20. Chapter 20
Maya
***
The notice arrives on a Wednesday morning.
Not slipped through the mail slot in the dark hours this time.
Delivered properly, by hand, a crisp white envelope bearing the return address of a legal firm I don't recognize, addressed to the current occupant of fourteen Linden Rise.
I open it at the counter with my stem cutter still in my hand and read it once, standing up, the way you read things you suspect are going to require you to stay on your feet.
The building at fourteen Linden Rise has a new landlord of record.
Ransome Group.
I set the envelope on the counter.
I set the stem cutter beside it.
I stand very still for a moment in the middle of Finch and Fern, in the shop that smells like everything my family built and everything I have built since.
I think about a council chamber and a corridor, a phone call, a loose strand of hair tucked behind my ear, a kiss that felt like an answer.
And I think about the feeling of someone who has just understood that the ground they were standing on was not where they thought it was.
Lily arrives at eight and takes one look at my face and doesn't say anything, which is the kindest thing she could do. I hand her the notice. I watch her read it, then see her expression do the same thing mine did, and I say, before she can:
"I know."
"Maya..."
"I know, Lily."
I take the notice back. I fold it along its original crease.
I put it in my apron pocket and I go back to work because the flowers don't wait, because I need my hands busy while I think, and because the alternative is standing in the middle of this shop feeling something I am not ready to feel in front of anyone.
I work through the morning.
I think about every conversation. Every vendor call and planning meeting and the hours at the lamplit study. Every time he said we and meant it. Every time I believed him.
I think about the rough sketch on the worktable and the word florist in pencil at the center of a rectangle.
I think about his fingers sliding along my cheek to my jaw, the lightest possible pressure tilting my chin up, and the kiss that felt like everything.
And I think about the fact that while all of that was happening, while I was falling in love with him, that same man had quietly, without asking, without telling, without once giving me the choice, become my landlord.
And I wonder, for the first time, whether any of it was real.
Whether the roses and the sketches and the I love you were simply the most effective way to keep me cooperative while he secured the building he wanted all along.
I cross Main Street at eleven-thirty.
***
The Conservatory's temporary site office is two blocks from the shop, a converted ground floor space that Briggs has been using for the planning files, and Sawyer is there when I arrive, blueprints spread across the folding table, Grace on the phone behind him.
He looks up when I open the door and something moves immediately in his expression, the attentiveness that means he has already read the room and is already preparing for what comes next.
He sees my face.
He ends the call himself before I say a word.
I take the notice from my apron pocket and set it flat on the blueprints between us.
He looks at it. His jaw tightens once.
"I blocked Lowell's bid the night of the auction," he says quietly. "And I kept it under my name so no one could flip it back."
I meet his eyes, then glance at the notice before returning to him.
"You bought my building," I say.
"To protect it," he says.
"And you didn't think about telling me."
"No, I didn't think I needed to."
A pause. "Right."
I breathe. I keep my voice level because losing it will not help either of us and because I have spent enough years handling things that need handling to know that the most important conversations are the ones you stay present for.
"Was any of it real?" I say.
"Real?" He looks at me. "What do you mean?"
"I mean the time. The sketches. The phone calls.
The Conservatory." I pause, and the next words cost me something to say out loud.
"Yesterday. Was any of it real, or were you pacifying me?
Keeping me close and cooperative while you went behind my back and bought the building yourself?
" My voice stays steady. My eyes don't. "Because I have been working, Sawyer.
Since the auction was postponed I have been working every day to get my numbers in order.
To make a real offer. To buy this building myself.
You knew that. You knew it and you went ahead anyway. "
Something moves through his expression that is not quite pain and not quite guilt but carries the weight of both.
"Maya, that's not..." He stops. "I bought it to protect it," he says.
"And to protect you. Lowell would have outbid you.
Ten times over, without breaking a sweat.
You don't have the money, Maya." His voice is quiet and direct and completely without cruelty, which somehow makes it worse.
"You don't have the money to go against him and we both know it. "
The room is very still.
I feel my eyes fill. I don't let the tears fall.
I hold them there, right at the edge, and I look at this man who said I love you just yesterday in my shop with his hand against my cheek, and I think about my father's partner saying I'm doing this for you, for your family while he signed everything away, and I think about how the most dangerous thing is not the person who hurts you carelessly but the person who hurts you while genuinely believing they are helping.
"Right," I say. My voice is very quiet. "Thank you, Sawyer."
I turn to leave.
"Maya." His voice stops me at the door. Not a command. Just my name, said the way he says it, with everything in it. "Don't go. Please."
I turn back.
He reaches into his jacket and pulls out an envelope. He sets it on the table beside the notice, smooth and unhurried.
"Take this," he says. "Please. Open it."
My gaze shifts from the envelope to him, then to the notice still sitting on the blueprints between us, and I think about every reason I believed him. And I wonder whether any of it was real.
"I don't want anything from you right now, Sawyer," I say.
I pick up the notice. I leave the envelope on the table.
I turn and I walk out.
"Maya." His voice follows me to the door. "Wait."
I keep walking.
The door closes behind me and I stand on the pavement outside the site office in the morning air and I breathe, slowly and carefully, and I tell myself that walking away was the right thing to do.
I tell myself that all the way back to the shop.
I am not entirely sure I believe it.
***
Lily is waiting at the counter when I get back.
She doesn't ask.
I don't tell.
I pick up my stem cutter and I go back to work, and I think about the envelope I left on that table.
I don't know what's in it. I think about the man who put it there, and I think about the fact that the hardest thing about loving someone who fixes everything is that the things they want to fix are not always theirs to fix.
It's yours.
And I think about whether I am brave enough to know the difference.