Chapter 18
Marigold finished her flower orders, then grabbed her wicker basket and headed out to gather supplies.
The morning farmers' market had taken over the town square, stalls bright with summer produce and the cheerful chaos of a small town on a Saturday morning.
The scent of fresh bread wafted from somewhere to her left.
A trio of pixies were arguing loudly over the last jar of local honey while a patient brownie waited to ring up whoever won.
"Morning, Marigold!"
She turned to find Mrs. Allenby waving from behind a display of absolutely magnificent tomatoes. The tiny dragon perched on her shoulder puffed a small cloud of steam in greeting.
"Good morning, Mrs. Allenby. Those tomatoes look incredible."
"Best of the season." Mrs. Allenby’s eyes crinkled with knowing warmth. "Planning something special?"
"Just a picnic."
"Mmmhmm." The sound was loaded with implication. "With that handsome satyr of yours?"
"He's not—" Her whole face felt hot. "We're just—"
"The whole town saw you dancing in the square last week, dear. The way that boy looked at you…" Mrs. Allenby fanned herself dramatically. "If my Reginald had ever looked at me like that, I might have forgiven him for the incident with the garden gnomes."
The dragon huffed an agreement.
She decided not to argue, purchased four perfect tomatoes, and fled before Mrs. Allenby could share any more details about Reginald and the gnomes.
The small local grocery store was a few blocks further, its brick facade weathered by decades of Harmony Glen's peculiar weather patterns. The bell above the door announced her arrival with a cheerful ding, and she hurried in, trying to look like someone on a simple, unremarkable shopping trip.
She failed immediately.
"Well, well, well."
Lila materialized from behind a display of seasonal melons, her grin covering her face. Her teal-streaked hair was piled in a messy bun, and she was carrying a basket of her own, though hers appeared to contain nothing but chocolate and wine.
"Don't," Marigold warned.
"I haven't said anything."
"You're thinking very loudly."
"I'm thinking that my best friend disappeared with nothing but a cryptic text about 'being busy,' and now she's wandering through the grocery store on a Saturday morning practically glowing." Lila's grin widened. "So either you've discovered an amazing new skincare routine, or—"
"Lila."
"—you finally took my advice and jumped that satyr's gorgeous—"
"Lila."
"What? It's a legitimate observation."
She grabbed her friend's arm and dragged her toward the bread aisle, which was mercifully empty. "Keep your voice down."
"Why? Do you think there's anyone in town who doesn't know? Mrs. Weatherspoon told the entire bridge club. Even the Sanderson sisters have been making comments about 'young love blooming in the vineyard,' and you know how they feel about puns."
She groaned and covered her face with her hand.
"Everyone knows?"
"Sweetie, this is Harmony Glen. Of course they do." Lila tilted her head, studying Marigold with the intensity of a scientist examining a particularly interesting specimen. "You're not denying it."
"Denying what?"
"That you and Thallos are together. An item. Making beautiful music together, possibly literally given he's a satyr—"
"We're…" she hesitated. What were they, exactly? Dating seemed too casual for what had happened between them. Together felt both too vague and too certain. "We're figuring it out."
Lila's expression softened. "But it's good? He's treating you well?"
"He's…" She thought about the dance lessons, the way he listened when she talked, the vendor contracts and the rose petals and the look on his face when she'd told him she wanted more.
"He's wonderful, Lila. He's kind and patient and he sees me.
Really sees me. And I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it just… doesn't."
"Maybe there's no other shoe."
"There's always another shoe."
"Not always." Lila reached out and squeezed her hand. "Maybe sometimes you just get to be happy."
It was such a simple statement. Such an impossible thing to believe. But standing in the bread aisle of Morrison's Grocery, her best friend's hand warm in hers and the memory of last night still glowing in her chest, she desperately wanted to believe it.
"I'm going on a picnic," she said. "Today. With Thallos. In the meadow by his vineyard."
"That's disgustingly romantic."
"I know."
