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with stories about how things have gone since high school.”
    Andi might not have been particularly well versed in girl talk in recent years, but she had a pretty good sense that Catherine wasn’t thrilled with her being back in town and running tonight’s knitting group.
    Fortunately right then, another woman, who Andi judged to be around her same age, smiled and said, “I’m Rebecca. I help run the inn on the lake, and it is such a pleasure to meet you, Andi. I just adore your mother and grandmother.”
    The pretty woman with the long, straight golden-brown hair and startlingly green eyes looked down at the diamond ring on her finger, drawing Andi’s gaze down to it.
    “And what about you, my dear?” Dorothy asked. “What brings you back to town?”
    Andi froze. She didn’t want to lie to these women, but she needed to sit down and talk about her project with Nate first. He would know the best way to present her building plans to the townspeople. Perhaps if she’d come back to town more since high school, it wouldn’t seem so strange that she was here now, but the constant demands of her job had always come first.
    “Fall on the lake is always so peaceful, so quiet. This seemed like a good place to focus on a big project at work.”
    “Quiet?” Dorothy and Helen both laughed. “Emerald Lake is a hotbed of excitement and intrigue.”
    “Okay, who’s got gossip?” Rebecca asked, obviously trying to change the subject and take the focus off of Andi, who felt more and more out of her element with every passing second.
    “Not so fast,” Catherine said. “Andi hasn’t told us something unique about herself yet.”
    Andi felt another rush of blood move up to her cheeks. She dearly wished Catherine hadn’t drawn attention to her, not when she was trying so hard to fit in seamlessly with these almost strangers.
    “I can’t think of anything,” she said, but she was met with a wall of raised eyebrows. Realizing they weren’t going to move on until she gave them something, she said, “I can’t knit.”
    Oh no, she hadn’t just blurted that out, had she?
    Dorothy scrunched her face up as if she was trying to access some long-lost information. “Wait a minute, I remember a little girl who looked like you sitting right here and knitting many, many years ago.”
    Andi held up her empty hands in an effort to defend herself. “I haven’t knit since I was nine or ten. I seriously doubt I remember how.” She certainly hadn’t earlier in the day with her grandmother.
    “Nonsense,” Dorothy said as she reached into her canvas bag for some large needles and soft blue yarn, so much like the skein Andi had been admiring earlier that morning. “It’s like riding a bicycle. You never forget how to knit, no matter how long it’s been. Take these.”
    Keeping her hands firmly on her lap, Andi said, “Thanks, but you don’t need to give me your—”
    “Take them.”
    Andi immediately responded to the firm note in the older woman’s voice. “Okay.”
    She sat awkwardly with the things on her lap when Rebecca took pity on her.
    “I can show you how to cast on if you want.”
    Wishing she could be anywhere but Lake Yarns on a Monday night, Andi nodded. “Thanks.”
    Rebecca deftly wound the yarn around the needles. “Any idea what you’d like to make?”
    Andi began to shake her head, but then she realized that if she had to sit here all night, she might as well start something she might use when she was done with it.
    “A shawl.” The one she’d been wearing in her earlier vision.
    Rebecca nodded. “Good idea. With the size of these circular needles and the gauge of the yarn, it should knit up really quick and look great. How about a simple triangle pattern? You’ll only have to do a yarn over at the beginning and end of every other row with all the other rows being a simple knit stitch.”
    After Rebecca quickly showed her how to do the alternating rows, Andi softly said, “You don’t know how