Arlene James - Love in Bloom

“Frogs?”

“Uh, to hold pins. They’re not real frogs.” She seemed embarrassed. “They don’t even look like real frogs.” She shrugged and bowed her head. “That’s just what we call them.”

Tate swallowed a chuckle and shifted his weight from one booted foot to another, finding her shyness kind of cute. “I figured you’d order supplies.”

“Well, yes, I have ordered some things, but why order what I already have? Especially when I didn’t have to pay for these things. They were gifts from my former employer and coworkers at the flower shop in Boston. Going-away gifts. ‘Success gifts,’ they called them.”

The lady knew how to pinch a penny. “Okay, I get it now. So which of these suitcases goes upstairs?”

“Just the big one.”

“All right. Let’s get these others inside, then I’ll take that one upstairs.”

They rolled the other suitcases into the shop. Lily positioned them behind the work area wall while Tate went out to remove the boxes from the backseat of the truck. Isabella woke as he worked, rubbed her eyes with both fists and pronounced herself in need of a potty.

“Go inside there,” Tate instructed. “There’s a bathroom in back.” He heard her asking Lily, and the two of them went off to find “the ladies’ room,” as Lily called it. Tate knew that it was a modest little necessary tucked into a corner.

“That’s going to need some attention,” Lily muttered upon their return.

By that he assumed she meant decoration, which was her department. He nodded to the boxes. “Any of these go upstairs?”

She pointed out only two of the smaller ones.

“All right. Then if you’ll each tote one, I’ll take the big suitcase, and we’ll go up.”

Nodding, Lily took the larger of the two boxes and stood by the door while Isabella easily carried her box and her father followed. Lily glanced around once more, shut off the lights and stepped outside to close the door and lock up before moving to the door that led to the apartment upstairs. Lily began searching for the appropriate key.

“Uh, I’m pretty sure that door’s not locked,” Tate told her.

She pushed her glasses up on her nose and looked at him as if he’d suddenly grown a second head. “What do you mean?”

“Well, the workmen were coming and going, and no one could say exactly when the bed you ordered would be delivered. It was just easier to leave it open.”

Her jaw dropped. “Even after the bed came?”

“Sure. I didn’t see the point in...” She found the light switch and flipped it on, illuminating the narrow, enclosed staircase. “Why lock the door on an empty apartment?” he asked as she slipped inside and started climbing the stairs. Tate stepped up and blocked the door open with his shoulder, calling after her, “No one locks their doors around here, not to their houses.” She ignored him and kept climbing.

Tate indicated with a nod that Isabella should go next. Shrugging, she started up after Lily, who quickly reached the small landing at the top and let herself into the apartment. A light came on in the small foyer. Isabella followed. Tate came last into the dark but spacious living and dining area.

“What is this place?” Isabella asked.

“This is my home,” Lily told her, coming out of the dark hallway behind her. Lily quickly moved into the small kitchen and switched on a light there. “Not many overhead lights in here. I’ll need to buy some lamps.”

“You’re going to live in town?” Isabella asked doubtfully.

“Right above my shop,” Lily confirmed, “in the very heart of Main Street.”

“We live in the country. Right, Dad?”

“Yep.”

“On the ranch. Right, Dad?”

“Right.”

“Grandpa, though, he calls it the farm. Don’t he, Daddy?”

“That’s because he’s in charge of the farming end of things.”

“And Daddy, he does the horses and the cows and all the animal stuff. And he helps with the farm, too, and sometimes the tractor stuff. And he and Grandpa do the oil lease stuff together.”

“You talk too much,” he told her, nudging her with the suitcase. He looked to Lily and asked, “So where do you want these?”

She took the box from Isabella, saying, “I’ll put this in the bathroom. You can just leave that there, though.”

Tate nodded. “If you didn’t notice, there’s a coat closet here.”

“That’s convenient.”

“And there’s a walk-in closet in the front bedroom. I had them set up the bed in there. The back room is really small, but you could put a twin bed in there for company.”

She looked around the empty living area and said, “I think I’ll concentrate on a couch first.”

Tate chuckled. “Yeah, or a chair at least.”

She smiled and nodded. “I understood there was a washer and dryer.”

“That closet in the kitchen,” he said. “It’s one of those stacked jobs with the dryer on top.”

“That’s fine.”

“Okay, well...”

Isabella pointed at the trio of bare windows overlooking the vacant, softly lit street. Tilting her curly head, she asked, “Who’s that?”

Tate and Lily both moved toward the window, staring at the wildly waving figure in the window of the building across the street.

“Oh, that,” Tate said with a grin. “That’s Miss Ann Mars. You know her.”

“Sure. Ever’body knows Miss Mars. She’s had her shop in Bygones forever.”

“I guess you didn’t know that she lives downtown above her shop, too.”

“This ’N’ That,” Lily read the sign on the awning across the street. “What sort of shop is it?”

“Um, sundries,” Tate answered. “You know, needles and pins, candles, handkerchiefs, coin purses, hand mirrors, little stuff. That’s in the front. Out back, now that’s—how do I put this?—mostly junk, I guess.”

Lily raised her eyebrows. Her glasses slid down her nose, so she pushed them back up. Tate fought the urge to smile for some reason. Clearing his throat, he turned away from the window at the same time Miss Mars did.

“Miss Ann is on the committee,” he told Lily, pulling a card from his shirt pocket. “If you need something and you can’t reach me, you can always tell Miss Mars.” He pressed the card into Lily’s hand and started for the door.

“I’ll walk you down,” Lily said. “I want to take another look at the shop.”

Shrugging, he turned a sleepy-eyed Isabella toward the stairs. He ushered his daughter out onto the landing then slipped past her and down a few steps before turning and gathering her into his arms. She laid her precious red head on his shoulders. Laying his cheek against those bright curls, he thought of his late wife, Eve, and the old familiar ache of loss filled him. If their daughter could have known Eve for even a little while, she’d give up her matchmaking ways, but the imp had never known her mother.

After carrying his daughter down the stairs, he nodded at Ann Mars, who scampered across the street in her bedroom slippers and housedress, the coil of her long white hair sliding to and fro atop her head. The tiny, bent old woman had to be eighty if she was a day, and as far as Tate knew, she had never married. If she had family, he was unaware of them. Stepping up onto the curb, she crossed the sidewalk to greet Lily.

Tate made the introduction. “Miss Mars, Lily Farnsworth. Lily, Miss Ann Mars, SOS Committee member and your neighbor.”

“So happy to meet you!” Miss Mars exclaimed, bending far backward to get a good look at the newcomer. “You’re aptly named for a florist.”

Lily smiled and pushed her glasses up. “I guess I am, at that.”

Miss Mars stuck her nose to the window of Lily’s shop, asking, “What are in those big boxes in there?”