Olivia took a box cutter off the shelf under the counter and walked over to the vending machine. As she opened the box, she tried to ignore RaeAnne and Flo’s remarks. First off, she wasn’t going out with Beau. She didn’t even want to meet him. While he might be a nice guy, even if she was interested in going out—and she absolutely, positively wasn’t—she couldn’t see herself with someone who didn’t have the gumption to move forward with his life. She might be in a rut, but hers was comfortable. Necessary. And she owned her own house.
Her conscience kicked in. For all she knew, Beau could be living in the basement for legitimate reasons that Flo didn’t know about. Who was she to judge?
She made quick work of filling the machine with various chips, crackers, and candy, then broke down the empty box and took it to the back storage room. Two words kept coming to mind—analysis paralysis. She didn’t have the same interest in psychology that Flo had, but she had heard of the term, and it didn’t apply to her. She wasn’t paralyzed. She liked her life the way it was. And the last time she’d listened to people who thought they knew better, she’d made a mistake. A huge mistake, one she would never repeat again.
Ignoring the pricking in her heart, she went to her office. RaeAnne and Flo had already left, but she saw a sticky note attached to a flyer and recognized Flo’s handwriting.
Forgot to pin this on the bulletin board. Ms. Abernathy dropped it off today.
She peeled off the note as she read the flyer.
Let’s Dance!
Learn the rumba, waltz, swing, and tango.
Six weeks of fun-filled lessons for ages 18+.
Put on your dancing shoes and join us at Abernathy’s School of Dance!
The flyer featured a silhouetted graphic of a couple pressed against each other in a dance pose, the woman in a sheath dress, the man in a trilby hat. In the bottom corner were the date and time—Mondays at 6:30 p.m., starting next week. Hmm. That sounded like fun . . . for someone else.
She went to the front of the library and pinned the flyer on the board. Ms. Abernathy had opened her dance studio last month, renting the building Rusty and Harper owned in downtown Maple Falls across from the Sunshine Café. She taught ballet and tap lessons for toddlers up to high school, but Olivia had no idea she knew how to ballroom dance. She wondered if anyone in Maple Falls would even be interested.
Good luck, Ms. Abernathy.
At six forty-five, she turned off the laptop on her desk, checked the front entrance and emergency exit to make sure they were locked, turned off the lights, and left through the back door. By six fifty-five she was pulling into a parking spot behind the Knots and Tangles yarn shop. Erma McAllister, Riley’s grandmother, owned the shop with Riley, and every Tuesday night the Chick Clique—Olivia shuddered—met here. She grabbed her satchel, got out of her two-door car, which hadn’t even had time to cool down inside from the oppressive August heat, and entered the back of the shop.
“Hey.” Riley was pouring a bag of rippled potato chips into a plastic bowl. All around sat yarn in various stages of being dyed—blank yarn, some drying, some waiting to be twisted into hanks, and some hanks lying next to the yarn winder to be wound into cakes. Different colors, half solid and half variegated. All beautiful.
Olivia pulled a bag of pretzels from her satchel and poured them into another bowl. Anita would bring the coffee and tea from her café two doors down, and Harper, who had now started baking full time after completely leaving the real-estate business this past spring, would bring something sweet and delicious.
Olivia and Riley took the bowls and sat down on the lime-green couch in the middle of the large dyeing area. “How has your week been going?” Olivia asked.
“Busy.” Riley yawned. “Extremely busy. We had the yarn crawl last week.”
“Oh, that’s right.” Their weekly meeting had been canceled because of the crawl. Knots and Tangles was on a list of Arkansas yarn shops, and for one week customers could get a map, visit the shops all over the state, and receive a stamp for their passports and small button pins from each retailer. According to Riley, the yarn crawl was one of Knots and Tangles’ biggest events. Olivia enjoyed knitting, but not enough to make a weeklong trek around Arkansas, especially right before school started. “Was it successful?”
“Very.” Riley leaned back against the couch as Anita walked in the back door, followed by Harper. She waved at the two women and turned to Olivia. “It’s going to take me a month to fully recover. But so worth it.”
After setting out the beverages—Earl Grey for Olivia, coffee and water for everyone else—and oohing and aahing over Harper’s latest confectionary creation of cookie-dough dip with scratch-made chocolate graham crackers, the four women settled with their needles and hooks and worked on their latest yarn project, a lacy shawl. Even Harper, who had always eschewed crafts, was learning how to crochet, having asked Erma to teach her three weeks ago. She had progressed from making a chain and single crochets to now practicing with cotton yarn to make baby-size washcloths.
Anita suddenly dropped her project to her lap. “I can’t take it anymore.”
Olivia looked at her. “Take what?”
Excitement entered her amber eyes. “I have news.”
Harper grinned. “Me too!”
Riley laughed. “I have some as well. Who wants to go first?”
“Anita.” Olivia knitted two stitches together. “She spoke first.”
“Okay.” Anita leaned forward. “I’m pregnant!”
Harper gasped. “Me too!”
“Really?” Anita jumped up, her knitting falling to the floor, and gave Harper a huge hug. “We’re gonna have babies together?”
“Yes!” Harper hugged her back. “I found out last week,” she said as Anita sat back down. “I’m only a month along, and Rusty and I were going to wait to tell everyone—except Senior, we had to tell him—but I can’t keep it from my besties.”
“What did Senior say?” Riley asked with a smile, referring to Rusty’s grandfather, who lived with the two of them.
“Oh, he was thrilled. Of course he said if it’s a boy, he’ll be named Russell Jenkins IV.” She paused. “Negotiations are still ongoing.” Then she turned to Anita. “Okay, your turn. Spill.”
“Well . . .” Anita had picked up her knitting and was glancing at it in her lap. Unlike Harper, she was more reserved. “We weren’t exactly trying—”
“Oh, you were doing something,” Harper cracked.
The tops of Anita’s cheeks reddened. “You know what I mean. If it happened, it happened. And . . .”
Riley grinned. “It happened. When are you due?”
“January.”
Olivia stilled. Anita had been pregnant for almost four months?
And she’s just now telling me?
Anita leaned against the chair. “It feels so good to spread the news finally. Tanner’s been wanting to let everyone know for a while now, but I needed to be sure everything was, you know, okay. And it is.”
“This is amazing.” Riley lifted her coffee cup. “To babies!”
Harper and Anita followed. So did Olivia, but she barely made the toast. No one noticed.