Chapter 3
Icall the number on the For Lease sign before I can talk myself out of it.
I don’t have steady income, but the money in the accounts is half mine and I’ll do what I want with my half.
Plus, if I don’t do this, I’ll have to do something else, and this, I think will make me happy, which is something I need right now.
It takes three tries to get the right number because the sun has eaten half the digits and I’m guessing at the last two.
The landlord is a man named Hershel Potts who sounds like he’s been waiting by the phone for two years and all but given up.
He quotes me a rent that’s low enough to make me suspicious, and when I ask what’s wrong with the space he laughs and says, “Nothing’s wrong with it.
Nobody around here starts anything anymore. ”
I tell him I want to see it. He says he can meet me there in an hour.
I hang up and sit with the phone in my lap, and for about thirty seconds I let myself feel how insane this is.
I’m a woman whose husband left her less than a week ago.
I have a lawyer picked out who I haven’t called yet, a joint bank account I need to split, and a mortgage on a house I may not be able to keep.
Starting a flower shop on the corner of Oak and Vine is not the responsible next step.
I go anyway because I’m still chasing that happiness I so desperately need.
The space is better than it looked through the glass.
High ceilings, original hardwood under a layer of grime that would come up with enough work, and two big storefront windows that catch the morning light exactly the way I thought they would.
The back has a utility sink and enough square footage for a walk-in cooler if I ever get that far.
The walls need paint. The baseboards are pulling away in the corners.
The electrical panel looks like it was last updated when the building still had a party line.
“It needs work,” Hershel says, which is generous.
“It does.” I’m already seeing it, though.
Where the display cases would go. Where I’d set up the worktable.
How the counter by the door could hold a register and still leave enough space for a customer to lean against it while they decide between roses and wildflowers.
I’m seeing it the way I used to see arrangements before I put them together, the finished thing already there inside the raw materials, waiting for someone to pull it into order.
“Any money you put into repairs I can shave off rent if that’s an arrangement you’re open to.”
“I can do that,” I say. “I’ll take it.”
Hershel looks at me like I’ve told him his lottery numbers just hit. We shake hands. He says he has a lease ready, so I sign it on the dusty counter with an old pen he pulls out of his jacket pocket.
The first person I would normally call when something big happens is Drew, but obviously, that’s not going to happen this time.
So, I call a friend of mine, Donna, because she knows everyone in town and she’ll know who does contractor work that isn’t overpriced or half-finished.
She gives me a name. Wes Callahan. Says he did her sister’s kitchen last spring and showed up when he said he would, which she delivers like it’s the highest compliment a person can receive.
I call him and he picks up on the second ring. He can come look at the space tomorrow afternoon, he’ll give me a straight estimate, and if I don’t like the number I won’t hurt his feelings. He says he’ll even work with me on payments if I need to go that route.
“Fair enough,” I say.
“What kind of business?” he asks.
“Flower shop.”
“Good corner for it,” he says. Then he hangs up, and I stand in my empty storefront with the dust floating in the light and think about how that’s the first conversation I’ve had with a man in a week that didn’t make me feel like I owed him something.
He shows up the next afternoon right when he said he would.
I recognize him before he’s out of the truck.
The man from the hardware store, the lumber over his shoulder, the flannel.
He’s wearing the same boots. Different flannel.
He gets out and looks at the building for a long minute before he comes inside, and I can tell he’s already pricing it in his head.
“Wes?” I ask.
“Rachel?” He shakes my hand. Firm, brief, no lingering.
“That’s me.”
He walks the space the way a man walks a space when he actually knows what he’s looking at.
He checks the baseboards. He opens the electrical panel and looks at it without wincing, which I respect.
He turns the water on at the utility sink and lets it run while he inspects the pipe joints underneath.
He doesn’t narrate what he’s doing or explain things I didn’t ask about.
“You want the full list or the short version?” he asks when he’s done.
“Both.”
He almost smiles. “Short version, the bones are solid. Long version, the wiring needs updating before you run anything with a motor, the plumbing’s functional but I’d replace the supply lines before you trust them with a cooler, and those baseboards are cosmetic, not structural.
Floor’s in better condition than it looks. ”
“And the number?”
He gives me a number. It’s not small. It’s also not padded, because he breaks it down without me asking, materials separate from labor, and the labor rate is fair enough that I know he’s not testing whether I’ll negotiate.
“When can you start?”
“I can pull the permit this week and have material here a day or two after.” He tucks his pencil behind his ear. “You want to be here while I work, or you want me to lock up when I’m done for the day?”
“I’ll probably be here,” I say, without thinking about it.
Then I realize why. I don’t want to sit in the house.
I don’t want to be in the place where Drew kissed my temple and asked about my day while he waited ten years for someone else.
I want to be here, in this dusty storefront that smells like old wood and nothing at all like the cologne he left behind in the bathroom.
“Works for me,” Wes says. He doesn’t ask why. He doesn’t ask about my situation, even though I know he probably knows because everyone knows everyone’s business here. He just nods and heads for the door.
“Wes.”
He turns.
“Thank you for being straight with me about the number.”
He looks at me for a second. “I don’t know how to be anything else,” he says.
Then he leaves, and I’m alone in my shop. My shop. I say it out loud in the empty space just to hear how it sounds, and it sounds like something that belongs to me, which is a feeling I haven’t had in so long that I almost don’t recognize it.
I spend the rest of the afternoon in the space.
I sweep and then scrub the front windows until the light comes through the way it’s supposed to.
I measure the counter and the back wall with a tape measure I bought at the hardware store on the way over.
I make notes on what I want where, and I think about varieties.
What grows well here. What I can source locally.
What the markup looks like on wedding arrangements versus everyday bouquets, because I used to know those numbers by heart.
I’m locking up when I see them.
Drew and Sabrina, walking out of the diner on Oak Street.
She’s got her arm through his, like she’s been doing it for years instead of days.
He’s laughing at something she said, and from where I’m standing he looks like a completely different man than the one who sat at my kitchen table and couldn’t eat his dinner. He looks happy. Light. Free.
Sabrina sees me first. I know because her posture changes, a small tightening through the shoulders, the kind of adjustment a woman makes when she knows she’s being watched and wants to be watched well.
She leans into Drew a little closer. He follows her gaze and finds me standing on the sidewalk with my keys in my hand.
For one second, we just look at each other, Drew and I. Across Oak Street, across everything. His face does something complicated, guilt and defiance and something softer underneath that I don’t want to identify because it might be pity.
I don’t wave. I don’t look away. I lock the door behind me, drop my keys in my bag, and walk to my car. Steady. Unhurried. Like I’ve got things to do that have nothing to do with him.
I do have things to do, actually. I’ve got a flower shop to build.
I don’t look back to see if he’s watching because it doesn’t matter if he is.