“Both, I guess,” said Dakota. She liked sitting here with her cheek on her father’s shoulder, with him kissing her head.
“Well, that’s my answer, too,” said James. “I’m sure.”
He told her that Sandra was funny, and intelligent, and made very good French toast. That they’d known each other in Paris but had never dated until she was transferred over a year ago, and hadn’t believed—until she saw him—in the rumors that James Foster had abandoned his player ways to become a devoted dad.
“So, you’re saying I got you a real girlfriend?” asked Dakota. “Ick.”
“I’m more committed and caring that I once was,” said James.
“Double ick,” said Dakota. “Dad, no offense, I get that you were pretty hot stuff back in the day. But first, you’re practically fifty. And second, I so don’t want to know. You can’t comprehend how little I want to know.” She mimed covering her ears.
“I get it,” said James. “But just because I’m moving in with Sandra doesn’t make me any less your father.”
“Yeah, I know,” said Dakota. “Big question. What’s happening to your apartment?”
James chuckled.
“Good to see you’re feeling better. I won’t put it on the market for a while, if that’s what is worrying you,” he said. “You can stay there until at least September, probably longer.”
“Dad,” said Dakota, getting serious. “If you’re going to have any shot at making this romance work, you can’t actually hold on to your place with a wait-and-see attitude. Even I know that much. What about renting it out? To me, I mean.”
“Well, I know you can’t afford the cost,” said James. “I pay for your bills, remember? And I was worried how you’d feel.”
“I could pay for the apartment if I had roommates,” said Dakota. “And I spend the week at the dorm anyway.”
“Most twenty-year-olds don’t maintain a pied-à-terre, you know,” remarked James.
“I hear your point,” said Dakota. “So, let’s just table this part of the discussion and pick it up again later. Just don’t say no yet.”
“Okay,” agreed James, more to maintain this sense of equilibrium than anything else. “I know this move is a big step. How do you feel?”
Dakota appraised her father. On the one hand, she’d had her outburst. So maybe she could tell him she wanted him to just be happy. This was true. Technically. But on the other hand, maybe she ought to just be honest.
“I’m kinda uncomfortable,” she admitted. “I don’t want to be. I’m good with the idea of a theoretical serious girlfriend. But in reality . . .”
“So, you’ll get to know Sandra. Slowly,” said James. “No one is saying you have to be best friends.”
“I can’t wait to call Catherine,” said Dakota. “I wonder what she’s going to think about all this.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said James. “She’ll probably understand how complicated it is. After all, Catherine is marrying a man who has his own memories. She’s going to become a stepmom.”
Dakota narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “You’re not leading in to anything parallel here, are you? Because a stepmom is not something I need, in case there was any confusion,” she said quickly. “Either way, I don’t want Sandra Stonehouse to think she’s going to become my new best friend. She’s not going to want to hang out, is she? Go shoe shopping?”
“No,” said James. “Because I’m her new best friend. Not that we’ve gone shoe shopping. But I’m pretty sure I still qualify.”
“I mean, this moving-in thing,” ventured Dakota. “It’s not just a precursor, is it? Like you’ll invite me over for a barbecue and then a minister will be there and then, whammo, you’ll get married and stuff?”
“Hold on there, Dakota,” said her father. “I’m just figuring out my way here.”
“It’s just that I don’t want Sandra—or any girlfriend of yours, I’m not singling her out—to not get it,” explained Dakota. “I want them to understand I have a mom. Who was my friend. Who still is my friend, you know? So I’m not looking for someone to play parent to get into your good books.”
“She’s already in my good books,” said James. “And last I heard, you’d declared yourself too old to need a parent. Who knows what will happen to your dear old dad because of it.”
“I’m still keeping him,” said Dakota, poking her finger into his shoulder. “Pending the outcome of the apartment rental situation.”
“So we’re good, then,” said James, dodging the topic.
“We’re always good, Dad,” said Dakota. “But I can’t pretend there isn’t this part of me that just wishes we could be a real family. You, me, and Mom.”
