Chapter Twenty-Seven
Thursday morning came, and my muscles still ached from hauling Marigold’s floral coolers the night before. Rhett’s tool bag sat by the door. I caught myself glaring at them more than once, as if they were personally responsible for my restless nights.
Not that the tools cared.
Leaving the backroom, I passed the tiny bag I’d tucked onto the storage shelf—still wrapped in tissue paper from the antique store.
I hadn’t found the right time to give it to him before the kiss, and after the argument, I wasn’t sure there’d ever be a right time.
Still, somehow, it felt right leaving it here. Among his handiwork.
Easton sprawled belly-up in a sunbeam near the window, snoring and twitching every few seconds. I envied how easy he made the calm look. Instead, I shoved the last of my croissant in my mouth and tried to convince myself that this was all normal. Healthy, even.
“Georgie!”
Margot’s voice carried through the front door before I could stop her, followed by the unmistakable click of high heels on wood.
I dropped the Morning Bell bag onto the counter and rubbed my temples. “Please tell me you didn’t—”
Too late. Margot swept into the shop, hair gleaming in a twist, not a single strand daring to escape. She could’ve been headed to brunch: cream-colored jumpsuit, snakeskin belt, and black platforms that threw light with every step.
“—dress like you’re headed to the Met Gala?” I finished weakly.
“It’s called being presentable,” she said breezily, leaning down to pat Easton’s belly. He whined for more when she stopped, traitor that he was. “Besides, I figured you’d need moral support. And maybe someone with an eye for design.”
“You’re going to ruin that jumpsuit.”
She waved a manicured hand. “Then it was time for a new one anyway.”
I laughed despite myself, because of course she’d say that. “Okay, fine, but don’t expect me to reimburse you for any damaged designer goods.”
“Don’t worry, I can handle it,” Margot replied, striding deeper into the shop. She pulled her phone from her bag, scowled, tapped something quickly, and slipped it back without a word.
I raised an eyebrow but said nothing.
We started with the back wall. I’d already cleared away the wilted arrangements and both of the floral coolers, but the built-in counter would demand some creativity.
My plan was to refinish it somehow, maybe using the shelving underneath for spare pottery that wouldn’t fit in the backroom.
Margot stood with her arms crossed, pretending to supervise.
“Don’t just stand there,” I said, pointing toward a stack of boxes filled with bags of soil, floral arranging materials, and watering cans. “Grab one of those and start hauling.”
Her nose wrinkled. “Do I look like a hauler?”
“No, but you look like someone who offered to help, and that’s close enough.” Sighing, I nodded toward the back door. “They need to get stacked in the alley. Someone from the thrift store is coming to pick them up later.”
She huffed but obediently tottered toward the pile. One box later, and she gracefully perched on the next one like a cardboard throne. “That was manual labor. I think I need electrolytes.”
I bit back a grin. “Electrolytes? You carried a box twenty feet.”
“Carried it in style,” she corrected.
For the next hour we made slow progress, interrupted constantly by Margot’s commentary: how the light would be so much better if we knocked down the front wall, how pottery was “having a moment,” how she couldn’t believe I didn’t want to paint a mural.
Her phone buzzed every ten minutes. She’d step aside, lips tightening, thumb flicking across the screen.
“You know, you’re supposed to be helping me, not checking your email every two seconds,” I teased at one point, leaning on the wall.
She jumped, then shoved the phone back in her pocket. “I am helping. Emotional support counts, doesn’t it?”
“Sure,” I drawled, but my stomach began to knot. Margot’s opinions were nothing new to me—but she’d never been so distracted before.
Later, she abandoned her shoes entirely and padded around barefoot, muttering about ruined pedicures. I could barely contain my laugh each time she glanced down at her once-pristine outfit with something like genuine betrayal.
“This is not how I imagined my day going,” she said, wiping her forehead with the back of her hand.
