Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Five months old and with chunky cheeks, baby Lily was the only person in the world Ivy ever wanted to see.
She was smitten with her baby and generally devastated by the rest of the world.
All night after Daniel returned from fishing, he watched television and ate the fish she cooked for him and hardly asked her a thing about her day.
When she went to the Bluebell Cove Autumn Festival, she carried her baby around happily, grateful not to be at home, listening to the sports channel and thinking about all the dreams she hadn’t fulfilled for herself.
It was at the Autumn Festival that she ran into the older woman who owned the flower shop again.
She wore a regal black coat and an ornate felt hat and some bright red lipstick, and she parted the crowd to get over to Ivy and Lily and demand why they hadn’t come back to the flower shop since they’d met in July.
Ivy couldn’t possibly tell Adeline the truth—that she wanted the flower shop too badly to return. She knew she could never scrape together enough pennies to buy it. And besides, did she really have the time for all that?
Adeline seemed to sense this in her face. She cupped Ivy’s hand and said, “Sit with me for a while. Come.” Adeline led Ivy over to the bonfire, where they sipped mulled wine as Lily slept beautifully in her stroller.
“Isn’t it funny that you gave her the name for a flower?” Adeline said. “Isn’t that something like a sign? And your name! Ivy! It fits. Better than Adeline ever did.”
Ivy laughed gently. “I told you.”
“You said your husband would never go for it,” Adeline affirmed. “But did you ever talk to him about it? Did you give him the chance to hear you out? I think sometimes we think people are one way, and they surprise us. I’ve been surprised time and again in this life.”
“You don’t know my husband,” Ivy said.
“Maybe you both don’t know each other well enough yet,” Adeline offered thoughtfully. “You’re still at the beginning of your marriage. You’re still figuring out what the future will hold.”
For some reason, Ivy let Adeline’s message inspire her, so much so that the following morning, before Daniel returned from the boat, she worked diligently at a gorgeous and flavorful meal—a clam chowder with freshly baked corn and cheddar muffins.
It was Daniel’s favorite meal and one she hadn’t made for him since Lily was born. She planned to butter him up.
When Daniel returned, he stopped in the foyer and let his shoulders melt. “You did it,” he said to her, sounding so tender and sweet. “You made my favorite dish.”
Ivy decided to ignore his fishy smell. She hurried up to him, kissed him, and said, “Get ready for dinner! We’re eating in the sunroom. I want to watch the sunset.”
Daniel didn’t ask where the baby was. Maybe he didn’t notice that Lily wasn’t there. Ivy had arranged for Wren to take her to a spare room at the Bluebell Cove Inn so she wouldn’t be distracted during her pitch. She needed Daniel to be focused.
Daniel went upstairs to shower and change while Ivy spooned ladles of chowder into two bowls and set everything up on the table in the sunroom.
She poured a beer for Daniel and a glass of wine for herself.
The smile on her face, for once, felt genuine and alive.
She felt more like herself than she ever had—whoever this was.
Ivy let Daniel eat an entire first bowl of chowder before she broached the subject of the flower shop.
He ate quickly, making a mess on his napkin.
He frequently glanced up at her and gave her a smile that she remembered from their wedding day, one of disbelief that this was his life.
She often felt the same. But she would never admit that.
She asked him questions about fishing and his sports teams. He didn’t ask her anything in return, but that was all right. In her experience, men rarely did.
It wasn’t till he had a full second bowl of chowder before him that she said, “So. I don’t know if you know the little flower shop? The one a few blocks west of the courthouse? It’s closing down.”
Was she speaking too quickly? He hardly registered her. She took a breath.
“I was thinking that I’d really like to buy it,” Ivy said. “I don’t have the money myself, but, you know, it could bring in a lot of revenue. And I’m sure the bank would agree to a loan if we both go in together. You know Reggie at the bank, right? He always liked you.”
Daniel squinted at her as though he’d never seen her before. “You do remember that the bank denied our loan last time?”
Ivy had, of course, remembered that. But that particular loan had been for a mega-expensive sailboat for what Daniel had called his “new business of bringing tourists along the coast of Maine.” Daniel had no tourism experience and very little “way” with people.
