Baby Lessons

cheek.
“It’s been a good day.” Madison smiled. “A great day, actually.”
“That’s my girl.” Alice winked, and Toby hopped off the crocheted dog bed tucked in the corner of the cash register area to scamper toward Madison and paw at her shins.
She scooped the tiny dog into her arms and looked around. The walls of the shop were all lined with cubby holes, each stacked with either skeins of yarn or yarn that had been wound into balls. From a distance, they almost looked like colored Easter eggs or crayons in a box. The cubby holes closest to the front of the store held yarn in delicate shades of white and ivory, which eventually switched to gentle pastel hues and ultimately, an explosion of vivid color near the back of the shop.
A large round table sat in the center of the sales floor, its beloved maple surface worn smooth with age. A ceramic bowl sat in the center of the table, piled high with balls of yarn in tints straight out of a baby shower—pale ballet pink, baby blue, minty green and a fair shade of yellow that reminded Madison of the fuzzy baby chicks she sometimes saw for sale at the Lovestruck Farmers’ Market. Knitting patterns labeled Baby Booties for Beginners had been placed in front of the six chairs surrounding the table.
Back when she was a little girl, Madison typically spent a week of each summer vacation in Lovestruck with Aunt Alice. Her dad was usually too busy at work to tear himself from the office, so Alice would meet her at the train station and dote on her for the entire week as if Madison were her own. Aunt Alice had taught her how to make hats on a round loom at this very table.
The memory made Madison smile. In a way, her aunt had been the one to introduce her to fashion. She still had some of the hats she’d made on that loom, along with her sad, juvenile attempts at crocheted scarves.
“Do you remember how to cast on?” Alice said as she offered Madison a pair of slender, wooden knitting needles.
She placed Toby on the floor so he could resume his spot of honor on his crocheted dog bed and took the needles. They felt completely foreign in her grasp. “Not at all.”
Alice winked. “No worries. This is a beginner class. You’ll fit right in.”
Her aunt was right...mostly. Two of Madison’s classmates were regulars at Main Street Yarn who signed up for all of Alice’s classes, regardless of skill level. The other three women who occupied seats alongside her at the old maple table were totally new to knitting. Two of them were in the late stages of pregnancy, both glowing as they struggled with a basic garter stitch. The third, situated right next to Madison, appeared to be around Aunt Alice’s age and wore a cute pair of eyeglasses with cheerful red cat eye frames. She wondered if the older woman might be a grandmother, but didn’t want to assume.
In any event, there wasn’t an actual baby in sight. Madison tried to tamp down her disappointment as she fumbled with her knitting.
“I’m sorry,” Aunt Alice mouthed to her at a quiet moment when all the other students had their heads bent over their booties in the making.
“It’s fine,” Madison mouthed back. “I’m having fun!”
She held up her tangle of pink yarn as evidence. In no way did the mess attached to her knitting needles resemble a tiny sock, but this was only the first night of the four-week-long class. Rome wasn’t built in a day and all that.
Except Mr. Grant was expecting her to morph into Mary Poppins overnight, and for that, she needed to get her hands on some living, breathing babies—not just their shoes. She’d bought herself a little time with the buzz generated by her response to Fired Up, but who knew how long it would last? There was no guarantee her cranky correspondent would even write another letter to the editor.
Meanwhile, the only thing Madison had in common with Mary Poppins was an appreciation for polka dots. Seriously, Emily Blunt’s wardrobe in the recent movie sequel had been amazing, but somehow Madison doubted she could get a workable column out of it. Oh, how she longed for her days at Vogue.
Once class was over, Madison straightened up the shop, readying it for closing like she’d done when she was a little girl while Alice helped a few lingering students at the checkout area. The table was covered with bits of yarn and practice rows stitched together in pastel colors. But as Madison picked through the discarded items, she found a tiny toe-shaped tip of a baby bootie still attached to a slender bamboo knitting needle. It was crafted from pale, peachy-pink yarn—the same yarn her knitting neighbor to her right had been using during class.
She looked up, hoping to catch a glimpse of the woman with the red cat-eye glasses, but she wasn’t among the small crowd gathered near the register.
Uh-oh.
Aunt Alice had assigned them all homework, and if the knitter didn’t get ten new rows added to her project, she’d never be able to catch up during the next class. Madison grabbed the knitting needle and the ball of yarn it was attached to and hurried to the front of the shop.
“Knitting emergency!” She dashed past her aunt, waving the needles in explanation as she pushed through the shop’s front door. “I’ll be right back.”
She caught sight of the cute cat-eye glasses just a few feet away, where the woman was about to climb into the driver’s seat of a boxy little minivan.
“Wait!” Madison called out. “You forgot something.”
She caught up to her fellow student just in time.
The woman pressed a hand to her heart when she spotted her creation in Madison’s grasp. “Oh, my. I can’t believe I left that behind! Thank you so much.”
“No problem. I’m glad I caught up to you.” Madison handed her the bundle of