Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Adrianna
“Ad? AD!” Mom hollers from the kitchen like the house is on fire.
I’ve just finished drying my hair and pulling on jeans. I don’t usually take a morning off from the bakery, but once every other week I force myself to take a me day.
Usually, it’s something glamorous like a teeth cleaning or an eye exam—self-care, but make it depressing.
Not today.
Today I’m planning to wander down to my favorite bookstore and blow the shiny new gift card Mom gave me on a couple of hardcovers by my favorite authors.
I read on my phone ninety percent of the time, but when I fall in love with a book? I want it on my shelf. I want to hold it. Smell it. Dog-ear it. Hug it.
Don’t judge me.
The Book Shop is run by Larry—short for Hilary—one of my best friends since college. I think I fell so easily into the friendship because we didn’t really know each other in high school.
Larry’s not part of the Adrianna and Nathan saga.
She doesn’t bring that part of my life up—like, at all.
Not like everyone else in this town.
Anyway, Larry always puts aside new releases she knows I’ll want, which is both thoughtful and dangerous for my bank account.
“Yeah, Mom?” I call as I walk into the kitchen.
I blink. Then laugh. Because of course this is what I’d find.
Mom is sitting by the back door with an enormous wooden sign propped across her lap, paint streaks up her forearms, her hair clipped back like she’s about to perform surgery.
“Mom, what are you doing?”
“It’s for the opening night of the school play!” she says brightly. “We’re donating bagged cookies for the drama club to sell, and I thought I’d dress up the table a little.”
“Mom,” I say, staring at the sign. “This is not a little. This is a billboard.”
She waves me off with a flourish of her paintbrush.
“Marketing, Adrianna. People forget to appreciate the classics.”
Apparently, the classics include my mother discovering Pinterest-level crafts after Dad died.
I swear, grief does strange things to people—some cry, some run marathons, and some, like my mother, pick up power tools and become unstoppable.
I glance at the big block letters she’s stenciling.
“You’re almost done though, right?”
“I ran out of red spray paint,” she says, nonchalant as can be.
Of course, she did.
I sigh, but fondly.
“I assume you want me to go get more?”
“Yes, please,” Mom says with a hopeful smile. “And once you’re done, could you stop by Mr. Gimble’s? He has that order ready for me.”
“Which order?” I ask, already knowing I don’t want the answer.
“The one with the tiny wooden birdhouses.”
I stare. “Mom! Why?”
“They’re for my winter craft fair table,” she says, as if that explains everything. And maybe at this point, it does.
I shake my head, laughing as I shrug into my coat. “Fine. Spray paint first, tiny birdhouses second.”
“And books third!” she calls as I head toward the back door.
I glance over my shoulder and grin.
“You know me too well.”
“Buy at least one romance,” she demands. “The steamy kind. Your face needs more color these days.”
“Mom!”
But she just winks and waves her paintbrush like a magic wand.
I step outside to help her move the giant foldable sign onto the drop cloth she already placed on the deck—because she always plans ahead—and then I grab my keys.
Spray paint.
Birdhouses.
Bookstore.
A nice, simple morning.
And nope, I don’t have the faintest idea that fate has other plans for me at the hardware store.
Plans with broad shoulders, familiar eyes, and a voice that once made the whole world sing.