Toots had volunteered to host a dinner one night at her house, another architectural masterpiece called La Mariposa, so they could all get a reading on the Blakemans in a relaxed setting. Roxanne, Frannie, and Mitsy would also be attendance, as if dining together on a weekend night were the most natural thing in the world. Which it wasn’t, because that was social time, the nights of the week when these society stalwarts put on their festive outfits and opened their wallets. But summer was not the time for fundraisers, and by some miracle the whole group was home.

Just then, Alexa’s phone rang. It was Penny. She looked at Ming, who pointed out to the patio, indicating that she could talk privately there. Ming knew business and wasn’t offended. Alexa slid the door open and stepped out onto the flagstone. “Hello, dear. Are you on the plane?”

*  *  *

“I can’t come. I have too much work.”

“I don’t understand. Aren’t you in the air?”

“No, I should be. But I’m at the office and I’ll be here all weekend. The client, that hotel chain I told you about, they want to expand the curated gift-box program I worked on last year. And they want me in charge. I can’t say no, Mom, even though we should have started the process months ago. It took so much energy to do one hotel last year. Now they want me to do four in the same amount of time. This is a huge opportunity and I need to be in Bentonville, Arkansas, on Monday.”

Last holiday season, Penny had a breakthrough moment at work that she had proudly shared with her mother. Their client, a boutique hotel chain with ten properties in the South, wanted to promote their connection to local makers and creators to lure travel pros, editors, influencers, and ultimately the paying public to their redesigned and rebranded country inns. The client chose Savannah as destination number one and Penny spent weeks there, finding the perfect knitters, tinsmiths, weavers, gourmet food purveyors, and watercolorists with products to sell and stories to tell. The boxes themselves were works of art, becoming a coveted item among the travel in crowd. Penny and her crew spent equal amounts of time shooting, writing, and posting about the artisans for social media. The project was considered a real success by her agency and her client. The media pickup was impressive. The featured makers became minor stars, and the hotel bookings for the year rose almost immediately.

It was a win for client and community, the kind of work that felt beyond satisfying. It was Penny’s future. She saw the project as her route to partnership in the firm. She wanted to be known for taking an idea that could have been ho-hum and creating something special and memorable. She carried that momentum into other projects that year.