Chapter 22
HE HAD IT BAD
MABEL
He jogs to the firehouse, ducks his head in, and then returns to me in less than a minute. “There’s something I want to show you.”
“What is it?”
“Something I think you’ll enjoy. Seems like you need it right now.”
My chest warms. “I do. Thank you.”
He rubs my arm. “I had a feeling.”
I push the knitting club and my mother out of my head as we get in his car.
He drives to a little flower and plant store on the outskirts of town. Its face is made of white bricks, and the name, Enchanted Blooms, is written in a wistful script on the gleaming window.
When we reach the door, Corbin pauses, then swallows like what he’s about to say is uncomfortable for him. “It’s…wisteria. The color of the door.”
I stare at the color…and he’s dead on. The door is painted a soft, delicate shade of purple. “How did you know?” I ask, my voice pitching up with wonder.
“The owner is a friend of my mom’s. I went in here the other day to pick up a plant.”
That doesn’t explain how he knows, but I keep listening.
“And I could tell that everything in here was some kind of…” He pauses, waves like he’s casting about for what to say next. “Pretty color. But I didn’t know what. I just knew you’d probably want to see it. Do you want me to show you?”
My breath catches. “Yes.” I’m more eager than I’ve ever been to bake, to read, to spend time with friends.
I want this color tour badly.
He takes me inside the little shop, where a big orange tabby sleeps lazily in a sunbeam on the floor. An elegant, older woman with Black braids gives a warm nod from the counter.
I smile back, then look around. There are kelly green, emerald green, and forest green plants hanging from shelves or sitting on little tables with mosaiced tiles on them.
Corbin guides me to one in the corner. Like foreign words he’s practicing for the first time, he says, “That’s robin’s-egg blue. ”
“It is,” I say, breathless. “Like the—”
“Mirror in the hallway in your apartment.”
He remembered the shade he couldn’t really see. “Yes. Exactly,” I confirm.
With a pleased nod, he gestures to another plant table. “And this is sunshine yellow.”
I’m stunned. “Yes. It’s bright and happy.”
He gives a faint smile. “I’ll trust you on that.”
He sets a hand on the small of my back, sending a hot shiver up my spine as he leads me a few feet to a shelf full of terracotta pots.
“I had a feeling you’d love this place, so I asked Annabelle,” he says, tipping his forehead to the woman at the counter, “the color of everything in the store. I wrote them all down to remember them, and where they were. I wanted to give you the tour myself so I needed to learn the colors to show them to you.” His smile is warm and kind.
“I was going to do it soon, but it seemed like maybe you needed to see it today.”
My heart stutters, then speeds up to double time. He did this for me. Learned and memorized so he could share it with me. Just because I love places like this, colors like these. Emotions rise in my chest, climb up my throat. “I really do. Thank you.”
He shows me a pot at the end of the shelf. “This is teal blue.” The one next to it. “Baby pink.” Another one. “Cherry red.” He lowers his voice to a deadly whisper. “Like the paint.”
The memory slams back into me, hot and sharp. “Just like the paint.”
He takes me around the shop, showing me a sign for a wall that says All My Friends Are Plants. “Sage green.”
“Yes,” I say, and my smile takes over my face. No, it steals my entire afternoon.
He bypasses the cooler holding bouquets of flowers. Those are probably tougher to memorize, since they must change more regularly.
But he finishes at a high white wooden table teeming with bouquets of irises. “Lilacs aren’t in bloom now in California. But irises are.”
My heart is too big for my chest. “This is incredible, and I needed this so much,” I tell him, and he deserves to know why. “You asked what’s wrong. The women in the knitting club are placing bets on how fast I fail.”
I tell him everything. His eyes burn with fire.
“They’re not betting on how fast you fail. They’re betting on how quickly we fail,” he says, his voice as protective as it was that day at the romance fair.
My heart softens, but the reality is I know it’s me they’re betting against. “No, Corbin, they think you’re a success. They think I’m a joke.”
