“Please, don’t sell it to anyone else,” Ivy begged.
There was laughter on the other line. “Honey, I won’t,” Adeline assured. “That place is yours. I know it will be. Make it happen.”
Ivy felt as though no one had believed in her as much in her life.
Ivy made a list of the people she could reach out to for help. Number one, of course, was the bank, but without Daniel's willingness to co-sign, she was sure she didn’t have a chance. Number two was Celia, her environmental journalist sister in Washington, DC. But Celia and Ivy had never gotten along so well. The strain in their relationship went back to the very beginning. More than that, Ivy wasn’t entirely sure that Celia was any better off than she was, financially speaking. She was pretty sure Celia had a baby and a husband, a baby not much older than Lily. It wasn’t like the world of environmental journalism was seeping with extra cash.
Plus, Ivy felt too nervous to call her sister up and explain everything on her mind. They’d never been sisters in this way. They’d never shared their hearts.
Juliet was next up. But as far as Ivy knew, Julia lived in Manhattan somewhere and studied fashion. Maybe Juliet was working for and with people with money, but that didn’t mean she had it. Wren was still in high school, preparing to leave the nest as soon as she could.
Who else was there?
The answer landed in Ivy’s lap a moment later.
There was always James Harper. Maybe he was her only hope.
It wasn’t till Thanksgiving that Ivy got up the nerve to ask her father about the loan. By then, Daniel had more or less assumed she’d forgotten about her little flower scheme, so much so that he often teased her about it, as though it were a funny thing from their past. But Ivy was waiting and watching. She often practiced talking to her father about the loan in her head and pictured herself highlighting a multiyear business plan. Eventually, she sat down at the computer at the Bluebell Cove Inn and researched how to put one together—something that would impress a man who’d run his own inn for the majority of his life.
She wouldn’t bring up the fact that he was often in over his head with his own business, and she had to tackle the stacks of bills, the calls for extra maintenance, and so on.
And maybe this was one of the best reasons to own the flower shop, she reasoned. Her father had begun to resent her just as much as she’d begun to resent him. Working too closely with a man of her father’s emotional disposition was never easy.
Maybe if she stepped away from the inn, she and her father could build a better and more loving relationship. Perhaps they could look at each other and finally give one another the truth.
On Thanksgiving morning, Wren and Ivy worked like crazy in the kitchen of the house where they’d grown up, cooking the turkey and the stuffing and the green bean casserole, baking four different types of pie. Lily was awake, propped up in her kitchen chair, smiling and laughing at everything they did. Ivy hated that her daughter was only seeing women working diligently to serve their men. Meanwhile, the men were in the living room, watching football and talking about having their first beer.
Under her breath, as she stirred the stuffing, Ivy outlined her plan of attack to Wren. It surprised her to confess this to her sister, who seemed so much younger and so silly at heart. But Wren’s face turned stone-cold serious. “You have to do something. This is your dream.” She said it as though she’d never assumed Ivy had a dream.
Ivy began to understand how everyone had seen her over the years, as if she were willing to be batted around by her husband and father. Like she had nothing to offer.
It wasn’t true, she knew. She hadn’t known how to tap into this side of her heart.
“Dad won’t be nice about it,” Wren pointed out.
“Understatement of the century,” Ivy said.
Thanksgiving went on as it always did: with heaping plates and James Harper’s stories and the television always on, showing one game after another. Ivy kept tabs on her father’s moods, wondering if there would be a point later when she found it safe to broach the subject of the loan for the flower shop.
After another helping of pie, Daniel passed out on the sofa, snoring gently. Wren carried empty plates into the kitchen to wash up and bowed her head low to Ivy to indicate it was now or never. Ivy’s tongue felt thick. She sipped her water and willed herself forward.
“Dad?” she stammered, with more energy than she’d planned for. “Dad, I want to ask you something.”
Her father flinched away from the television and gave her a look like he didn’t recognize her. She wondered if she looked older to him. All the sleepless nights with Lily had probably taken a toll on her face. Maybe her aging reminded him that he was getting older too.
“What’s going on, sweetie?” he asked, surprising her with the term of endearment.
Ivy told herself not to burst into tears. If only my mother were still alive, she thought. If only another woman were here, Celia or Juliet, to help her.
Wren was too young for this kind of pressure. Ivy took a breath.
“I have a business plan I’d like to propose to you,” she said, raising her chin.
Her father lifted his eyebrows into a funny smile. “Aren’t we professional-sounding on Thanksgiving?”
Ivy set her hands on the table and forced herself to say everything she’d practiced in her head: the flower shop, Adeline’s offer, her belief that she could bring in more capital if she ran her own business, her urgent belief that she had to go after her dream, that it was now or never. Throughout, her father listened with his head tilted. He said nothing, asked no questions.
But when Ivy slid the printed-out business plan across the table, reversing it so that he could read it first thing, James Harper burst into laughter. The brash and arrogant guffaw woke Daniel up immediately. Daniel bumbled, scratching his beard and peering back at the table.
