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Chapter One
I had been dreading this moment, but I couldn't put it off any longer. Would she even understand why it was so important to me? That this was something for just me. Something that was mine. I shrugged to myself as I realized the answer was of course not. I pulled myself together and told her I was leaving. I had barely gotten the words out when she began to protest.
"You can't go," Gray Hanover wailed. "What am I going to do without you here? You always make me look good to the customers and take care of everything." Her reaction was exactly what I had feared. She was almost twenty-five, which made her only a few years younger than me, and was totally used to leaning on me. It had been going on since we were kids. I was pretty sure she viewed me as her personal assistant. I thought of her as a responsibility.
We were like night and day. Everything about her screamed out that she was the epitome of a privileged L.A. celebrity offspring. Her silky-smooth, golden-blond hair caressed her tan shoulders. I knew for a fact that the highlights had been added and a treatment put on so that her hair had that ultra-shiny finish because I was the one who had arranged it and was there for the process. Her face was perfect down to the puffed-up lips that were the current style. She wore designer jeans and a gauzy top with the nonchalance of someone who had no concern for the price.
I belonged to the night in that analogy. If I had to name my look, it would be something like artsy classic. That meant I liked jeans with mostly something black on top, which I either left stark or added something that grabbed my fancy that day, whether it be a scarf, a couple of necklaces or an arrangement of brooches. The main color of my hair was a warm brown and any red or gold highlights had showed up on their own. My budget didn't allow for injections to make my lips look pillowy, not that I would have done that anyway. I didn't understand this desire for standardized big lips instead of the ones that made you look like you. As for makeup, some BB cream and eyeliner were it for me.
"How can I run this place without you?" Gray said in a forlorn voice. She looked around the fancy Malibu children's boutique as if she was lost in the wilderness instead of in a store that had every amenity you could think of from a play area with a smoothie bar for the kid shoppers to an espresso and wine bar for the adults. And the idea that she ran the place was absurd.
"It's only for a week or two at the most," I countered, trying to calm her. I reminded her that there was a manager and other sales help, so she would hardly be left on her own. She was really window dressing for the place anyway. It was called Malibu Kids, but everyone knew it was the Academy Award winning actress Camille Constantine's daughter's shop. There was nothing like a celebrity connection to bring in customers. Though at the moment the place was empty. It was too early, and it was a sure bet our usual customers were off with their Pilates trainer or getting an organic juice drink to kick off their cleanse. It sounded like a cliche version of the people that shopped with us, except it was true.
"But, you know," she said with a lost look in her blue eyes, "you're the one I depend on. You're like the wind beneath my wings."
I rolled my eyes at her word choice, realizing it was sort of true and not exactly how I wanted to be thought of. My father Bryan Hart was a talent agent whose job really went beyond just securing work and negotiating deals for his actor and musician clients. They expected to be coddled, too. That meant that they felt free to call after hours and weekends with all kinds of crazy requests. That's where I came in. It had started when with me just answering his phone on weekends and then when he saw that I could help with some of the problems, I became like his assistant.
Gray's mother was my father's most important client, so when she had asked Bryan to get Gray some help with Girl Scouts, I had to join the troop with her. I had to "help" her sell cookies and earn badges. After Girl Scouts, I became a regular companion for her. I was the one who went along when she needed someone to go shopping with her or keep her company on a family trip. I was the one who gave her pep talks when she was feeling down. I did it without a second thought because I knew I was helping
My father keep his client happy, and I liked doing it. When Camille got the idea of the kids' store as a landing place for her daughter, my father asked me if I could help.
By then, I had finished art school and had been through some low-level jobs in the entertainment business and was a little lost myself. I was glad to take the job working in the store and functioning as Gray's support staff. Though now that looking after Gray was part of a paying job, the dynamic changed.
"Why do you have to go to Indiana?" she said in a pouty tone. "What are you going to do there, anyway?"
"You have to understand," I said, wondering if there was any possibility that she could understand since everything had been hand delivered to her. "This is the first time I have something that is just mine. I want to see it in person before I sell it." The "something" was a piece of property in Franklin, Indiana. It had been left to me by my uncle who had died on a photo expedition in Peru. Bryan had urged me to simply put it up for sale sight unseen, but I was insistent on going there myself. I wanted to see what it felt like to have something that belonged to me, even if it was only temporary. And yes, I did call my father by his first name.
I still lived with my father. Sort of, anyway. He had the ranch-style house, and I had a studio apartment over the garage. It worked for both of us. Rents being what they were in L.A., there was no way I could have afforded a place without sharing it with a bunch of roommates. He was gone most of the time and I kept an eye on things. I also continued as his backup, helping with the extra demands of his clients. It was second nature to me now and when Julie Phelps was hysterically crying that she missed her cat while she was on location on Bainbridge Island, I took care of the whole thing from getting the cat into its carrier to taking it to Van Nuys Airport where a private jet was taking some crew people up to the location.
But the point was that it was still his house.
"What am I going to tell the people who come in and ask for you? And what about that?" she said, pointing to the half-done purple teddy bear in my lap.
"That's the great thing about crochet. It's easy to take with," I said, taking it out of my bag. The head and body were done, but the arms and legs still needed to be made, and most important, it needed a face.
