Chapter 5 Almost
ALMOST
WHERE I ALMOST LET MYSELF WANT SOMETHING.
Itold myself it was just for the quiet.
And every morning, the moment I stepped through that old wooden door, silence.
Not literal silence—the shop had its own sounds.
Creaking floorboards that seemed to announce visitors to no one in particular.
The soft tick of a dozen clocks that didn’t quite agree on the time.
The occasional crackle from the radio, which had graduated from Barry Manilow to what Marcus called “pointed jazz”—apparently it was making commentary on his mood through song selection.
But the phone stopped. The buzzing stopped. The relentless, insistent pressure that had been the soundtrack of my life since Cassie’s crystal touched my phone finally, blessedly, shut up.
I’d called in sick to the winery three times this week. Valentina had left increasingly pointed voicemails about “reliability” and “harvest season commitments” and “the geese miss having someone to terrorize.” I’d deal with it eventually. Right now, I needed the quiet more than I needed employment.
Marcus had stopped pretending to be annoyed by my presence somewhere around day three.
That was when he’d set a cup of tea on the counter without me asking—two sugars, splash of milk, exactly right.
That was also when I’d noticed he’d cleared a space in the back room: the old velvet armchair that looked like it had opinions, positioned near the window where the morning light was best.
He hadn’t said anything about the chair. Neither had I.
Some things you don’t need to say.
“These are wrong.”
I looked up from the box of inventory I’d been sorting—old brooches, mostly, the kind grandmothers wore to church and great-aunts wore to funerals. Marcus was frowning at his laptop with the enthusiasm of a man being forced to handle a venomous snake.
“What’s wrong?”
“The dates. Someone catalogued these music boxes as 1920s, but they’re clearly Edwardian. Look at the filigree work.” He held up a small brass box, delicate and tarnished. “This is pre-war craftsmanship. Someone just assumed.”
“Is that bad?”
“It’s sloppy.” He said it like sloppiness was a personal offense. Which, for Marcus, it probably was. “Sarah would have caught it immediately.”
Sarah. His wife. The woman in the photographs I’d noticed that first day, laughing in silver frames throughout the shop.
He talked about her more now. Not constantly—Marcus wasn’t the type for constant anything—but casually, naturally, like she was still just in the next room instead of two years gone.
“She knew antiques?”
“She knew everything.” He set the music box down carefully. “That’s how we met, actually. She came into my father’s shop in San Francisco looking for a Victorian mourning brooch. Very specific—jet black, with a compartment for hair. Most people thought it was morbid. She thought it was romantic.”
“Was it? Romantic?”
“It was for a museum exhibit. She was a curator.” His mouth twitched—not quite a smile, but close. “I asked her to dinner three times. She said no three times. The fourth time, she said yes, but only if I could name the exact provenance of every piece in the front window.”
“Could you?”
“Of course. I grew up in that shop.” Now he did smile, small and private. “She said I passed. We were married six months later.”
I tried to imagine it—Marcus young, probably less grey, definitely less guarded, charming a museum curator with his encyclopedic knowledge of antique jewelry. It wasn’t hard to picture. Under all that grumpiness, there was something solid. Something worth leaning on.
“She sounds wonderful.”
“She was.” He picked up the music box again, turned it over in his hands. “She’s the one who found this place, actually. We were driving through Fairhaven on our way to somewhere else, and she made me stop the car because she ‘felt something.’ Said the town was humming.”
“Humming?”
“Her word for it. Objects that felt different. Places that resonated. She didn’t know why she was drawn to them, just that she was.” He set the box down. “She never called it magic. She called it intuition. But looking back, I think she sensed things. The way some people feel rain coming.”
Magical sensitivity. Sarah had been drawn to magical objects without knowing what they were. No wonder this shop felt the way it did—she’d filled it with things that hummed.
“Do you think that’s why I feel different here?” I asked. “Because of what she collected?”
“Maybe.” He looked at me—really looked, the way he sometimes did when he forgot to be guarded. “Or maybe it’s something else.”
The radio crackled, shifted from jazz to something softer. A song I didn’t recognize but felt in my chest anyway.
“The radio’s editorializing again,” I said.
“It does that.” He cleared his throat, suddenly businesslike. “Anyway. These music boxes need to be re-catalogued. If you’re going to keep coming here, you might as well be useful.”
“Is that your way of asking for help?”
“It’s my way of pointing out that you’ve been staring at the same box of brooches for twenty minutes.”
