Rickie Blair

For the past two years, Verity Hawkes hadn’t ventured out of her apartment much, kept neighbors at arm’s length, and read stacks of self-help books from Ten Paths to Clarity Through Tidying Up to Achieving Peace Through Nature. But the apartment still had “dust bunnies big enough to form their own union” and her latest dracaena plant was well passed reviving. When an early morning call woke her, she was tempted to just let it ring.