I nudge her. “He’s nice. Anyway, what are you ordering? Those samples I tried from—”

“I’ll tell you what I’m not ordering,” she says, capping the Sharpie and crossing her arms before facing me.

“I knoooooow,” I groan, pulling my phone from my pocket. “I’ll check again.”

I refresh my e-mail, watching new messages stack and stack, until I’ve got to scroll through to search for the name I’m looking for.

“Oh, wait!” I exclaim, straightening as I quickly scan the message from the print supplier I’ve been working with for the last few months. A smile spreads across my face as I see the good news. “Two weeks, they say. A full restock.”

“Whew,” Lachelle says. “Things are getting desperate over there.”

She gestures toward the somewhat empty-looking table at the front of the store, the special placement Cecelia and Lachelle have reserved for me since the new line launched three months ago. I may not be part owner of this shop with my two friends, but the sign that proclaims this store the “birthplace” of the new Meg Mackworth line makes me feel warm with contentment, included in the most perfect possible way.

Despite this evening’s sojourn in the back of the shop, I’m not really back in the wedding business. Instead, I’m back in my own business, a new version of it that I’ve had to rebuild, somewhat, in the aftermath of the Coster Capital fallout. With a lot of determined, difficult work—and the occasional character reference from everyone’s favorite princess—I’d managed to keep most of my clients. But there’d been costs to having my name in the news—time spent fending off the press, reconsideration of my website and social media, the realization that I couldn’t keep up with enough new clients to make up for the losses.

So in the end, I didn’t really have a choice. I’d needed to pivot.

I’d needed to find a way to do my work the way I’d wanted to do it. The way that I’d broken through my block for.

Lachelle and I both drift over to the table, and I start straightening the products that are left, a burst of pride going through me each time I see the logo I designed.

Harbinger, I’d called it, my new product line. Journals and planners, stickers and stationery, no hidden messages necessary. These pieces, they’re the right kind of signs—letters that remind you of a place, a season, a feeling, an ambition. Letters that say more than the words on the page.

Lachelle can’t keep them in stock.