Chapter Two
The smell of smoke had become part of the neighborhood.
Becca unlocked Sawyer's Blooms at seven a.m., the same way she had every morning for four years, and tried not to look at what remained of the laundromat next door.
Three weeks since the fire. Three weeks of yellow caution tape and blackened brick and the acrid reminder that everything she'd built could disappear in a single night.
She flipped the sign to OPEN and retreated into the familiar comfort of her cooler. Roses, lilies, baby's breath, carnations in every color the South Side could want. The flowers didn't care about arson. They just needed water and cold air and hands that knew how to make them beautiful.
Becca's hands were steady this morning.
They weren't always.
The developer's buyout offer sat on her counter where she'd left it three days ago. Crisp white paper, professional letterhead, a number with enough zeros to make her stomach clench every time she looked at it. Unsigned. But not discarded.
She couldn't bring herself to throw it away. Couldn't bring herself to sign it either.
Sawyer's Blooms has been identified as a key property in the Pilsen Renaissance Development Project. We are prepared to offer...
Renaissance. Like burning out the bodega and the shoe repair shop and the laundromat was some kind of rebirth instead of murder.
Becca shoved the offer under a stack of order forms and pulled out her supplies for the day.
Three quincea?era centerpieces for the Delgado family.
A funeral spray for Mrs. Kowalski's husband, dead at seventy-two from a heart that finally quit.
The everyday work of marking life's moments in petals and ribbon.
She lost herself in the arrangements, fingers moving through the familiar motions while her mind drifted.
The roses for the quincea?era were perfect—deep pink fading to cream at the edges, the kind of bloom that made teenage girls gasp and their mothers cry.
She'd ordered them special from her supplier in Indiana, paid extra for overnight delivery, because the Delgado family had been coming to her shop since she opened and Elena deserved perfect roses for her fifteenth birthday.
That was the thing about Pilsen. The neighborhood remembered. Remembered who showed up, who did good work, who treated people like family instead of transactions.
Becca wasn't from here. Wasn't Latina, wasn't raised on these blocks, didn't grow up with the murals and the music and the generations of families who'd built this community brick by brick.
But four years ago, she'd walked away from a stable hotel job, sunk her savings into a flower shop in a neighborhood that didn't know her, and earned her place through early mornings and honest work.
The neighborhood had adopted her. And now someone was burning it down.
At eight o'clock exactly, the black sedan rolled past her window.
Becca's hands stopped moving. She watched the car cruise by at exactly the speed limit—not too fast, not too slow—the driver's face hidden behind tinted glass. It passed the burned-out shell of the bodega, slowed slightly in front of her shop, then continued down the block.
Like clockwork. Every morning since the laundromat fire.
She'd learned not to look directly at them. Not to react. Just keep her head down and her hands busy and pretend she didn't notice the countdown happening outside her window.
The sedan disappeared around the corner, and Becca realized she'd been holding her breath.
She exhaled slowly and went back to the roses.
The morning passed in a blur of customers and arrangements.
Mrs. Orozco came in for her weekly bouquet—carnations, always carnations, because her husband had given her carnations on their first date fifty-three years ago and she still put fresh ones on his grave every Sunday.
She paid in cash, same as always, and pressed a foil-wrapped tamale into Becca's hand on her way out.
"You eat," Mrs. Orozco commanded. "Too skinny. The worry is eating you instead."
"I'm fine, Mrs. Orozco."
"You're stubborn." The old woman's eyes softened. "Like my daughter. She's stubborn too, and it will kill her one day, but at least she'll die standing up."
Becca managed a smile. "That's the plan."
The bell above the door chimed as Mrs. Orozco left, and Becca unwrapped the tamale at the counter. Chicken and green chile, still warm. The taste of a neighborhood that fed its own.
She was halfway through the tamale when Lucia Reyes walked in.
Becca knew immediately. The look on Lucia's face—the tight smile, the apologetic eyes, the way she clutched her purse like a shield. She'd seen that look three times already this month.
"You're leaving," Becca said. Not a question.
"My sister has a place in Cicero." Lucia's voice cracked. "After the shoe repair burned, after Mr. Milton's bodega... I have two kids, Becca. I can't—"
"I know."
"It's not giving up. It's just—"
"I know." Becca came around the counter and pulled Lucia into a hug, feeling the smaller woman shake against her chest. "I know. You have to protect your family."
"You should come too." Lucia pulled back, her eyes wet. "Before they—"
She didn't finish the sentence. She didn't have to.
"I can't." Becca's voice came out steadier than she felt. "This is my home. The only one I've ever had."
"Home doesn't matter if you're dead."
The words hung in the air, heavy and true. Becca didn't have an answer for them. Didn't have an answer for any of it—the fires, the buyout offers, the black sedan that rolled past her window like a promise.
Lucia left with a bouquet of sunflowers that Becca refused to let her pay for. "For the new apartment," she said. "Something bright."
The shop felt emptier after she was gone.
Becca worked until six, building arrangements for people who might not be here next month.
The funeral spray came together beautifully—white lilies, white roses, a cascade of greenery that spoke of peace and endings.
Mr. Kowalski had been a regular at the bodega that wasn't there anymore.
His wife had cried on Becca's shoulder the day after the fire, mourning her husband and her neighborhood in the same breath.
Now Becca would deliver flowers to his funeral, and Mrs. Kowalski would be alone in a community that was emptying out one family at a time.
She locked the register, checked the cooler temperature, watered the display arrangements. The same closing routine she'd done a thousand times. But tonight her hands weren't steady.
Tonight, the developer's offer seemed to glow under the stack of order forms.
We are prepared to offer...
She shoved the thought away and grabbed her keys.
The walk to her car took her past the laundromat.
Past the caution tape and the blackened windows and the smell that never quite faded no matter how many days passed.
The building had been here for forty years.
Generations of Pilsen families had washed their clothes in those machines, gossiped over folding tables, watched their kids play in the parking lot while the dryers tumbled.
Now it was ash and memory.
Becca's car was parked at the end of the block, past the bodega that used to sell her coffee every morning and the shoe repair shop where she'd had her favorite boots resoled twice. Both buildings stood empty now, their windows boarded, their owners gone.
Three businesses on her block. Three fires in two months.
She was the only one left.
The drive home took twenty minutes through streets she'd memorized in four years of predawn flower deliveries. Her apartment was in Bridgeport, close enough to commute but far enough that the smoke didn't follow her home.
Except it did.
Becca rolled down her window at a red light and caught it—that acrid undertone beneath the city exhaust and the lake wind. Smoke. Or the memory of smoke. Or her imagination filling in details that weren't there.
She couldn't tell anymore.
The light turned green, and she drove on, trying to remember what her block had smelled like before the fires started. Trying to remember what it felt like to unlock her shop in the morning without checking for the black sedan first.
Trying to remember what it felt like to not be afraid.
She couldn't.
The smoke smell followed her all the way home.