Hanging by a Thread

You can take the girl out of Queens... Or can you? Because for five years, fashion assistant Ellie Levine was taking a halfhearted stab at it, commuting to Manhattan by day, trying desperately to keep secret her outerborough existence--that accent, that hair...that daughter. Until the day fate landed her back in her Richmond Hill neighborhood 24/7, the very place she'd sworn to escape. Now she has a business to run there--not the business she had in mind, perhaps, but a business nonetheless. And the boy next door, who for years had been the married-man-next-door, is suddenly available. And interested? Maybe there really is no place like home. So even if you can take the girl out of Queens, would you? ϡ쯦랠

You can take the girl out of Queens. . .

Or can you? Because for five years, fashion. . .what?--assistant?--Ellie Levine was taking a halfhearted stab at it, commuting to Manhattan by day, trying desperately to keep secret her outerborough accent, hair. . .daughter! Until the day fate landed her back in her Richmond Hill neighborhood, the very place she'd sworn to escape.

Only now she had a business to run there-not the business she had in mind, perhaps, designing wedding dresses for Fran Drescher wanna-bees, but a business nonetheless. And the boy next door, who for years had been the married-man-next-door, was suddenly available. And interested?

So maybe there really was no place like home. So maybe the life she wanted and the life she had were starting to merge. And if she wasn't a success by anyone else's definition? Maybe it was time to throw away the dictionary. . .

A Seventh Avenue refugee, Karen Templeton now lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she is at work on another novel.