“I was organizing them by era.”
“You were organizing them by how ugly they are. That’s not a system.”
“It should be.” I held up a particularly aggressive piece—gold with tiny seed pearls arranged in a pattern that might have been flowers or might have been a skin condition. “Tell me this isn’t hideous.”
“It’s Victorian mourning jewelry. It’s supposed to be somber.”
“It’s supposed to be worn by someone who wants to be left alone at parties.” I turned it over, squinting at the back. “Why is there hair in it?”
“Memorial jewelry. The hair is from the deceased.”
I dropped it like it had bitten me. “THERE’S A DEAD PERSON’S HAIR IN THIS?”
“A lock of hair. From a loved one. It was a way of keeping them close.” Marcus picked up the brooch, completely unbothered. “Very common in the nineteenth century. Very collectible now.”
“Very creepy always.”
“You’re touching objects imbued with decades of emotional resonance every day and the hair is what bothers you?”
“The hair is HUMAN REMAINS, Marcus.”
“It’s keratin. It’s no more ‘remains’ than your fingernail clippings.”
“I’m not wearing my fingernail clippings as jewelry!”
“More’s the pity. Very on-trend for the 1870s.”
I stared at him. He stared back, completely straight-faced.
And then—I couldn’t help it—I laughed. A real laugh, the kind that comes up from your belly and surprises you with its existence. Marcus’s mouth twitched, and this time it was definitely a smile.
“You’re messing with me,” I said.
“Only slightly. The hair is real. The trend analysis is accurate. The suggestion that you should start a fingernail jewelry line is my own contribution.”
“I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.”
He was right. I didn’t.
That was becoming a problem.
The afternoon light had gone golden by the time we finished the music boxes—properly catalogued this time, with dates Marcus actually approved of. The shop felt different in this light, softer somehow, all the sharp edges blurred into something almost romantic.
Not that I was thinking about romance. I was definitely not thinking about romance.
“There’s one more box,” Marcus said, emerging from the back storage room. He was carrying something larger, dustier, with “SARAH - PERSONAL” written on the side in faded marker. “I’ve been putting this off.”
“We don’t have to—”
“No. It’s time.” He set it on the counter between us. “Two years is long enough to avoid a box.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I didn’t say anything. Just stood beside him as he lifted the lid.
Inside: treasures, but different from the inventory.
A pressed flower in a frame, the petals still holding color after what must have been decades.
A stack of letters tied with ribbon—his handwriting, I thought, though I couldn’t be sure.
A small leather journal with a worn spine.
And at the bottom, wrapped in tissue paper like something precious, a snow globe.
Marcus lifted it out carefully, like it might shatter if he breathed wrong.
Inside the globe, a tiny couple stood in a permanent embrace. The man was tall, dark-haired. The woman was laughing, head thrown back, frozen mid-joy. When Marcus shook it gently, silver glitter swirled around them like stars.
“She bought this on our honeymoon,” he said quietly. “Monterey. Everyone said we were crazy. Moving too fast.” He turned the globe, watching the glitter settle. “She said it reminded her of us. The way we fit.”
“It’s beautiful.”
“I used to think it was silly. A tourist trinket.” His voice went rough. “She kept it on her nightstand for twenty-eight years. And I haven’t been able to look at it since she died.”
“Marcus…”
“I’m not telling you this for sympathy.” He looked up, met my eyes. “I’m telling you because you asked. If I missed her.”
I remembered. In the chaos of that first day, surrounded by witches and possessed phones and disco enthusiasts, he’d said he was done with love. That he’d had his chance.
“What changed?” I asked. “That you could open this box now?”
He was quiet for a long moment. Set the snow globe down gently on the counter, where it caught the golden light.
“I don’t know. Something about the last week.” His voice was careful, like he was picking his way through uncertain ground. “Having someone here. Talking about her out loud instead of just… carrying it.”
“I’m glad I could help. Even accidentally.”
“It wasn’t accidental.” He looked at me, and there was something in his expression I hadn’t seen before—uncertainty, maybe, or hope.
“You asked questions. You listened. You didn’t try to fix anything or tell me it was time to move on or any of the things people say when they’re uncomfortable with grief. ”
“I’m uncomfortable with a lot of things. Grief isn’t one of them.”
“No.” He was closer now. When had he moved closer? “It isn’t.”
