The Weekend Crashers (knitting retreat gets knotty in this humorous and poignant)

Prologue

The New Hope Inn is one of those old buildings that still has hidden doorways dating back to the days of Prohibition. It’s

rumored the place helped shelter soldiers during the Revolutionary War. A lot of other historical things probably happened

there. Belinda, the current innkeeper, simply knows that for the past twenty-five years, her knitting retreats have made it

a tourist destination.

Belinda Yarrow and her husband, Max, own the inn together. But retreat weekends are her domain. She blocks out rooms for her

knitters and manages every last detail to create a cozy cocoon for her special guests. To make it feel like their place. And her husband should know this by now. So why is he hanging a banner over the inn’s entrance that reads “Welcome

Bushcraft Bachelor Party”? She marches over to him, crunching through a pile of orange and gold leaves.

“What are you doing?” she calls out. “It’s my knitting retreat weekend.”

She can tell by the sheepish look on his face that he forgot. And then when he recovers, once’s he’s processed that he messed

up, he says, “There’s room for both.”

He doesn’t understand, even after she’s explained it countless times.

“It’s not about the space, it’s about the atmosphere,” she says. Belinda likes to cultivate a certain vibe. But talking “vibes” to Max is like talking to a wall.

“I’m sorry, Belinda. But I don’t think your knitters will care one whit. It’s going to be fine,” he says.

“I don’t want this weekend to be ‘fine,’ ” she says. “I need it to be perfect. This weekend of all weekends.” Maybe that, at the very least, he can understand: This weekend matters.