue-collar poor.My mother is ashamed that her brother is supporting us, and I never advertise the fact myself. None of my friends know that my parents and I are one careless word away from being homeless and have been for years now. My uncle is known for his temper, and I used to keep a small suitcase packed just in case someone said the wrong thing.Early on, my mother encouraged me to look like I belonged in San Marino. She probably thought my uncle might like having us around if we looked like the neighbors. Back then I saw iTronstad, Janet is the author of 'Dropped Stitches Christmas [Love Inspired Series]', published 2007 under ISBN 9780373874590 and ISBN 0373874596.