“I don’t know if my husband would go for it,” Ivy said finally, letting her eyes flutter to the ground.
“Ah, the husband conundrum,” the older woman said sadly.
Ivy felt an apology on her tongue. How could she be so tactless? This woman had lost her husband years and years ago. She likely ached for the life they’d built together.
“I was devastated when he died,” the older woman said. “I had to banish all ideas of what we were going to do together and make up my own story. My story was about this flower shop! I wonder what yours would be, if you didn’t have to ask someone’s permission to do what you wanted?”
Ivy was caught off guard so much that she took a step back and nearly dropped her bouquet.
“Forgive me, honey,” the older woman said, her eyes spitting light. “I’m at the end of my time in Bluebell Cove, which means I’m saying a lot of what’s on my mind. I don’t know if it’s always best.”
Ivy told her it was all right, of course. She placed the bouquet on the stroller and wheeled sleeping Lily out onto the sidewalk, where she waved goodbye to the older woman and hurried back to her side of town. All the way home, tears threatened to spill from her eyes. She had no idea where they’d come from, nor how to get rid of them. But when she walked into her front door and heard Daniel’s sports channel, and smelled Daniel’s fishy smell, and realized that it was up to her to make dinner, tend to the baby, and keep their house afloat forever, she pushed all thoughts of the flower shop to the side. It couldn’t be her dream. She knew that.
Chapter Five
Present Day
It was October, nearly a month after the grand opening of the Bluebell Cove Eco-Lodge. By all accounts, the eco-lodge was a complete success, bringing in far more money and press than the Bluebell Cove Inn had during the final years before Ivy and her father had closed its doors. From her kitchen most evenings, Ivy watched with a mug of tea as numerous guests chased autumnal colors across the Northeast sojourned on the back porch, bundled up as they shared glasses of wine and talked about the hikes they’d done that day and the fine seafood they’d eaten. Ivy couldn’t remember the porch looking so alive, so bustling.
A couple of days before the Bluebell Cove Autumn Festival, Ivy picked her way across the lawn and stepped into the front lobby of the eco-lodge to find Lily at the front desk, frowning at the computer as she finished her shift for the day. Ivy felt a stab of regret, one that confused her. There at the counter, Lily looked almost exactly as Ivy had twenty years ago, working diligently at her family’s inn, doing her part. How many hours had she spent at that desk? How many was she cursing Lily to spend?
But she can’t go, Ivy thought, imagining Lily hours if not states away. She couldn’t take it.
“Oh hey, Mom!” Lily offered Ivy a half-hearted smile and turned away from the computer.
“Hey, honey.” Ivy cleared the distance between them and propped her arms on the counter. Through the back window, she could see that several of the guests were gathered around a bonfire near the beach. Above them hung a pearlescent moon.
“I was going to text you,” Lily said. “Aunt Celia and Landon are at the beach and invited us to hang out. I think that the carpenter might be coming, too. Elliot Rhodes? You up for it?”
Ivy hesitated. It had been a week or two since she’d spent any time with Celia, as she’d burrowed her head into flower shop dealings and felt a strange ache at all that Celia had accomplished. But she’d hardly seen Lily either, although Lily was living under her roof. Ivy had to wake up early to work at the flower shop, and Lily usually didn’t start work at the inn till midday. They were always missing each other.
The fact that Elliot was coming shouldn’t get into her head, either. But it did.
“I was hoping you and I could watch that movie we’ve been talking about,” Ivy said, although she couldn’t for the life of her recall what the film was called.
“That one with Zendaya?” Lily asked. She pronounced the actress’s name entirely differently from what Ivy had in her head.
“Maybe?” Ivy said. “I mean, yes! I think that’s it.” She forced a smile that felt false.
Lily rubbed her temples. “Honestly, it’s been crazy today. I really want to unwind at the beach with everyone else. We had a full house, people checking in left and right for the Autumn Festival this weekend. Maybe we can watch the movie next week? After the festival.”
Ivy tried not to let her disappointment show on her face.
“Are you going to make it to the festival?” Lily asked. “I think Aunt Celia said Aunt Juliet will be back in town, albeit briefly. And Aunt Wren’s curious about going. They’re all nostalgic about the old times, I guess. I told them maybe you don’t care since you’ve been to a thousand Autumn Festivals.”
Ivy felt it like a gash in her heart. “I’m going to be there,” she said pointedly. “I’ve never missed a festival.” This was true, in fact, especially during the most prosperous years of the flower shop, when she’d provided thousands upon thousands of flowers for numerous autumn parade floats, food carts, and displays. A few years back, the festival had abruptly stopped ordering flowers from Ivy’s shop. She’d learned that they’d gotten an incredible deal on plastic flowers that looked “just like the real thing,” and that they’d been able to cut down on costs for the foreseeable future as a result. It had made her stomach hurt.
This was nothing she would share with Lily, of course. It felt too private.
That night, propped up on the pillows of her bed, Ivy listened to the guests at the eco-lodge next door as they celebrated a dark and magical night around the bonfire. She could hear Lily’s laugh, rising above the others. She wondered if Celia ever looked at Lily and thought, Why aren’t you anything like your mother? You’re so much better!
The morning of the festival, Ivy went to the flower shop at five to fulfill a few different birthday-related floral arrangements. With the radio on and a big mug of coffee on the counter, she allowed her mind and her heartaches to drift away as she snipped and tied and brought to life the flowers she’d selected for each. The men buying them knew very little about flowers and usually threw up their hands and said, “Make it look good! You know what she likes.”
After she finished the bouquets, Ivy went into the office and tried and failed to avoid the massive pile-up of bills on the left-hand side of the desk. When Ivy had neglected her email-based bills, the companies she owed money to had begun to send her paper letters, which yanked her back to memories of the Bluebell Cove Inn and all the letters she’d had to open for her father. When she glanced in the mirror, she realized that she wore the same expression her father used to have as the expenses for the inn rose and rose, and their bank accounts grew thinner and thinner. Apparently, she looked more like James Harper than she’d ever thought.
Ivy played a tiny game with herself. How much longer could she keep the flower shop open? She was bringing in about 50 percent less revenue than she had during her prosperous days, but the rent had gone up by almost 80 percent. She wasn’t a math wiz, like Elliot Rhodes’s ex-wife and high school sweetheart, but even she knew those numbers didn’t add up.
Ivy put her forehead on the desk and felt her head echo with the only name she had for herself: Loser.
