A Note from Roxie 

(Before You Get Comfortable)

Pull up a chair. Grab something chocolate. I’ll keep this brief, which, if you ask anyone who knows me, is not my strong suit.

My name is Roxie Maxx. I’m forty-five. I live in Whiskey Pines, Michigan, a small Lake Michigan tourist town that swells with strangers every summer and goes quiet every winter, the kind of place where everybody knows your business and half of them knew it before you did. I came back here after escaping a marriage to a man named Dut Steeplepuss III. Yes, that’s his real name. No, I will not be discussing him further in this preface because he’s taken up enough of my life already, and I refuse to give him the ink.

I live in Maxx House, a Victorian home with more history than any single building should be allowed to accumulate. It has a lighthouse attached to the back, accessible from inside, which sounds charming until you realize the previous owners had reasons for wanting to see who was coming from a great distance. The house belonged to my grandmother, Roxanne Elizabeth Maxx, who was, depending on who you ask, either the most brilliant businesswoman in Prohibition-era Michigan or the most dangerous. She ran a bootlegging operation out of a water-accessible cavern system, operated a speakeasy that drew money and trouble in equal measure, and made enemies with the Steeplepuss family in ways that are still costing me legal fees. She left me the house, an emerald pendant, and more secrets than I have storage for.

She also left me Kenzie.

Kenzie is my dog. She’s a white Bichon Frise, nine pounds of fluff and judgment, and she is, without question, the most opinionated creature I have ever lived with, and I was married to Dut, so the bar is high. Here’s the part that takes some explaining. In 1926, a speakeasy waitress named Mackenzie died saving my grandmother during a police raid. Mackenzie was loyal, street-smart, blunt as a hammer, and the kind of woman who could tell you exactly what you didn’t want to hear in a voice that made you listen anyway. She was reincarnated. As my dog.

I know how that sounds. I know.

Kenzie can communicate with me telepathically. She sends me her thoughts, and I hear them, loud and clear, in a voice that still carries the rasp of a woman who spent too many nights in a smoky speakeasy and not enough nights minding her own business. It’s one-way only. She talks; I listen. I can’t send thoughts back. I respond by muttering under my breath, nodding, giving her a look, or flat-out ignoring her, which she finds deeply offensive and says so. Often. At inconvenient moments.

The people of Whiskey Pines have accepted that I talk to myself. I tell them it’s how I sort out the many things in my head without becoming overwhelmed. They buy it, mostly because the real explanation involves reincarnation and telepathic dog communication, and nobody wants to deal with that before their second cup of coffee.

I work with my father, Richard, at the Whiskey Pines Journal, the local paper. He’s late sixties, wears flannel like a uniform, smells like Old Spice and press wash, and has the kind of quiet protective fury that makes you glad he’s on your side. My mother, Linda, is warmth and backbone in equal parts. She calls Kenzie “that ridiculous dog” with enough affection that Kenzie has decided to allow it. I have a best friend named Becky who owns a bakery and is everything soft and kind that I pretend not to be. And I have Ethan Michaels in town, a man who is patient and steady and good in ways I’m not ready to talk about yet. Someday. Not today.

* * *

Now. Pines & Needles.

After my ex-father-in-law, Dut Steeplepuss II, died and left his money to me instead of his own son (a decision that keeps me warm on cold nights), I did something I’d been dreaming about. I built a place. A women-only crafting community outside Whiskey Pines called Pines & Needles Crafting Cottages, where women could live, create, eat well, argue passionately about things like seam allowances and grainline, and belong to something that belonged to them right back.

The cottages are identical in structure and wildly different in personality, because that’s what happens when you hand creative women a set of walls and tell them to make it theirs. There’s a Community Center that residents call the Cathedral of Supplies, with a sewing studio, a weaving corner, paper-craft stations, and a locked notions cage for premium smalls, because some things are too precious for communal access. There are also big things to play with, like looms, a woodshop, a long-arm quilter and a pottery kiln. There’s a cafeteria that runs on gossip and genius-level comfort food. There’s an outdoor pool with cabanas. Men and children are welcome on Sundays only, a day the residents call Oneday. I don’t live there. I visit as founder, occasional problem-solver, and the person they call when something goes sideways, which it does with a regularity that suggests creative women and calm are not naturally occurring companions.

Kenzie comes with me. Always. She considers herself head of security, which mostly involves monitoring the other animals on the property and sending me commentary that I did not request.

* * *

You’ll want to know who you’re about to meet.

Myrtle “Mert” Hawthorne has been quilting for fifty years and can identify fabric content by touch, the way sommeliers identify wine by smell. She’s blunt, warm, and carries the community’s memory in her head like a living archive. If it happened at Pines & Needles, Mert remembers it, including the parts you wish she didn’t.

Hazel Pike keeps the records. Every tool, every notion, every spool of thread in the Community Center is catalogued in her inventory binder with the kind of precision that makes accountants emotional. She is the backbone of the chain of custody, and if something goes missing, Hazel will know what, when, and from which shelf.

Opal Jensen knows fiber the way detectives know fingerprints. She can tell if a skein has been handled, swapped, or tampered with by the way it sits in the twist. She teaches generously and without condescension, which is rarer than people think.

Della Mae Rourke runs the cafeteria like a cross between a four-star kitchen and a military operation. She’s up before dawn, she feeds everyone, and her coffee cake has been known to resolve conflicts that conversation couldn’t touch. She uses food the way other people use diplomacy: strategically, with impeccable timing, and with enough butter that resistance is futile.

Dr. Grant Beaumont makes house calls in a golf cart with the unhurried warmth of an Old South gentleman who has spent a lifetime listening. He checks on people before they ask, notices things they think they’re hiding, and has a voice that makes you trust the diagnosis before he gives it.

Celeste Van Alstyne is the board chair, not by election, but by dictatorial takeover. Few have the strength to fight her, so they let her knock herself out. She has a bylaw for everything, a subsection for the bylaw, and a paragraph for the subsection. She controls the community “for its own good,” and underneath all that procedural armor is a woman who cares so much it scares her, so she organizes it into committees instead.

Dixie Ramey spent forty-one years as a factory seamstress and has the posture, the hands, and the no-nonsense delivery to prove it. She is blunt about craft and awkward about tenderness, which makes her one of the most honest people I’ve ever met.

Tanner Lyle and Rico Santos are our cabana boys. Tanner is charm and easy conversation; he overhears everything and forgets nothing. Rico is steady, reliable, and the kind of quiet witness that makes him invaluable when you need to know exactly who was where and when.

And then there are the animals, because no community of women is complete without creatures who answer to no one. Princess Maribel is a Pomeranian who rules the pool deck with the authority of a very small, very fluffy monarch. Gus is a bulldog who blocks doorways like it’s a professional calling. And Juniper is a cat who steals things, relocates them to places they don’t belong, and leaves them there like tributes. Or accusations. With cats, it’s hard to tell.

* * *

That’s the world. That’s the cast. What you’re about to read is a story about what happens when someone at Pines & Needles decides, quietly and anonymously, to do something kind, and how a community of strong, guarded, complicated women reacts to the one thing none of them were prepared for: being told they matter.

Kenzie has commentary. She always has commentary. I apologize for nothing.

Come on in. Della Mae probably has something warm waiting.

Roxie