Chapter 32. Everybody Needs Somebody to Love
Everybody Needs Somebody to Love
The first day of the street festival was finally here.
Our usually quiet street had been temporarily transformed to resemble a busy, fun carnival ground.
The entire road was closed to local traffic, there were banners and buntings put up along the street and strings of lights threaded across the trees, and there was a makeshift stage at the end of the road for performances throughout the three-day festival.
The local shop owners had been busy since the crack of dawn, helping to set up market tents and folding tables for the stallholders that had rented a spot.
There was a huge variety of vendors: We had jewelry makers, candle and soap makers, scrapbook suppliers, and arts and crafts stalls.
There were also food vendors, a face painting corner, a mini petting zoo, and Ellie had even managed to source a bubble tea seller.
It was a fun mix of things, and it was heartwarming to see how people at the precinct came together to pull this weekend off.
My phone beeped with a calendar alert. I pulled it out of my pocket, only to see that it was a reminder of the fourth wedding I was supposed to go to with Rob tomorrow.
I ignored the painful twist in my heart. Maybe he’d be going with Lucy this time.
Well, whoever he was going with, it was none of my business, because I didn’t have time to dwell on it and think about him right now.
Pushing Rob out of my mind, I continued what I was doing—putting up flyers in the store to advertise the activities we were planning for the day.
I was teaching a beginner’s class on knitting (after having sat through several intensive hours with Nicole to make sure I knew what I was doing), while Nicole was running embroidery demonstrations and a workshop on beginner’s amigurumi.
She was talking to someone on the store phone while I finished putting up the signs.
When she hung up, she gave me a funny look.
“Guess who that was.”
“I don’t know. The pope?”
“That was Melinda Paulson’s personal assistant,” Nicole said, sounding as if she was still in disbelief. “Melinda Paulson, the knitting influencer.”
I turned around to gape at her. “What?”
“Exactly.” Nicole nodded. “She said Melinda is available to come into the store to speak and give a short demonstration. She’s available for an hour tomorrow and on Sunday, too, if we can squeeze her in.”
My jaw became practically unhinged. “But how?”
“I asked, and the PA said she was only told to convey the message and arrange the schedule. If you’re interested, we need to call her back and confirm before noon.”
I wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth. “Fuck yes, we’re interested. We can fit her in the morning, or in the afternoon, whenever she’s free. Look, she can come whenever she likes, we’ll work our schedules around her.”
Nicole went to call them back, while I directed my attention to the people who were already starting to trickle in.
For the next eight hours, we were up on our feet serving customers and answering questions, as the festival was in full swing outside.
The street was chock-full of people visiting the stalls and the other stores on the strip.
There were people lining up outside Ellie’s bakery and Quinn’s coffee shop, and Anahita’s cousin and his band were playing on the makeshift stage at the other end of the street.
The next two days followed a similar pattern.
We opened the yarn store an hour earlier than usual, and not long after, visitors began to show up.
Melinda Paulson came for her session just after lunch, and it was probably the busiest I’d seen the yarn store since I started running it, and that was saying something.
It was standing room only, and at least sixty people were crammed into the store, some even having to stand just outside the door.
Melinda was warm and engaging, kept the audience hanging on her every word, and even graciously stayed to sign books and take photos after her session was over.
We sold all her books and almost half our stock in one day, and none of that would have been possible if she hadn’t been in the store.
“Thank you so much for doing this,” I said to her once she was finally finished chatting with people. “My grandmother was a huge fan, and she would really have loved to meet you.”
The woman smiled at me. “My pleasure. I don’t do events anymore, but I owe Amanda a huge favor, so when she reached out to ask for my help, the least I could do was say yes.”
“Amanda?” I only knew one Amanda, but surely she wasn’t talking about the same—
“Amanda Carmichael. The screenwriter? We’re represented by the same agency, and I met her at my last book launch a couple of years ago.
I was going through some stuff at the time, and she connected me with her therapist, because she had been doing some work in the mental health space.
