The truth was, we needed a bigger workroom. A second sewing machine. More shelving. More light. Maybe even a little retail space, although a storefront in Manhattan was totally out of my price range, at least for now.

I reached for a punch tool. “You sure you’re all right filling these orders while I’m gone?”

“Mamey.” Easy. Flo Callazzo was a real New Yorker, a proud Afro-Dominican Puerto Rican daughter of the Bronx.

Me? Not so much. In Paris, my schoolgirl French had marked me as irredeemably “other.” I’d reckoned being back on American soil would feel like home. But my first week in the city, I’d realized my down-home accent made me stick out among the fast-talking Yankees all around me. Waitresses asked me to repeat myself. Buyers assumed I was uneducated. Guys figured I was easy. Or naïve. A dumb hick blonde.

Which worked to my advantage, sometimes.

“You’re not getting out of your sister’s wedding on account of me,” Flo said.

“I’m not trying to get out of anything.” I busied myself inserting a snap. “I’m flying down early to do some store checks.”

Three days after Easter. I didn’t actually need to visit clients on my way to my sister’s wedding. But I loved walking into a store and seeing my bags, my brand, displayed on the gleaming shelves (#bagsinthewild #ownit). I loved the expensive smell of the boutiques: citrus, sandalwood, jasmine, bergamot. The accounts were always happy to see me, flattered I’d gone out of my way to visit.

Not like going home at all.

Not that my family didn’t love me, I told myself as I left the last client store and hit the highway for my mother’s farm. They did. All of them, even Jo. But my sisters were too busy with their own lives to care much about mine.

Our mother, who never took a day’s vacation in her life, had encouraged all of us girls to work hard and follow our dreams. Meg was the perfect mother to two perfect children. Jo was a bestselling author. Beth was a budding country star. And I . . . I made accessories. It didn’t matter how many Instagram followers or employees I had. In my family’s eyes, I was still little Amy, playing with scraps from Miss Hannah’s quilting bag.

And yet . . . There was comfort in the familiar landscape rushing by, the tall pines stretching to the wide blue sky, the sunlit ditches full of cattails and turtles, the poppies blooming by the side of the road. I turned up the gravel drive marked SISTERS’ FARM, the stones spitting beneath my tires. The square-frame house, the old mule barn, the child’s playset in the baby goats’ paddock.

Home.

Too bad nobody was there. No car. No truck. Nobody.

I got out of the car and took a deep breath of country air scented with hay and the river. Also . . . goats. Brown goats, black goats, striped and spotted goats, all sizes, smelling like cheese left out on the counter too long. They crowded to the fence, bleating and bumping for attention, the babies skipping around the paddock like they were auditioning for YouTube. Cute, if you liked that sort of thing.