The air between us had changed. Thickened. The late afternoon light was turning everything gold and I was suddenly, acutely aware of how close we were standing. Close enough to see the grey in his hair, the lines around his eyes, the slight part of his lips.
The radio shifted to something slow. Deliberate. The kind of song that was clearly making a point.
“Your radio is being very obvious,” I said, and my voice came out barely above a whisper.
“It does that.”
“Should we tell it to stop?”
“Do you want it to stop?”
I didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer. Because the honest answer was no, and saying that felt like stepping off a cliff.
His hand came up. Slowly, carefully, like I might bolt. His fingers brushed my cheek, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear, and the touch was so gentle it almost hurt.
“Diane.”
“Marcus.”
I could kiss him. I wanted to kiss him. He was leaning closer and I was leaning closer and for once in my life I wasn’t looking for the flaw, the reason to run, the escape hatch—
My phone SCREAMED.
Not buzzed. Not vibrated. Screamed—a sound like every notification in the world going off at once, a digital shriek that made both of us jerk apart like we’d been electrocuted.
“What the—”
The screen was lit up, notifications cascading so fast I couldn’t read them. Matches. Messages. Alerts. And cutting through all of it, one message that made my stomach drop:
Todd Martinez: I’m in town. I need to see you. Please, Di. I’ve changed.
“No,” I whispered. “No, no, no—”
A knock at the shop door. Loud. Insistent.
Through the glass, I could see him. Leisure suit. Sideburns. Disco energy radiating off him like cologne made of pure 1978.
Greg.
“GROOVY LADY!” His voice was muffled by the glass but unmistakably enthusiastic. “The universe told me you needed me! I brought a MIX TAPE!”
“Oh god.”
Marcus had stepped back. I watched it happen in real time—the walls going up, the warmth draining away, replaced by that careful blankness I’d seen the first day we met.
“Friend of yours?”
“He’s from the app. From the magic. He’s not—I don’t want—”
“You should probably deal with that.”
“Marcus—”
“It’s fine.” His voice was flat. Distant. “I’ll be here.”
But the way he said it didn’t sound like a promise. It sounded like a door closing.
“I was going to kiss you,” I blurted out.
He paused. Something flickered behind his eyes—hope, maybe, or fear, or both.
“Were you?”
“Yes. Before the phone. Before Greg. I was going to—”
Another knock. “GROOVY LADY? THE COSMIC VIbrATIONS ARE VERY INSISTENT!”
Marcus looked at the door. Looked at me. The flicker died.
“Then I guess we’ll never know,” he said quietly. “If you would have gone through with it.”
“That’s not fair.”
“No. It isn’t.” He turned back to the counter, to Sarah’s box, to the snow globe still catching the light. “Go deal with your disco emergency. I need to close up.”
I wanted to argue. Wanted to burst back in and make him see that I hadn’t planned this, that the timing wasn’t my fault. But part of me wondered if he was right to pull away. If I would have found a reason to run eventually anyway.
But the phone was still screaming. And Greg was still knocking. And somewhere in this town, my ex-husband was waiting to complicate everything further.
“This isn’t over,” I said.
“Maybe not.” But he didn’t turn around. “Goodnight, Diane.”
I went.
The moment I stepped outside, the phone exploded back to life. 4,892 matches. 4,893. 4,894. The numbers climbing faster than ever, like the magic was punishing me for almost deciding something.
Greg beamed at me, holding up a cassette tape labeled “Songs 4 My Groovy Lady” in careful handwriting.
“There you are! Side A is for dancing. Side B is for…” He waggled his eyebrows. “Romancing.”
“Greg. I need you to listen to me very carefully.”
“Anything for you, foxy mama.”
“I am not your foxy mama. I am not anyone’s foxy mama. I need you to go back to wherever you came from, because I absolutely cannot deal with disco right now.”
His face fell. “But the universe said—”
“The universe needs to MIND ITS OWN BUSINESS.”
Behind me, through the shop window, I could see Marcus bent over the counter. Not looking up. Not looking at me.
The radio had gone silent.
I turned and walked away before I could do something stupid, like burst back in there and kiss him anyway, Greg and the magic and the entire universe be damned.
Greg followed me, chattering about cosmic alignment and groovy vibrations and whether I’d ever considered the healing power of disco. I let his words wash over me without listening, my phone buzzing against my hip, my chest tight with something that felt dangerously close to loss.
I’d been so close.
And now I didn’t know if I’d get another chance.