It helped me tremendously, and I’ll be forever grateful to her. ”
Rob’s sister.
He had somehow made good on his promise to find Melinda Paulson, and that helped make the day—and possibly the festival—a success.
Even when he wasn’t around, he was still there for me.
After Melinda left, I took out my phone and debated with myself whether I should send him a message.
In the end, I did, because he did me a solid, and having Melinda come into the store made a huge difference.
My text was read immediately, but no matter how many times I checked my phone throughout the day, he never answered.
And even though it shouldn’t disappoint me that he was ignoring me, it did.
By seven thirty on Sunday evening, I was exhausted, mentally and physically. The last visitor had just walked out of our store, and the company we rented the equipment from had almost finished packing up the tents and makeshift stage.
In the three days that we held the street festival, we managed to sell nearly all our stock, and there was a long list of people wanting to join our knitting clubs.
The other shop owners had similar reports in the group chat—everyone said their sales for the past three days had surpassed anything they’d done in the previous twelve months.
A lot of visitors said it was a pleasant surprise to discover our shops and how they look forward to coming back in the future.
A few of the vendors that had rented a stall even told me that they were interested in leasing the vacant shop fronts.
It was all good and well, but I hoped it was enough to convince everyone not to accept the offer from Goodwin.
“Kim?” Opa’s voice shook me out of my reverie. “Did you hear what I said?”
My grandfather was much stronger and healthier these days, thanks to the iron supplements and his newly reconfigured diet.
He had insisted that he help in the store on the last day of the festival, but it was getting late, and I didn’t want him to over-exert himself, so we were driving back to his house right now.
“I’m sorry, Opa. My mind was somewhere else. What were you saying?”
“I was asking how things are with the heritage application. Have you heard anything?”
“We haven’t. The historian thinks it might take a while to get the application approved. There’s nothing much we can do until then.” I gripped the steering wheel in frustration. “I’m sorry, Opa. I don’t know if I’ve done enough, and I feel like I’ve failed you and Oma.”
“You haven’t,” Opa immediately replied. “You’ve done your best, and if your grandmother were still here, she would have been so proud of you.”
“You have to say that, because you’re my grandfather.”
“But it’s the truth.” He chuckled. “Your grandmother was just worried about you. I think she thought she was being helpful by asking you to run her store. She thought it would help you find your purpose.”
“My purpose?”
His smile was sad. “You haven’t had a long-term job for a while, honey.
You were always moving from one new job to another, from one new city to another.
Like you were searching for something but you probably didn’t even know what.
She was just worried about you. But you should know that whatever you do, even if we lose the yarn store, she would still have been proud of you.
As long as you’re happy and content and doing what you love. ”
I was quiet as I mulled that over.
“I am happy,” I said. “Coming back home, and being here with you, was the best decision I’ve ever made.
And I do love running the store, but I guess I’ve been so fixated on keeping it going, because I thought that was what she had wanted.
I thought it would keep her legacy alive, and help with your medical bills, because I know they can be a lot. ”
Opa waved a hand. “Don’t worry about me. I’ve got enough savings to look after myself. You need to think about your own future, and what you want to do with your life. Not what your grandmother or I wanted.”
I nodded, swallowing the lump in my throat. Somehow, hearing my grandfather say that felt like a huge load had been lifted off my shoulders.
There was a white rental SUV parked in his driveway as we turned onto his street. My blood froze in my veins when I saw the man leaning against its door.
“What is he doing here?” I turned to Opa. “Did you know he was coming?”
“He arrived this morning. He said he had something he needed to talk to you about. Just listen to what he has to say, okay?”
“Why should I? Why are you listening to him still? Where was he when you were hospitalized?”
“Kim.” Opa looked tired, and for a second a heavy dose of guilt came over me. “I know you invited him to the party. He texted me that night and said he was sorry he couldn’t make it. Did you know he checked in with me every day after I was released from the hospital?”
I was taken aback. “He did?”