Reggie had accepted them at first, but Reggie’s higher-up had rejected them.
Ivy hoped that this particular higher-up would recognize that Ivy had the wherewithal to handle flowers.
Daniel crossed his arms over his chest, his chowder forgotten. Ivy marveled that she’d thought this would be easier.
“I really do think we can make a killing on this,” Ivy said.
“We’re already doing fine,” Daniel said. “And what about Lily?”
“There’s no reason Lily can’t be at the shop with me during the day.”
Daniel snorted. “You won’t be able to do both.”
Ivy felt a burning in her chest. She wanted to say, "I beg your pardon?" But she didn’t want to make matters worse.
“I think it’s good to show Lily that she can have it all,” she said. “She can have the career and the family. She can have dreams.”
Daniel picked up his spoon and set it back down. His cheeks were red, as though the anger was coming out through his pores.
“You wanted a baby,” he stammered. “You wanted to move into your parents’ house. You wanted all this. Isn’t it enough?”
Ivy couldn’t look at him. She understood that he was a brick wall.
If she wanted to find the money for the flower shop, she had to go about this in a completely different way.
That night, as she scrubbed the kitchen counters, Daniel paused in the doorway of the kitchen and said, “I’m glad you’re going to listen to reason on this. I mean, a flower shop? All that responsibility? On top of all this?” He clucked his tongue. “It’s too much!”
* * *
In the days that followed, Ivy considered her next steps. Daniel’s behavior had solidified her belief in her dream. She had to make it a reality, one way or another. She couldn’t let Daniel win.
To make matters worse, she called Adeline and told her she was going to make the flower shop work. “I have to find the money,” she said, desperation in her voice.
Adeline believed in her. “I’m going to keep it up for sale for the next few months,” she explained. “But I’m headed off to Florida the week after next. The estate agent knows how to reach me. But you can call me any time you need as well.”
“Please, don’t sell it to anyone else,” Ivy begged.
There was laughter on the other line. “Honey, I won’t,” Adeline assured. “That place is yours. I know it will be. Make it happen.”
Ivy felt as though no one had believed in her as much in her life.
Ivy made a list of the people she could reach out to for help.
Number one, of course, was the bank, but without Daniel's willingness to co-sign, she was sure she didn’t have a chance.
Number two was Celia, her environmental journalist sister in Washington, DC.
But Celia and Ivy had never gotten along so well.
The strain in their relationship went back to the very beginning.
More than that, Ivy wasn’t entirely sure that Celia was any better off than she was, financially speaking.
She was pretty sure Celia had a baby and a husband, a baby not much older than Lily.
It wasn’t like the world of environmental journalism was seeping with extra cash.
Plus, Ivy felt too nervous to call her sister up and explain everything on her mind. They’d never been sisters in this way. They’d never shared their hearts.
Juliet was next up. But as far as Ivy knew, Julia lived in Manhattan somewhere and studied fashion. Maybe Juliet was working for and with people with money, but that didn’t mean she had it. Wren was still in high school, preparing to leave the nest as soon as she could.
Who else was there?
The answer landed in Ivy’s lap a moment later.
There was always James Harper. Maybe he was her only hope.
It wasn’t till Thanksgiving that Ivy got up the nerve to ask her father about the loan.
By then, Daniel had more or less assumed she’d forgotten about her little flower scheme, so much so that he often teased her about it, as though it were a funny thing from their past. But Ivy was waiting and watching.
She often practiced talking to her father about the loan in her head and pictured herself highlighting a multiyear business plan.
Eventually, she sat down at the computer at the Bluebell Cove Inn and researched how to put one together—something that would impress a man who’d run his own inn for the majority of his life.
She wouldn’t bring up the fact that he was often in over his head with his own business, and she had to tackle the stacks of bills, the calls for extra maintenance, and so on.
And maybe this was one of the best reasons to own the flower shop, she reasoned. Her father had begun to resent her just as much as she’d begun to resent him. Working too closely with a man of her father’s emotional disposition was never easy.
Maybe if she stepped away from the inn, she and her father could build a better and more loving relationship. Perhaps they could look at each other and finally give one another the truth.