Stephanie Bond - Baby, I'm Yours

Just the mention of Emory made Shelby’s chest tighten. She missed him so much at times, she thought she’d never bear it. “He’s fine, ma’am. Still in Afghanistan.”

Today especially, he was weighing on her mind, as well as their last conversation, which had ended in an argument. Nothing new there—he believed her father depended on her too much. And her father felt as if Emory wanted her to turn her back on her only family. She’d woken up this morning feeling blue, but conceded that some of it could be the weather. The sky was as heavy as her heart.

“Shelby,” said Thelma from the next checkout aisle, “my register is acting up.”

“I’ll be right there,” Shelby said, still waiting for Mrs. Cafferty to find her coupons.

“Shelby to produce, Shelby to produce…quickly.”

She took a deep breath and counted to five. It wasn’t everyone else’s fault she was in a bad mood today.

Betsy, one of their best part-time employees, parked a row of baskarts and walked over. “I got this,” she offered with a wink, gesturing to Mrs. Cafferty’s order.

Shelby gave her a grateful look. “Thank you.”

She said goodbye to Mrs. Cafferty, then stepped over to inspect Thelma’s register, which didn’t want to open at the end of the sale. The registers, like everything else in the grocery, needed to be replaced or updated.

“It’s a trick,” she said, then smacked the old machine on the side with her hand. The register drawer popped open and Shelby couldn’t help but notice its scant contents.

Revenues were sliding more every month, but she couldn’t get her father to accept the fact that the business he’d built and worked from the ground up was stumbling. Since her mother’s passing, the market had become his life and, consequently, her life. He expected her to stay in Sweetness and help with the business that would pass to her someday. If she broached the subject of the financials, he became agitated and asked her to think about what would happen if they closed the grocery—where would people buy food? Not everyone had the ability or could afford to leave the mountain to shop in other towns.

The fact that her father considered his business a service to the community showed just how big his heart was. She knew for a fact that he sold some staples for exactly what he paid for them to keep from passing rising cost on to his customers. And countless times she’d seen him load up a store van with food baskets and deliver them to needy families. He expected her to carry on the family tradition. She loved him so much, she couldn’t bear to disappoint him.

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