“I don’t think that feeling is ever going to go away,” admitted James. “But all we have is what is. There’s no way for us to resurrect what might have been. And finally, I think I’ve found a new way to be happy. It’s something I never believed would ever happen again for me.”
“Then you have to do it, I guess,” said Dakota, sighing. “And somehow, we’ll figure it out. That’s what mom would say when I had a problem.”
The scent of pine was soothing, filling her nose and lungs. Dakota lay flat on her back underneath the Christmas tree, the lights still on even though everyone else had gone to bed. It had been a good Christmas. Lots of butter tarts and an iPod from her uncle Donny, a knitted photo album cover that Gran had sent from Scotland, and an expensive jacket from a fancy store, courtesy of James. Mister Mystery Father. It had been a good haul.
Dakota felt her big toe being squeezed.
“Hey, muffingirl, you going to sleep there all night?” asked Georgia, before easing herself down to slide under the tree branches with her daughter. “Looks different from this perspective. Pretty.”
“Yeah,” said Dakota, reaching up to poke at the tree’s needles. “I don’t feel like going to bed.”
“Seems a shame, doesn’t it, for Christmas to end?” said Georgia. She wanted to reach out and hold hands with Dakota but knew her tweenage daughter well enough to resist.
“I waited all year for Christmas,” grumbled Dakota. “And then it’s just one day. One good day. But just the one.”
“The letdown after the big buildup, right?”
“Makes me kinda sad, I guess,” admitted Dakota.
“Well, there’ll be another Christmas next year,” said Georgia, giving in to her urge and snuggling in close to her daughter. Miraculously, Dakota didn’t budge. Maybe, even, if Georgia was correct, she was leaning in. Just a tiny bit.
“But it won’t be the same,” said Dakota. “I’ll be older. I’ll be a teenager.”
“That’s okay,” insisted Georgia. “You’ll still be my muffingirl when you’re fifty-two. Even eighty-two.”
“Don’t tease, Mom,” said Dakota.
“Okay,” said Georgia, lying side by side with her beautiful daughter, taking in the intoxicating aroma of the tree and the glittering, twinkling lights. “No teasing. We’ll find a way to work it all out. We’ll just stay here together. All night. That way our perfect Christmas never has to end.”
the new year
This is the most powerful of tomorrows: one moment that overflows with renewal, with resolution. The exhilaration of being able to start anew, when there are no mistakes. Not yet, anyway. In a similar way, each knitting project starts fresh—yarn still untouched—and all outcomes are possible. So grab your needles. It’s the only way to ever know what the result will be.
chapter sixteen
Although there was mention of a possible blizzard in the weather reports, the city streets remained clear of snow and slush when Dakota and James returned from Scotland. A good thing, really, because Dakota needed to get around quickly: She had to dash up to the kitchens at school in a few hours and mix all manner of batters with her classmates who were assisting on the wedding petit-fours project. The catch was that she had to train back into Manhattan tomorrow night for a New Year’s Eve bachelorett
e party bankrolled by Marty and organized by Peri and KC. The men were scheduled to attend a tasting of regional Scotch at James’s apartment. It was all quite a lot, mused Dakota, for a girl who’d never even been a guest at anyone’s wedding. Ever.
“Not only that but you get to be maid of honor twice over,” shouted Catherine, standing in garters and a tight white bustier in the spacious dressing room as Dakota waited on a bench near the three-way mirror. She’d bought a designer gown off the rack from a famous Madison Avenue designer and paid exorbitantly to have it rush-fitted. Now she stepped into the dress carefully with the aid of the sales clerk. “What a way to celebrate New Year’s Day! I’ll be a bride!”
Dakota had gotten used to Catherine’s exclamations of “I’m getting married!” that popped out of her mouth with alarming frequency, and she’d been with her for only half the day. They’d run through table seatings with Anita and had a long discussion about whether the florist should make the centerpieces even taller, at which point Dakota determined that the safest course of action was to make as many umm-hmmm sounds as she could without ever venturing an actual opinion. Her scheme seemed to have worked: After all the chatter, everything stayed exactly as had been already decided.