In addition to helping Malibu parents find just the right outfit for their little Raisin or Bartholomew, I had backed into a side hustle. It still made me shake my head with amusement when I thought over how it had come about. I could just imagine what my art school professors would say if they knew that I had found my artistic expression was connected to crochet. I could make scarves and blankets, but my real love was what seemed to me to be like sculpture. I crocheted pots of African violets and cacti in terracotta-colored containers. It morphed into making dolls, along with animals. I always had a project with me to work on when things were slow in the shop. By chance, one of our primo customers saw that I was making a unicorn. Her daughter loved unicorns, and she said she simply had to have it for the little girl. I made up the most ridiculous price I could think of, and she agreed without blinking twice.
The unicorn was a hit and as soon as her super trendy friends saw it, they wanted a custom toy for their child. I laughed every time I thought of how having something made by me had become a status thing. I turned to Gray. "No worries, they'll get the bear when it was promised."
It was a joy and a challenge to make the toys, and I had come to realize it was all about the face and the expression, along with little touches like the purple bear was going to have a sweater and scarf. It gave me a secret pleasure to know that I was creating a toy companion that was going to be loved and hugged, and would become part of a kid's childhood memory. I still had a doll that my mother had made for me. It was sitting in a chair in my room, actually more like flopping over in the chair since all that dragging around and hugging had rearranged the stuffing. She was a tie to my mother who had died when I was ten.
My mother had pushed me to be self-reliant as if she'd had an inkling that she would not be around to see me grow up. It was lucky that I was good at being on my own since Bryan was totally wrapped up in his work. I don't think he ever went to an open house at my school and barely made it to my graduation. I had assumed that I would follow him in the entertainment business and did a stint as a production assistant and then as a tour guide at Universal Studios. But neither had panned out. I actually liked working retail and got along well with the customers.
Gray finally accepted that I was going since it was only for a short time. I had hoped that her acceptance would be enough, but of course, it wasn't, and shortly after, I heard from Camille directly. She wanted to know where I was going and why. I explained that I had cleared it with the manager and it was only for a limited time. Camille still tried to get me to cut the time in half. It wasn't my help in the store she was worried about but help with her daughter. "She depends on you," Camille said.
I assured her that I would have my phone with me and Gray could call whenever, which is what she'd always done anyway.
A few days later, I was at LAX waiting for my flight. I had done what research I could in advance, but the place still felt like getting a mystery bag at a church sale, only on a much bigger scale. I had a photo my uncle had taken of the property, but it was an artsy picture that conveyed mood rather than offering details. The sun had been close to setting and the building was almost completely lost in the shadows of the tall trees around it. I had accepted that I would not really know what it was until I was standing in front of it.
My plan had been to get there in the daylight, but my plane was delayed and then the rental place had run out of cars. It was only after a lot of me pressing them that they finally "found" an SUV for me. The fifty-mile drive from Chicago was all highway but thick with traffic. And then I'd had to maneuver country roads with a map on my phone since the car didn't have GPS. I had expected the property to be in the actual town, but when my phone announced that I had arrived, I was on a country road across from a small cemetery.
It was dusk when I turned on to the gravel driveway. "Well, this is it," I said out loud, feeling a sense of uncertain excitement. I cut the motor and got ready to step on to the land that belonged to me.
I pushed open the car door and tentatively looked out. It was almost like I was looking at the photo. Tall old trees hung over the building, making it almost completely blend in with the shadows. A stone pathway surrounded by tall overgrown grass led to the door. The low light made it hard to tell the color of the building and I thought my eyes were deceiving me as it seemed to be made of red brick. When I got the full view of it, I was stunned to realize what the building was. I had inherited an old red school house complete with a bell tower that must have announced the beginning of class sometime in the distant past. A sign over the entrance was hanging at an angle. I tilted my head to read it. Classy Yarns. A yarn store?
It hadn't been clear why my uncle had left the place to me, but now it made some sense. He knew about my passion for crochet and must have figured I would know what to do with a yarn store, though I still didn't know why he had bought it in the first place. All Bryan knew was that his brother had done the whole transaction online.
The shadows made it a little spooky and I was having trouble propelling myself forward. I liked to think I was spunky and brave, but I didn't feel either at that moment and would have loved to have had someone there to go into the place with me. The chicken part of me was saying leave and come back the next day, and the person who had faced possible bears to clear the way before walking Gray to the bathroom at Girl Scout camp told me to snap out of it and get on with it. I would like to say that it was all about the braver me winning out, but there was another reason to go inside. It had been a long ride, and I needed a bathroom. I would just find it and go. Inwardly, I chuckled at my pun, and I started up the stone path.
Up close, the sign looked like a chalkboard with white writing and when I tried to right it, it fell off completely. The upper part of the door was glass, but it was too dark inside to see anything. The only choice was to go in completely blind. It took some jiggling of the key before the door unlocked and then with a push, it opened. Instinctively, I sniffed the whoosh of inside air that greeted me. It smelled faintly of something floral.
I stepped into a vestibule and felt along the wall for a light switch, but nothing happened when I flipped it. There was a small room on either side of the entry, but since neither seemed like what I was looking for, I moved ahead into the hallway. It mostly disappeared into darkness, but I noticed an entrance to a room that still had some light coming in from the outside.
The switch didn't work any better in there ...
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