Stepping closer, he slides a thumb across my jaw. My chest flips. “But you’re not a joke, and we are going to prove them all wrong. Together.” Then he says, “Do you like flowers?”
“Of course I do.”
“I had a feeling. That’s why I wanted to show you the irises. They’re close to your favorite color. Let’s put them in the bakery. I think we should have some flowers there every day, and they should be in your favorite color.”
All at once, he’s turned my day completely around.
When he buys a bouquet of irises, the woman at the register—Annabelle—smiles at him like she knows something. “Told you,” she says to Corbin, her dark eyes twinkling.
“Annabelle,” he warns.
I don’t know what she knows, but I like her already, especially when she says to me, “That was one hell of a London Fog cake you made.”
“Thank you.” Then it hits me—she’s the someone he asked about the color of the London Fog cake I left on his doorstep as we were getting started. She must matter to him if he put himself out there in that way. A fond feeling digs into my breastbone.
Corbin nods to the back of the shop. “There’s a garden out back. Want to see it?”
“How can you even ask?”
He sets a hand on my back and guides me along a skinny hallway, past boxes of plant food. “I also took the liberty to bring a little something along.”
My brow knits. “What do you mean?”
“Maybe we don’t want to wait for opening day to read another letter. I hope you don’t mind. But I think you popping into other businesses and saying hello is a milestone and deserves—”
“A cookie?” I ask, anticipation bouncing inside of me.
He pats his back pocket as we reach the door and stop. “I took one.”
“Did you read it already?” I’m only a little worried. It doesn’t seem like his style, but I need to ask.
“What do you take me for? A guy who has no patience?”
Considering I’m ahead in the O department, he clearly has plenty of self-control. “Nope.”
He opens the door into a tiny garden, teeming with winter jasmine and white lilies stretching toward the sun. A small Japanese maple stands proudly in a corner, and a green slatted bench commands the center of this emerald enclave.
“This is incredible,” I say, soaking in this refuge in the middle of this small town.
“Glad you like it,” he says, pride and something else in his voice.
Something that makes me feel warm and shimmery. It’s a feeling I could get lost in though. A feeling that could distract me from my business, my plans, my dreams.
“All right. What have you got?” I ask, heading to the bench and patting the seat next to me.
He joins me, takes the letter from his back pocket, and carefully unfolds it. My fingers are tingling to touch it, this lovely artifact from a romance decades ago. “It was already folded,” he explains. “Don’t want you to think I put a crease in it.”
“I would never think such a thing,” I say, eager to learn what happened next for the young lovers.
Corbin hands it to me. “It’s yours.”
But it feels like ours, especially when I read the first two words.
Dear Harriet.
“It’s to her,” I say breathlessly. “He wrote it to her.” I feel like I’m holding a piece of history—someone’s personal history. It’s a privilege, this sneak peek into another century, another love affair.
I offer it to Corbin. “You read it out loud.”
He takes the paper, clears his throat, and reads.
Dear Harriet,
Today was a tough day. Calls like that are always hard. The things we have to do in our line of work are never easy. But you’re brave, and you made a difference in our community.
I sensed it was hard for you, though, the way the other guys didn’t seem to want to let you do things—even things rookie firefighters do, like pulling hose lines.
But you trained for this. You can do it. And I just want to say—don’t let them get you down.
They’ll come around.
They’ll see who you are. Gutsy, determined, focused.
And, you’re funny.
Well, maybe don’t let them see that.
Save that part just for me.
Your friend,
Russ
I’m quiet, as if speaking might pierce a magic spell cast by the past and those words. I want to live in this bubble for a few more shimmery seconds.
After a moment, he breaks the silence. “Seems like he had it bad for your great-grandmother. He had it bad from the start.”
A warm, hazy smile keeps tugging at my mouth. I didn’t know Harriet and Russ, but thanks to my grandma’s last gift, I get to experience their love story. “He sure did,” I say, kind of amazed.
And we sit on the bench, neither one of us wanting to move, just soaking in the next chapter in a love story I didn’t expect.