Page 1 of The Weekend Crashers
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 liketheirplace. 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.Thisweekend of all weekends.” Maybe that, at the very least, he can understand: This weekend matters.
Chapter One
Monday
The directions at the arrivals gate are confusing, and Maggie takes this personally, as if LaGuardia Airport is trying to thwart her. She hasn’t seen her daughter in weeks and has no patience for circling for the right place to pull over. The curbside is a sensory overload of honking horns, rolling luggage wheels and traffic marshals wearing neon vests shouting at drivers to keep things moving. It’s too much to handle on only one cup of coffee.
To her right, a stream of yellow cabs jostle for position alongside a logjam of sedans and black SUVs. A police officer raps on her driver’s-side window. She lowers it and a rush of crisp autumn air fills the car. “This is a no-standing zone,” the policeman says. He’s handsome, and it irritates Maggie that she notices.
She can’t leave this spot. Piper will be out any second. But from the look on the officer’s face, she’s about to get a ticket.
Really, Maggie has no one to blame for this 7:00 a.m. stress bomb but herself: Piper had insisted she could just get an Uber, but Maggie wouldn’t hear of it. There are few things left to do that make her feel useful. And they have so little time together anymore. But Maggie has an idea to fix that: a three-day weekend at a rustic knitting retreat. If Piper will say yes.
Maggie’s eyes sweep the curb, and she spots Piper’s familiar long-legged stride heading toward her. “She’s here!” Maggie jumps out of the car and waves her arms wildly. She doesn’t care if she gets a ticket. Piper is home!
“Mom,” Piper says, running into her arms. The embrace feels like a giant exhale.
The officer barks something at her, and Maggie ushers Piper into the car. She avoids a ticket—probably because of Piper. Grown men lose all reason around her stunning daughter. Piper is nearly six feet tall with white-blonde hair and remarkably big blue eyes.
“Thanks for picking me up,” Piper says. “But honestly, next time Ethan will do it. He always offers.”
Maggie ignores the comment as she steers into the queue to exit the airport. Ethan is Piper’s boyfriend of the past three years. Maggie has nothing against Ethan, but she does think her daughter is too young—and has too much going for her—to be tied down in a serious relationship. Maggie learned the hard way that nothing could derail a career like the distraction of a romance.
“It’s my pleasure,” Maggie says. “Now tell me all about the trip.”
Piper’s been in Milan the past two weeks modeling. Her return to Manhattan is for walking in a runway show tomorrow night for the designer Betsy Toledo. Her career is so glamorous; Maggie can’t imagine living Piper’s life. At her age, Maggie struggled to make ends meet in a studio apartment alone with a two-year-old. Piper’s twenties are the opposite: Freedom. Money. The world is her oyster.
“I’ve told you pretty much everything,” Piper says. Then, with a little smile, “Except last week, Ethan flew out and surprised me,” she adds.
“He was with you in Italy?”
“For a few days, yeah.”
Maggie feels a flash of annoyance. It was a work trip. Modeling is a brutally competitive business, and it’s difficult enough for Piper to fight her way to the top. She really needs to set some boundaries.
“Don’t you think it’s a little inappropriate that he showed up?”
“I invited him to come. It was my idea.”
Maggie has to dial back her negativity. It doesn’t matter what she thinks. She doesn’t want to sound like her own mother. She shudders at the thought. So she keeps her mouth shut while Piper spends the remainder of the hour drive to the Upper West Side talking about all the romantic things she and Ethan did in Europe. Barely a mention of work, something Maggie is more curious about. But it’s her job to listen, and she does, and then before she knows it, they’ve reached Ethan’s apartment building on West 82nd Street.
Only when Piper opens the passenger door to step out does Maggie realize she forgot to ask her about the knitting retreat.
