Chapter 34
LILY
The email comes while I'm elbow-deep in a bucket of tulips that Erin ordered too many of, which is how I've learned March works in a flower shop.
Nobody tells you that March is chaos. Nobody warns you that people lose their minds over spring arrangements and early Easter orders and the desperate need to put something alive and colorful in their homes after months of gray.
Now I'm sorting stems by height because Erin is particular about her window display, and getting it wrong means a very polite lecture that's somehow worse than getting yelled at.
My phone buzzes on the counter. I almost don't look because my hands are wet, there's pollen on my forearms, and I've got maybe forty minutes before Erin comes back from her supplier run and expects this bucket sorted and ready.
But my eyes drift to the screen anyway, the way they always do, and I see the word Chicago sitting there like it's been waiting for me.
Pritzker School of Medicine at the University of Chicago.
I wipe my hands on my apron and pick up the phone.
Dear Ms. Moreland, We are pleased to inform you...
I read the first line, then I set my phone face-down on the counter and stand very still.
There's an instant rush in my ears, and I’m almost lightheaded as I process what's happened. I take a breath. Then another. My hands are shaking slightly as I pick up the phone again and make myself read the whole thing.
Early acceptance. Full track. Fall start. Chicago said yes.
I stand there in the middle of the shop and try to feel what I'm supposed to feel. Joy. Relief. Validation. All the emotions that belong to a moment like this, the moment you've been working toward for years, the moment that proves every late night and every sacrifice and every choice was worth it.
And I do feel those things. I really do. But underneath them, threaded through like a dark vein in marble, is something else entirely.
Chicago is very far away. I think about the other applications still pending. Johns Hopkins and Stanford haven't responded yet, which at this point probably means no. But Chicago said yes. Chicago is real. Chicago is happening.
I also applied to Brown, one random night when the thought of leaving became too real. It was a last moment application, and I haven't told anyone.
Brown is less than an hour from Harbor Hill, close enough that I could commute, close enough that leaving wouldn't really be leaving. It's a school I never considered because of my parents' expectations and my need to feel loved. Wanted.
But I've been wondering lately, in the quiet hours when I can't sleep, whether choosing Brown would be choosing something for myself or choosing something out of fear. Whether staying close is wisdom or cowardice. Whether I'm even capable of knowing the difference anymore.
The bell above the door chimes and Erin comes in carrying a flat of peonies, her cheeks pink from the cold, her hair escaping its braid again.
"How are the tulips?" she asks, setting the flat down on the back counter.
I should say something. I should tell her. But my mouth isn't cooperating with my brain, and instead I just pick up my phone and hold it out to her.
Erin sets the peonies down and takes the phone from me and reads the screen, and I watch her face go through it.
Understanding first, then joy, then a flicker of something else.
Loss, maybe. Or fear. She catches it and smooths it over before she thinks I can see it, but I do.
I've gotten good at reading the people I love. Too good, maybe.
"Lily." Her eyes are bright when she raises her head. "You got in."
I try to smile. It comes out sadder than I mean it to.
"I got in."
She comes around the counter and pulls me into a hug. She smells like soil and peonies and the lavender hand cream she uses lately, and I press my face into her shoulder and feel my eyes start to burn.
I blink fast. I'm not going to cry over good news. Good news is supposed to feel like a door opening, not like standing in a doorway and looking back at everything you're about to leave behind.
"I'm so proud of you," Erin says into my hair. "Rome is going to lose his mind."
Rome does indeed lose his mind. I call him from the back of the shop, sitting on an overturned crate next to the extra vases. He goes quiet for a few seconds and I press the phone hard against my ear because I need to keep whatever comes next close to me.
"I had no doubt, Lil." His voice is thick in a way I've only heard a handful of times, and my heart breaks a little. "I knew they'd see it."
"Rome…"
"We're celebrating tonight," he says, and I hear him shifting into planning mode, the version of my brother who solves problems by organizing them into submission. "All of us. I'll make the reservation."
"You don't have to do that."
"I'm making the reservation, Lily."
He makes the reservation. And before I know it, the calls start coming.