“Is this all stressing you out?” said Catherine, peeking out of the dressing-room door before stepping back in. “Out in a sec.”
“You know,” said Dakota, “for once in my life, I feel surprisingly calm. I am drowning in to-do lists—and that internship at the V starts the day after New Year’s—but I feel more in control than I have in a long while.”
“Good visit with Gran, I bet,” said Catherine. “That helped turn my life around back when.”
“And look at you now,” said Dakota, as Catherine glided out of the dressing room and toward the mirror. “You are stunning.”
“Don’t tell anyone what I look like,” she implored. “I want it to be a surprise. Because I’m getting married!”
“Yes, so I’ve heard,” said Dakota, raising one eyebrow. “Is getting engaged like taking drugs? You seem unnaturally happy all the time now.”
“I know,” said Catherine. “It’s amazing.”
Her fir st wedding had also been a whirlwind: a miserable countdown to a big day she’d had little role in planning, buffeted between the whims of Adam and the insistence of his mother to have a proper society affair. Even if she’d hated Catherine. Oh, Catherine had been ecstatic, of course. But mainly because she had no idea what she was getting herself into, her brain addled by a fantasy future of living the good life and finding happiness as her due course.
Now she knew that true love was found somewhere between a feverish child and holding a flashlight in gum boots while her lover checked on the vines. Somewhere in the real world. And if she fell a tiny bit into the trap of bridezilla self-indulgence this go-round? Well, at least it was for only a short while.
Catherine wanted to hug everyone she met and encourage them to fall in love. The entire Christmas holiday was beyond compare, she thought, twirling around on the dais in front of the mirror. She’d hosted the Toscanos—er, her soon-to-be family; she had to stop thinking of them as one unit apart from her—as well as Anita, Marty, Sarah, and Enzo. Eight people in all, and Catherine, wanting to give them a feeling of home, had attempted to bake homemade panet tone. Well, it was a first effort. She’d be better next year.
The timing meant she went over the wedding details with Anita each and every day (and yes, it was a bit odd to plan someone else’s wedding and then become one of the brides herself). But she also shopped nonstop, buying lip glosses and cute sweaters for Allegra, and a leather bomber jacket for her pilot-in-training almost-stepson Roberto. She shopped so much for the children, and picked up little trinkets for Sarah and Enzo, that it wasn’t until Marco presented her with a glimmering cushion-cut diamond ring that Catherine realized she’d forgotten to get him any sort of gift at all.
“A good sign,” he’d said later that night, as she apologized once again, and he meant it. Marco felt reassured that she, like him, thought initially of his children.
Only two more days, thought Catherine, and she would see him waiting for her as she walked herself down the aisle.
Dakota checked the clock on her cell phone as she exited the subway steps and hoofed it over to Walker and Daughter. She wanted to go over the holiday sales with Peri, and also just visit. Of course, she had hundreds of teeny-tiny cakes to bake, so she wasn’t going to be able to stay long. Peri was putting together goody bags of candles, chocolates, eye masks, and knitted slippers when she arrived.
“Favors for our bachelorette party,” she explained.
“This I like,” said Dakota, peeking into the bag. “But something tells me I should worry that KC has invited oodles of naked guys to shake their junk around.”
Peri laughed. “Because that’s what Anita and Sarah really want to see,” she said. “Nah, even Silverman knows there’s a line not to cross. Of course, if it were just Catherine getting married, we’d all be at a strip club in Vegas right now.”
Dakota waved at a few regular customers knitting at the table as she sauntered past the register to scoot up onto the counter. It was the ideal vantage point to look at the shop in its entirety, the rainbow rows of yarn, the light streaming in the tall windows, the shelves of reds and greens and blues and whites a wee bit low after a swift holiday sales cycle. She smiled at the black-and-white photo of herself with her mother taken years before that held a spot of honor on the wall.
“So, Peri,” she asked. “Think you’re going to miss this place?”
