“I feel like I invented them,” Ivy said, rolling her eyes into a smile.
Elliot laughed and gestured again with his dessert until she took a bite and closed her eyes. The cream was sensational, fragrant, the exact right texture, and the caramel was divine, sweet but not too sweet, the sort of thing her mother used to make on the stovetop when they were girls. Ivy used to like to watch the caramel bubble and thicken under her mother’s spoon.
It was the kind of dessert that transported Ivy through time.
When she opened her eyes again, she found Elliot beaming down at her. “Did I lose you there for a second?”
Ivy laughed despite herself. “You shouldn’t have shared it. I want to inhale the rest.”
“They have more,” he told her. “We can buy all of them!”
Ivy wanted to make a joke about them “going right to her hips” now that she was forty, but she kept it to herself.
“How is everything?” Elliot asked. “I haven’t seen you since the opening party.”
Ivy thought again of the bills, the wrinkly flowers that she ended up throwing away because she’d ordered too many for the limited number of bouquets.
“Everything’s great,” she said. “Busy.”
Elliot furrowed his brow. “You know, I was working at a house not far from your flower shop the other day. I walked by to see if you were there, but it was closed up.”
“Oh! Yeah. Maybe I had an appointment or something,” Ivy lied. “That’s a perk of owning my own business. I can come and go whenever!” But he knew what that was like. He was a carpenter, for goodness’ sake.
“I couldn’t help but notice that it needs some repairs,” he said. “The roof and the door and maybe the window as well. You should have told me!”
Ivy was shocked at the very idea of getting in greater debt with the likes of Elliot Rhodes—the only man her body had responded to in decades. Not that he liked her back.
“Oh, I don’t think it’s so bad,” she said, suddenly anxious. She hated the way he was looking at her, as though he wanted to take care of her. She didn’t need it.
“Well, maybe we can work something out,” he continued. “My sister’s getting married next year, and she’s trying to keep costs lower than low. It’s her second wedding, and she doesn’t want to get carried away. My suggestion? I do a little bit of handiwork for you, and you do the flowers at my sister’s wedding.”
Ivy filled her lungs with air and tried to come up with an excuse to get out of this, to reject his friendly assistance, to refute yet another offer of help. But before she could, her phone rang. She didn’t recognize the number, but she answered it anyway, grateful to get away from Elliot’s prying eyes.
“Mrs. Elbert?”
Ivy hated hearing her husband’s last name. But more than that, she hated how formal the man’s voice was. She knew something was off.
“This is she.”
“Mrs. Elbert, my name is Officer Baxter. I have your son, Tyler, here at the police station in downtown Bluebell,” he said. “I need you to come down immediately and pick him up.”
Ivy closed her eyes. Oh, Tyler. What had he gotten himself into?
Chapter Six
October 2007
Five months old and with chunky cheeks, baby Lily was the only person in the world Ivy ever wanted to see. She was smitten with her baby and generally devastated by the rest of the world. All night after Daniel returned from fishing, he watched television and ate the fish she cooked for him and hardly asked her a thing about her day. When she went to the Bluebell Cove Autumn Festival, she carried her baby around happily, grateful not to be at home, listening to the sports channel and thinking about all the dreams she hadn’t fulfilled for herself.
It was at the Autumn Festival that she ran into the older woman who owned the flower shop again. She wore a regal black coat and an ornate felt hat and some bright red lipstick, and she parted the crowd to get over to Ivy and Lily and demand why they hadn’t come back to the flower shop since they’d met in July.
Ivy couldn’t possibly tell Adeline the truth—that she wanted the flower shop too badly to return. She knew she could never scrape together enough pennies to buy it. And besides, did she really have the time for all that?
Adeline seemed to sense this in her face. She cupped Ivy’s hand and said, “Sit with me for a while. Come.” Adeline led Ivy over to the bonfire, where they sipped mulled wine as Lily slept beautifully in her stroller.
“Isn’t it funny that you gave her the name for a flower?” Adeline said. “Isn’t that something like a sign? And your name! Ivy! It fits. Better than Adeline ever did.”
Ivy laughed gently. “I told you.”
