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Read an excerpt from Knit Two (Continued...)

"Uh, no," said Dakota. "And double no. My friends and I are a little busy with college." Her hands rested on the waist of her deep indigo jeans as she watched Peri pretend not to fuss over the job she'd done. The stroller looked like a giant yellow banana. A wrinkled, torn banana. She sighed. Dakota was a striking young woman, with her creamy mocha skin and her mother's height and long, curly dark hair. But she retained an element of gangliness, gave the impression that she was not quite comfortable with the transformation of her figure. At eighteen, she was still growing into herself.

"Thank God for that," replied Peri, discreetly trying to peel the tape off the yellow paper so she could redo the edges. Whether it was operating the store or designing the handbags in her side business, she approached everything with precision now. Working with Georgia had been the best training she could ever have received for running a business—two businesses, really. Her own handbag company, Peri Pocketbook, as well as Georgia's store. Still, Peri felt she had done a lot to keep things going since Georgia passed away, and now that she was pushing thirty, she was beginning to feel a desire to move. In what direction, she wasn't sure. But there would be no more Walker and Daughter without her. Of that she was certain.

Sometimes it wasn't very satisfying to work so hard for something that essentially belonged to someone else. It was hers but not really hers at all.

For one thing, Dakota had seemed less and less interested in the store during the last year or so, grumbling on the Saturdays when she came in to work, typically late and sometimes appearing to simply roll out of bed and throw on whatever clothes she could find. It was quite a change from her early teens when she seemed to relish her time at the shop. And yet there were brief moments when her world-weary attitude would disappear and Peri could see the whispers of the bright-eyed, wisecracking little kid who loved to bake and could spend hours knitting with her mother in the store's back office or the apartment they had shared one floor above the yarn shop.

The shop was located on Seventy-seventh and Broadway, just above Marty's deli, amid boutiques and restaurants in Manhattan's Upper West Side. Only a few blocks from the green of Central Park, and the cool of the Hudson River in the opposite direction, it was a lovely part of the city. Oh, certainly there was lots of noise—honking taxis, the rumble of the subway underneath the streets, the sound of heels on the sidewalk and cell phone conversations swirling all around—but that was the type of commotion that had appealed to Georgia Walker when she moved in. She didn't mind the beeping of the Coke truck at 5 am bringing supplies to the deli on the street level. Not if it meant she got to live right inside the action, showing her daughter the world she had barely imagined herself when growing up on a farm in Pennsylvania.

Of course, now Peri lived in the upstairs apartment that had been Georgia's and the back office was no more. The wall had recently been blown out to make a separate showcase for the handbags she designed and sold; each purse was individually displayed on a clear acrylic shelf mounted onto a wall painted a deep gray.

The change to the store had come together after much discussion with Anita and with Dakota, and they'd consulted Dakota's father, James, too, of course, though mostly for his architectural expertise. But it made financial sense: Peri had turned Dakota's childhood bedroom in the apartment into an office so there was no need to tally up receipts in the shop anymore. Why waste the store's valuable real estate? And there had always been the understanding—with Georgia and with James and Anita after Georgia died—that her handbag business would have the chance to flourish. She had reminded them of that while purposefully avoiding the one ultimatum she knew everyone most feared: she would leave the store if she wasn't able to remodel. The concern hung in the air, and she saved voicing it unless it was absolutely necessary.

After all, what would happen to the store if Peri left? Anita, who turned seventy-eight on her last birthday though she still looked just barely old enough to collect Social Security, certainly wouldn't be about to take over. Though she continued to arrive two days a week to help out and keep busy, as she said, Anita and Marty spent a lot of their time going on quick trips, by train or car, to wonderful country inns in New England and in Canada. Those two were on a perpetual vacation, and Peri was happy for them. Envious, a little bit. Definitely. Hopeful that she'd have the same thing someday. And if that legal department coworker her pal KC kept mentioning was half as cute as he'd been described, who knew what could happen?

And then there was Dakota, who had nearly finished up her first year at NYU. It wasn't as though she could step in to run the store—or that she even seemed to want to do so anymore.

Not everyone wants to go into the family business.

Peri's decision to work at the yarn shop, and create her own designs, had not been popular within her own family. Her parents had wanted her to become a lawyer, and she'd dutifully taken her LSAT and earned a place at law school, only to turn it down and leave everyone guessing. Georgia hadn't been cowed by her mother, who flew in from Chicago to pressure Georgia into firing her, and Peri had never forgotten that fact. Even when difficulties arose over the shop, Peri reflected on how Georgia had helped her and she stuck it out. Still, the work of two businesses took up all of her days and many of her evenings, and the past five years seemed to have moved quickly. It was as though one day Peri woke up and realized she was almost thirty, still single, and not happy with the situation. It was hard to meet guys in New York, she thought. No, not guys. Men. Men like James Foster. Peri had had a mild crush on the man ever since he'd come back for Georgia, and he remained, for her, the very epitome of the successful, confident partner she longed for.

Of course, James had only ever been interested in the store from the standpoint of keeping an eye on Georgia's legacy to Dakota. And Georgia's old friend Catherine was surrounded by crap up in the Hudson Valley, thought Peri, where she managed her antiques-and-wonderful-things-blah-blah-blah store. Besides, Catherine couldn't even knit. And she and Peri had never really connected; it was more as though they shared several mutual friends but hadn't quite managed, even after all this time, to get to know each other. Peri often felt judged whenever Catherine glided into the shop, soaking in everything with her perfectly made up smoky eyes, every blond hair in place.

No, over the years the feeling had become more definite that either Peri would keep things going at Walker and Daughter or it would be time to close up the doors to the yarn shop. The desire to keep everything just as it once had been—to freeze time—remained very strong among the group of friends. So even as she advocated change, Peri felt guilty. It was almost overwhelming. Stemming from some natural fantasy they all shared but never discussed: that everything needed to be kept just so for Georgia. For what? To want to come back? To feel at home? Because making changes to Georgia's store, without her presence or consultation, would mean things were really final. Wouldn't it? That all the moments the members of the Friday Night Knitting Club and the family of Georgia Walker had experienced, the good and the bad, had truly happened.

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