Feelings can wait. They usually do.
But as I walk, I catch myself whispering under my breath.
“Goddamn it, Lo.”
Because even after all this time, even after all my silence, even after years of pretending I was content with scraps, her name still tastes of hope and ruin on my tongue.
I walk the length of Main, boots thudding against cracked pavement, the chill of the coming of winter already seeping through the soles. Festival crews are everywhere, stringing bunting and re-anchoring poles knocked loose in yesterday’s chaos.
Someone waves. I nod back, but I don’t slow down.
Work first.
Always work first.
The north floral arch is sagging hard to the left, the base sunk half an inch into soft ground. Whoever anchored it didn’t bother to check for last week’s irrigation overflow. Idiots.
It’s ridiculous that Winterfest uses floral arches, anyway. More than likely, it’s just an excuse for the flower shop to get rid of their inventory before the cold smashes into us.
The floral shop where Lo used to work.
The floral shop I passed just so I could stand in the tinted window and watch her like a creep.
I set my coffee on a folding chair and crouch to run my hands along the support struts. Press my thumb into the wood, feeling it bend and complain under the metal ties. Whisper to it under my breath.
“Easy, girl. I got you.”
“She always was a stubborn one.”
I glance up.
My grandfather, Ezra, is standing on the other side of the arch, leaning on his walking stick, hat pulled low against the sun.
His eyes are clear today. Good. Some mornings, the fog takes him. But not today.
“Morning, Pops,” I say.
“Morning.” He taps the wood with his stick, gentle. “Maple. From the old Holloway orchard, if I’m not mistaken.”
I nod, running my thumb along a knot near the base. “Yeah. You can tell by the grain. Tight curl, pale core.”
Pops hums low in his throat, a sound I’ve heard my whole life. Approval without words. He taught me to read wood the way other kids learned to read bedtime stories. Taught me to plane it smooth, taught me to listen for the difference between green sap snap and old dry split.
When I was six, he put a whittling knife in my hand and said, “Don’t cut toward your thumb. Don’t cut toward your knee. The rest is learning.”
When I was twelve and my parents’ car went off the south ridge, he didn’t say much. Just handed me sandpaper and a block of oak and kept my hands busy until the funeral was over.
And when I was seventeen and came home smelling of peaches and heartache, he didn’t ask questions. Just poured me coffee, nodded once, and said, “Some things take time, boy. But don’t leave ’em so long they rot.”
I breathe deep, letting the maple’s faint sweetness ground me.
“You working today?” I ask.
He snorts. “Workin’? Hell no. Supervisin’? Always.”
He gestures with his cane toward the festival prep madness as the stallholders try to get everything together for day three of this Winterfest madness.
I finish tightening the last bolt on the floral arch and stand up slow, wiping sweat off my forehead with the hem of my shirt. The scent of pine sap and iron filings clings to my skin. Morning’s grown thick already.