Poppy screams into the phone loud enough that Erin hears it from across the shop and chuckles, shaking her head.
Ruth finds out through the town's information network, which operates faster than any cell tower, and by noon she's sent over a plate of cookies with a note that says Doctor Lily.
Has a ring to it. Don't forget us little people.
Everyone is happy. Everyone says the right things. Proud. Excited. You deserve this. We always knew.
The words stack up around me like a wall of good intentions, and I stand inside them and smile and thank everyone and feel the hollow center of it all expand with each congratulation.
I text Cal.
Me
I got into Chicago.
Three dots appear. Disappear. Appear again. The pause stretches long enough that I feel it in my throat, a tightness that has nothing to do with joy.
Callahan
I knew you would.
I am happy for you.
And very proud.
Every word is careful and measured and right. Every single one slices at my heart like a paper cut, small and precise and more painful than it should be.
I stare at my phone for a long time, waiting for something else. The thing he's not saying. The thing I can feel pressing against the edges of every interaction we've had for weeks, ever since I started getting interview invitations and we both realized this was actually going to happen.
Nothing else comes. I put my phone in my pocket and go back to the tulips.
The shop is quiet by four. Erin has flipped the sign and is doing her end-of-day inventory, her pen moving across the page in her neat handwriting.
I'm sweeping the floor even though I already swept it ten minutes ago, but I need something to do with my hands, something to keep my body occupied while my mind runs circles around itself.
"Can I tell you something?" Erin says it without looking up.
"Always."
She sets her pen down and turns on her stool to face me, and I stop sweeping because there's something in her expression I haven't seen before, a vulnerability she usually keeps tucked away behind her competence and her calm.
"I'm thinking about selling the shop." Somewhere outside, a car passes. Inside, neither of us moves.
"Selling it?" I repeat, because I'm not sure I heard her right.
"Not tomorrow. Not next month. But I've been thinking about it for a while." She folds her hands in her lap, organizing her thoughts, and I lean the broom against the wall and sit on the stool across from her because this feels like a sitting-down conversation.
"I want to write, Lily. Full time." She pauses. "I've been doing it on the side for years now. Mornings before the shop opens, nights after it closes. And I love it in a way I haven't loved anything since I first put my hands in soil and understood what I was supposed to do with my life."
Her fingers twist in her lap.
"Rome wants me to do it now. He said he'd cover the gap if I needed him to, that he'd make it work, that he wants me to have the time to actually try." Her eyes are full of conflict when she raises her head. "He wants to invest in my dream, Lily. And it terrifies me."
"Erin."
"I know." She exhales, long and deep.
“It terrifies me because it means closing a business I built with my own hands.
Relying on your brother down the line for something that might not work.
A shop has customers and hours and structure.
Writing has none of that. It's just me and a blank page and no guarantee that anything I put on it is worth reading. "
I watch her face, the way she's holding herself together, and I recognize that particular brand of fear. The fear of wanting something so badly that the possibility of not getting it feels like it might break you.
"Tell me the part that isn't about fear," I say quietly.
When she speaks again, her voice is more certain.
"The part that isn't about fear is that I can see it.
The book. The life. I can see mornings at my desk with coffee, and Rome downstairs working on his projects, and the light coming through the window the way it does in this town, that particular early light, and I'm writing.
I'm actually doing the thing I keep telling myself I'll do someday. "
Her eyes are full now, and she presses her lips together.
"Someday is a coward's calendar, Lily. I don't want to be on it anymore."
I reach over and take her hand. Her fingers are cold from handling inventory, slightly rough from years of working with stems and soil.
"Can I say something about my brother?"
"Please."
"Rome is a man who shows love by building things.
" I squeeze her fingers. "He builds you.
He would build you a city if you let him.
When he says he wants to make this possible for you, he's not offering charity.
He's doing the thing he does best. He's making room for your dream because that's how Rome loves. "
I hold her gaze. "Let him invest in you, Erin. Let him make you happy. Let him help your dreams come true. That's the way he loves best, and letting him do it is the way you show him that you love him back.”
Erin wipes her eyes with the back of her hand.