Chapter Twenty-Three
Piper finds a spot to sit halfway down the hall, a carved wood and green velvet settee under a framed oil painting. She can
see the closed double doors of the Purl from her seat, but she’s far enough away that she’s free to talk. She calls Gretchen’s
cell, hoping she’ll get voicemail but no, her (former) manager answers on the first ring.
“There you are!” Gretchen says. “You avoiding me, lady?”
“Um, you fired me as a client.”
“It was a momentary lapse in judgment. And I totally respect your hard-to-get vibe, but can we put a pin in it for now? Because,
Piper, you were right. The fall worked.”
“What do you mean, ‘worked’? It was an accident.”
“Well, whatever you want to call it, thanks to that clip going viral, I have tons of go-sees for you—including print jobs.
The real deal. My assistant will follow up with an email, but I wanted to get this on your radar ASAP. Can you swing by the
office Monday morning?”
Piper feels cornered. Trapped. “Actually, I’m on vacation.”
“Piper,” Gretchen says, her voice dropping to convey gravity. “I say this for you, not for myself: Don’t miss your moment.
We have a short window to capitalize on this. Seize the day and all that. Let’s get you in front of these people and make
some real money.”
“I need some time to think,” Piper says.
“Well, don’t think too hard,” Gretchen says. “You’re lucky to have this second chance.”
And she abruptly ends the call.
Piper sits and stares at the painting hanging on the wall directly across from her. It’s another oil painting, this one a
Revolutionary War scene. She replays the call in her mind, then she picks up her phone again and FaceTimes Ethan. When the
video appears on her screen, she can see he’s in Central Park.
“Hey,” she says, smiling.
“Hi! You have a break in the action over there?”
“Yeah, I guess you could say that.” It’s so good to see him. He’s wearing his college hoodie with an army-green coat she hasn’t
seen since last winter. His big brown eyes are bright and his fair skin is ruddy. His lips are red and chapped, and she misses
him with a sharpness that’s almost physical.
“I miss you,” she says.
“I miss you too.”
She glances down the hall at the Purl. “I only have a minute because I ducked out of a workshop. But the weird thing is that
Gretchen called me to say the viral post of my fall is getting me job offers. So she wants me to come in on Monday.”
He smiles and shakes his head. “So now the fall is a good thing?”
“I know. It’s ridiculous. And I told her I need to think about it. Since she fired me, I’ve been kinda relieved.”
“You have?”
“Yes. I want to quit, but there’s no way to justify it to myself, or to my mother, especially. And I think that’s what’s been
making me so anxious the past few months. I think it’s why I fainted on the runway. It was like . . . subconscious self-sabotage.”
“You don’t want to model anymore?” he says.
“I don’t know. Maybe not. But I can’t just quit. What if now’s my chance to actually start making good money doing this?”
“The money isn’t worth it if you’re miserable. And does Maggie know you feel this way?”
Not if she can help it. “No.”
“Maybe you should tell her.”
“Why?”
He’s quiet for a few seconds. “Let’s talk about this when you get back.”
About what? “No, let’s talk about ‘this’ now.”
He backtracks, tells her it’s nothing. Tells her he loves her. And she knows he does. But she also knows it’s not nothing.
Why’s he in such a rush for her to talk to Maggie about work? He knows she’s just going to push her to stick with it. Maybe
that’s what he thinks deep down, and doesn’t want to be the one to tell her.
The doors to the Purl open and Laurel bursts into the hall, her face flushed and her fingers tapping furiously on her phone.
She barely looks up in her rush towards the lobby.
“Piper, try to just enjoy the weekend. I’m glad you have some space to think about the whole Gretchen thing, away from the
city. Don’t let her pressure you.”
He’s right. Still, she thinks it was strange for him to suggest she talk to Maggie. Typically, she gets the sense that he
wishes she and mom had more boundaries, not less. But, heading back inside the Purl, she pushes aside her unsettled feelings.
Instead, she thinks of something positive: Cole’s potentially brilliant parent trap idea.
Belinda finds Laurel on the front porch alone. She’s sipping from a Bucks Tavern takeout coffee cup and staring out at the
direction of Main Street.
There’s a moment in almost every retreat where Belinda goes from teacher to den mother. Sometimes it happens on day one. Sometimes there are tears at the farewell breakfast. This weekend, it’s the brioche workshop.
“I heard reports of a runaway knitter,” Belinda says, sitting in the wicker chair beside her.
“Sorry for walking out like that.”
“No need to apologize. I just want you to know I’m here if you need anything.”
Laurel fixes her gray eyes on her and sighs.
“You ever care about somebody so much, but at the same time want to strangle them?”
“Of course. I’ve been married over thirty years.”
Laurel gives her a half smile. “Okay. Well, I brought Kalli here this weekend to cheer her up. To support her during a rough
time. And it backfired.”
Belinda frowns. That’s not what she wants to hear.
“She isn’t enjoying herself?”
Laurel stays silent for a minute, then says, “She’s enjoying herself a little too much.”
Well, that’s a new one. Belinda’s there to listen, not talk, so that’s what she does. But Laurel doesn’t offer anything further.
The front door opens and a few of the younger men from the bachelor party head out to the parking area. When the brioche class
ended, Aidan Danby invited her to join them for the next activity in the bushcraft-knitting challenge: axe-throwing. She doesn’t
have time, but the fact that they’ve constructed this little competition amuses her to no end. Normally, she’d rush to tell
Max all about it and together they’d “unpack it,” as the kids say today. But she knows all he wants to hear from her is yes,
take the offer. And she can’t say that right now. Not until the weekend is over. She’s giving herself two more days to pretend
she has any real argument to make for turning down that kind of money.
Now that she’s thinking of it, the bushcraft competition seems to be what set Laurel off.
“I know the outdoors stuff with the bachelor party might be an unwelcome diversion to you, but maybe it will be fun. Maybe
it’s what Kalli needs right now too.”
Belinda’s phone buzzes with a message from the staffer at the front desk, but she ignores it. Let him bother Max.
“Kalli isn’t making new friends,” Laurel says. “She already knows Cole Danby.”
Belinda is confused. She saw Piper introduce Cole to Kalli, and the interaction was that of strangers. As if reading her mind,
Laurel says, “Yeah, that whole ‘nice to meet you’ thing was an act.”
She proceeds to tell her that Kalli had been married to her high school boyfriend for two years when she met Cole Danby and
fell madly in love. She tried breaking things off, but it was too late for her marriage. She couldn’t go back. Then, when
she finally filed for divorce and reached out to Cole, he shut her down. Said he’d been too heartbroken by the whole thing
to go back and try again, leaving Kalli completely heartbroken. And so: the knitting retreat.
“I see,” Belinda says. And she does: Laurel planned a trip to help Kalli get over a guy, and the guy shows up on the trip.
Not good. “But Laurel, sometimes you just need to let people make mistakes. Even people you care about. There’s no way through
life without a few stumbles, right? As friends, we just have to be there after the fall. And who knows? Maybe this is what
she needs to get over the relationship once and for all.”
“You think?” Laurel says, looking a little more hopeful.
“Absolutely,” Belinda tells her. “A long weekend can work miracles.”