“I, uh, uh,” Peri stammered. “How did you know I decided to take the job?”
“It’s the best choice,” said Dakota. “And it’s Paris. And soon it’ll be Peri Pocketbook all over the world. You must go give it a try. You’ll always wonder if you don’t.”
“I’m nervous,” said Peri. “I’m handing over my baby. Sure, I’ll be president of Peri Pocketbook but a subsidiary of the major corporation. Plus I’ve been asked to oversee all the knitwear lines.”
“That’s a lot,” said Dakota. “But you’ve got management experience. We have part-timers. Your new gig’s just going to be on a bigger scale. So I couldn’t think of anyone more suited.”
“I haven’t spoken French since college,” continued Peri.
“Get those little tapes,” said Dakota. “All you need to do is learn how to look mysterious and glamorous, and no one will guess you’re not French.”
“You mean I don’t look glamorous now?”
“Okay, even more glamorous, then!” Dakota threw up her hands. “So, what about the boyfriend? Is he still the one?”
“I ditched him as soon as I returned from seeing my parents for Christmas,” said Peri. “It wasn’t just Thanksgiving, though his behavior was irritating beyond belief. But then I found out from a girlfriend that he’d updated his profile to ‘single’ on the online dating site where we met.”
“Youch,” said Dakota.
“Not youch,” said Peri. “Because he called me the same day to say that he loved me. And no, he wasn’t asking to come on over. But that’s when I knew.”
“Huh?”
“That he couldn’t resolve the conflict between what he wanted and what his mother was pushing for,” said Peri. “Then I called up Lydia Jackson and accepted the job. I wanted Paris more than I wanted Roger, and that sums it up.”
“Wise moves all around,” said Dakota. “So, admit it, aren’t you a little thrilled?”
“I’m ecstatic,” said Peri. “But I’m worried about the shop. I’m worried about Georgia. What would she think?”
“She’d be packing your bags for you,” said Dakota. “And I know that, because I was going to march upstairs and do the same thing myself if you’d chickened out.”
“What about you?” Peri frowned. “That’s what worries me most of all.”
“I am fine. More than fine, in fact,” said Dakota. “I’m going to buy
out your share of the shop.”
“You are? How?” asked Peri.
“Not sure yet,” Dakota admitted. “But I’m working on a plan.”
“You know, I might refuse to sell.”
“Of course you will,” said Dakota. “All to spare me the expense, I have no doubt. But I’m going to make you a good offer someday soon. In the meantime, we’ll just work things out, won’t we?”
“You know it,” said Peri, spontaneously hugging Dakota. “I’ll miss you, you know. You’re like my little-sister-business-partner-best-buddy.”
“Hey, I’m not going anywhere,” said Dakota, returning the embrace. “I’m already home. With the shop. My café and recipes. My mother’s pattern book and her designs. This is what I’m meant to do. And so I’ll always be right here.”
The dress code on the bachelorette party invitations was clear: Pajamas only. Slippers optional. The Friday Night Knitting Club was having a New Year’s Eve slumber party.
“Well, I’ve never heard of such a thing,” said Sarah, as Anita bundled her sister, in a pair of navy striped pajamas under her heavy winter coat, into the waiting car.
“You never can know with the club,” said Anita, who wore an old pair of Marty’s sweats and a T-shirt. No one needed to know what she really slept in. “I only hope someone thought to get some cushions for the floor of the shop.”
But the car didn’t take them to Walker and Daughter. Instead, all the cars that had picked up the guests arrived at a secret party location almost simultaneously. At a lovely hotel overlooking the very heart of the city on the last day of the year.
“We’re in Times Square, everyone!” shouted KC in the lobby as she handed out the goody bags Peri had made. She was delighted that all was coming together, as generous patronage from Marty was able to make happen. KC winked at Anita and her sister. “Strippers come after midnight. Big, naked men!”
“Really?” gasped Sarah, clutching her coat tighter.
“No,” said Anita, shaking her head. “Not really.”