"Then you're going to need better bread than anything they have here. Get those rosemary sourdough rounds from the bakery. And you'll want cheese from the dairy cart in the square—ask for the aged cheddar with the herb crust, it pairs beautifully with white wine. And for dessert—"
"Lila."
"I'm helping."
"You're taking over."
"Same thing."
In the end, she left the store with a basket full of carefully curated picnic supplies: strawberries and grapes, a selection of cured meats, crackers that Lila had deemed "acceptable," and two bottles of sparkling water because wine at a picnic with Thallos seemed like a recipe for a repeat of that first wine tasting.
She added a small jar of local honey—having fought her way past the pixies to claim it—and a bar of dark chocolate from the specialty display near the registers.
The walk back to her apartment took twice as long as usual because she kept getting stopped.
First by Mrs. Weatherspoon himself, who emerged from her store to offer her congratulations "on finding yourself a good one" and to hint heavily that if she was interested in any home improvements, she could recommend some excellent contractors for when she was "ready to expand."
Then by the Sanderson sisters, who were making their morning rounds through town and paused to inform her that the festival preparations were "coming along beautifully, dear" and that they were "so pleased" she and Thallos had "worked things out.
" The way they said it—knowing and warm and just slightly mischievous—made Marigold wonder exactly how much the town's oldest residents knew about the sacred grove and its effects on inhibitions.
Even Dorvak, the orc who ran the bakery, handed her a rosemary sourdough round with a grunted "on the house" and what passed for a smile on his stern face.
By the time she finally turned down the narrow lane that led to Bloom & Vine, her cheeks hurt from smiling and her heart felt impossibly full.
*This is what belonging feels like,* she thought.
Not just Thallos. All of it. The town that had welcomed her, the friends she'd made, the life she was building piece by piece. For years she'd been afraid to want things—afraid that wanting led to having, and having led to losing. But maybe she'd been wrong.
Maybe some things were worth the risk.
She was still riding that wave of contentment when she rounded the final corner and saw the familiar facade of her flower shop. And the woman standing in front of it.
Her heart dropped straight through the cobblestones.
No.
Daisy Bloom was a vision of fragile loveliness, as always.
Her blonde hair was artfully tousled, her makeup flawless, her dress a swirl of pale blue that would have looked ridiculous on anyone else but somehow worked on her.
She was surrounded by an explosion of designer luggage—four bags, no, five, piled on the sidewalk like the aftermath of a very glamorous shipwreck—and she was waving her phone in the air with the universal gesture of someone trying to find cell service.
"There you are!"
Daisy spotted her and beamed, abandoning her phone search to rush forward with arms outstretched. A cloud of perfume enveloped them both as Daisy pulled her into a crushing hug.
"Baby! Oh my God, look at you! You're practically glowing. What have you been doing? New moisturizer? A facial? No, wait, don't tell me—" Daisy pulled back, hands on Marigold's shoulders, eyes widening with delighted recognition. "Oh. Oh, it's a man."
"Mom."
"It is! I know that glow. That's the glow of a woman who's been thoroughly—"
"Mom!"
"What? I'm just saying." Daisy linked her arm through Marigold's and began steering them both towards the shop door, somehow managing to gesture at her luggage pile with her free hand.
"We need to get those inside before someone steals them.
Not that anyone in this adorable little town would steal them, but you never know.
I once had a bag stolen by a very determined seagull in Barcelona, and I've never quite recovered from the—"
"What are you doing here?"
The question came out sharper than she intended, and Daisy's smile flickered, just for a moment, before resettling into place.
"Can't a mother visit her daughter?"
"Considering I've barely heard from you since you dumped the shop in my lap and took off, I'm a little surprised."
"Well, I'm visiting now." Daisy's voice carried that particular brightness that meant she was pushing through an uncomfortable moment by sheer force of personality.
"Besides, I heard about this festival you're planning.
Chair of the Summer Dance Festival! My baby, running the whole show! I had to come see it for myself."
"How did you—"
"Ellie Sanderson and I have been friends for years, darling.
