A cloud shadowed Lily’s eyes. “Thank you. Most of the plants are still hers. She loved ivies and when she passed on the shop to me, I had a hard time letting them go.”
“You don’t need to sell these to me if they’re special to you,” I said as she passed over both pots to my waiting hands.
Lily smiled, but it held a hint of sadness. “No, either of these would be a good pick for your grandma and I think it would be nice to see them passed on to someone she knew.”
I inspected both plants, leaving out the fact my grandmother and Lily’s fought in a bitter rivalry the last three years of Rose’s life because Nanna swore she cheated at bridge and refused to play with her anymore. No one needed to learn their grandmother cheated at cards.
I weighed both plants in my hands and spun them in circles, looking at the different leaves. “How can I pick? They are both so lovely.” And identical. “Would you care if I took both of them?”
No one else entered the shop in the thirty minutes we’d stared at the ivy plants and talked. A little extra business wouldn’t hurt Lily, and even though my bank account was dwindling, I knew I’d find a job soon.
Life had knocked me down before, but I always found a way to get back up again. It was important to support the local shops. Every dollar I helped her with was a dollar further away she was from selling her building to Pierce. A truly worthy cause.
“Sure, they’re a matched pair. They’d probably like to go together. Did you want anything else or is this it?”
“Just these two.” I didn’t have the heart to let her in on my plans. Give one to my grandmother and then take the other back to my place. Whichever of the sisters ended up in my care would die. More than likely my grandmother’s would too. Black thumbs running in the family and all.
“That will be twenty-one seventy-eight,” Lily said after hitting a bunch of buttons on her register.
Holy shit? How did these green leaves cost $21?
“No problem,” I said trying hard not to choke on the words. I scanned my debit card and crossed my fingers the charge went through without an issue.
“Do you want a carrying case for them for your car?” Lily asked, ripping off the receipt from the register and passing it over to my waiting hand.
I shook my head no. “No, this is enough.” Who knew how much a carrier for plants cost?
She watched me leave the nursery, but I stopped right outside the door and turned back. “I’ll stop by later with that new sign. Something to make an impact with the Kensingtons.”
She shook her head with a smile. “Sure.”
It was nice to have another person in town who I could still con into attending protests with me. The women at the bakery were getting picky in their old age. It was probably because they’d attached themselves to burly hot men who liked to boss them around. Whereas I was still free and able to make my own decisions.
The drive to Nanna’s nursing home was quick, just on the outskirts of Pelican Bay. It was one of the last buildings before the countryside that separated Pelican Bay from our neighboring town Clearwater.
The nursing home was enormous—one of those old stately places they filled with people. Except for the sign out front naming the place Roses and Retirement, you wouldn’t know behind the walls lived old people enjoying a life of luxury. It looked like it belonged to an old rich tycoon. Probably one of Pierce’s eccentric old relatives. I pulled into one of the parking spots right as my phone rang.
“Hey, Mom,” I said grabbing it from my purse and stopping with my driver-side door open ready to get out and see Nanna. “I just got to Nanna’s place. Can I call you back?”
“No,” my mother said, sounding dismayed, and then she sniffled. “Katy, I need to tell you. The home called.”
Panic seized my heart and my free hand gripped the steering wheel hard as I waited for her next words.
They didn’t come quickly enough. “Mom, did she fall again?”
As a family, we’d forced Nanna to move into this home five years ago after she fell in her living room one Sunday afternoon. Pierce had found her. He stopped by—probably to collect the rent check—and rescued my Nanna before she lay there too long. My mom said he saved her life, but I wasn’t willing to give him too much credit.
She broke her hip and couldn’t handle another bone injury at her age.
“No, honey,” Mom said and blew her nose loudly into the phone. “Nanna died this morning.”
Her words crashed over me like a frigid ocean wave. It was as if the water froze each of the blood cells cycling through my veins and they exploded, killing me along with the news.
I shook my head and swallowed hard, thinking I misheard. “What?”
Everything around me slowed and became too much. The sun was too sunny, and the dead leaves blowing across Nanna’s nursing home yard were too leafy. The senses and my mother’s words were battling for space inside my brain, and I couldn’t take any of it in to process.
My gaze shifted to the home, the long two-story place with a large front porch that held seven different rocking chairs. Each of them was empty at the present time, but it took little effort to picture them filled with white-haired friends of my grandmother’s just last week.