Didn't you know?" Daisy produced a key from somewhere—*where did she get a key?
*—and let herself into the shop. "She called me last month to tell me what a wonderful job you've been doing.
Said you'd really found your place here.
I was so proud I just had to—oh, you've done wonders with the shop! "
Daisy swept into Bloom & Vine like a hurricane making landfall, exclaiming over the arrangements and the window displays and the "precious rustic charm" of the exposed brick walls. Marigold followed in her wake, clutching her picnic basket and trying to gather her scattered thoughts.
Her mother was here. Her mother was here, in Harmony Glen, in the life Marigold had built specifically to escape the chaos of being Daisy Bloom's daughter. And she was acting like this was normal. Like she hadn't spent the last year barely remembering to return Marigold's phone calls.
"I'll just put my things up there and freshen up." Daisy was already heading for the back room. "That train was endless. You wouldn't believe the man who sat next to me, absolutely no concept of personal space. And I desperately need to—"
"Mom. Stop."
Something in her voice must have registered, because Daisy actually paused and looked back at her daughter with an expression that was almost, but not quite, uncertain.
"What's wrong, baby?"
"Why are you really here?"
"I told you—"
"The real reason."
Daisy's smile wavered. Just for a second. Just enough for Marigold to see the cracks beneath the polish.
"Can we talk about it later?" Daisy asked, and for once her voice was soft. Tired. Real. "I promise I'll explain everything. I just… I need a minute, sweetheart. Please."
It was the "please" that got her. Daisy Bloom didn't say please.
Daisy Bloom breezed and charmed and expected the world to rearrange itself around her desires.
But this Daisy—this version of her mother standing in the middle of Marigold's carefully organized shop with her mask slipping—looked genuinely fragile.
"Fine," she said. "But we are talking about this. Tonight."
"Tonight. Absolutely. I promise." Daisy's smile bounced back, bright and deflecting. "Now, tell me about this man who's making you glow. Is he here in town? Is it serious? You know I always thought you should—"
"I have plans today."
"Plans?"
"A picnic. With…" She hesitated, realizing she was going to have to say this out loud. "With the person I'm seeing."
"The person you're—oh!" Daisy clasped her hands together. "A date! Baby, that's wonderful! I want to meet him. I want to meet him immediately. We can have dinner! All three of us! We'll—"
"Mom—"
"Don't 'Mom' me, Marigold Rose Bloom. I am not going to spend my first visit to your new town sitting alone while you gallivant off with some—"
The bell above the shop door chimed.
They both turned.
Thallos stood in the entrance, backlit by the morning sun, a bottle of wine in one hand and a slightly bemused expression on his unfairly handsome face. His golden-brown eyes found Marigold first—warm, questioning, concerned—before shifting to the woman standing beside her.
"Am I interrupting something?" he asked.
Daisy made a sound that Marigold had heard before. Many times. Usually right before her mother did something impulsive and complicated and entirely outside the bounds of appropriate social behavior.
"Oh," Daisy breathed. "Oh, my."
"Mom," Marigold said, with the kind of desperate warning that never, ever worked. "This is Thallos. Thallos, this is my mother. Daisy."
Thallos's eyebrows rose almost imperceptibly.
He knew about Daisy—Marigold had told him about her mother's chaotic lifestyle, about the years of cleaning up messes, about the complicated tangle of love and frustration that defined their relationship.
But knowing about someone and meeting them were very different things.
"Mrs. Bloom." He stepped forward, offering his hand. "It's a pleasure to meet you."
Daisy took his hand but didn't shake it. Instead, she turned it over, examining his palm like she was reading his fortune, then looked up at him through her lashes with the particular expression that had been making men lose their common sense for thirty-plus years.
"Please," she said, "call me Daisy. Everyone calls me Daisy. And the pleasure is entirely mine."
*Oh no,* she thought. *Oh no, no, no.*
Her mother was *flirting.*
With Thallos.
With *her* Thallos.
Some things, apparently, never changed.