“Welcome to the glamorous life of entrepreneurship,” I muttered, coughing as dust settled in the air. “But maybe you could wear flat shoes next time.”
She gave me a look like I’d sworn at her, then abruptly bent down to swipe something off the floor—her phone again. Another message, another quick flick of her thumb across the screen.
“Everything okay?” I asked, trying to sound casual.
Her head snapped up. “Fine. Totally fine.” She smiled, but it looked unnatural. “Just… work stuff.”
“Bad?”
“Work stuff,” Margot repeated, brushing off her pants as if to tell me the conversation was over.
Before I could press further, a brisk knock sounded from the doorway.
“Georgette?”
I turned, heart sinking a fraction when I saw Janice poking her head in. Rhett didn’t have a reason to be here anymore. I had to keep reminding myself of that.
“Janice, come in!” I set the broom aside. “Don’t mind the mess. We’re in the moving phase.”
Her hair tucked under a wide-brimmed sunhat, she carried a tote bag bulging with papers. She stepped carefully over a bag of soil, eyes warm as they swept across the nearly empty shop. “Looks like progress to me.”
Margot gave her a two-fingered wave and promptly retreated to the backroom, muttering something about answering a phone call.
Janice’s voice softened once Margot was out of earshot. “I wanted to talk, if you have a minute.”
“Of course.” My pulse quickened. Janice rarely looked serious, but today there was a tightness around her mouth that made me nervous. I wasn’t sure what I’d do if she was sick again.
Janice hugged her tote under her arm. “Georgie, you know I love you like my own granddaughter.”
I nodded, dreading where this was headed.
“But the grant I mentioned…” Janice hesitated, dragging a folder from her tote. “It isn’t guaranteed. I may have gotten ahead of myself when I said the funds were lined up.”
My pulse quickened. “What do you mean, not guaranteed?”
“The town council applied for a small business revitalization grant through the state,” she explained gently. “We made it through the first round, but there’s still paperwork, approvals, waiting periods. It could be months before we know anything, and even then… well, there’s no promise.”
I stared at her, words curdling in my mind. “But you said—”
“I know.” She reached for my hand and squeezed it. “You never talk about what’s bothering you, but with the flower orders decreasing in size… well, it wasn’t hard to put it together.”
The knot in my stomach cinched tighter. “So if the grant doesn’t come through… how am I going to pay Rhett?”
“Don’t worry about that, he knew all along,” she replied as if it wasn’t world-shifting news. “With the festival contract, he didn’t really need the grant money.”
“So why did—” I shook my head. Knowing wouldn’t help.
The room seemed to shrink; even the dust hung heavier in the air. I glanced around at the barren walls and the stacked boxes in the alley. What had seemed like a fresh start an hour ago now loomed like a dark cloud.
Margot reappeared, wiping her hands on a dish towel she must’ve scavenged in the back. “What’s with the long faces?” she asked, but her eyes flicked to the folder in my hands before sliding back to mine.
“Nothing,” I said too quickly. “Just logistics.”
Janice gave me a sad smile. “I’ll leave you to it. Remember—one step at a time. This is the right direction, Georgie. I just know it.”
I walked her to the door, trying to smile back, but my chest ached.
When I turned, Margot was already scrolling through her phone again, face lit by the glow of the screen. For the first time all day, I wanted to snatch it out of her hands and demand to know what was so important.
Instead, I swallowed hard, tossed the folder on the counter and began sweeping dust into a pile to keep my hands busy.
Because suddenly, Georgie’s Pottery Shop seemed more like a gamble than a dream.
Margot plopped onto the nearest bucket-turned-stool and stretched out her legs, oblivious to the fact that she’d just left a trail of dust across the half-cleaned floor.
She tugged her phone out of her pocket, glanced at it with that same tight-jawed look I’d caught twice already, then shoved it back.
“You okay?” I asked, trying not to sound like I was prying.
“Mmhm,” she said, too quickly, then grinned. “I was just thinking—what if we made this place a pottery café? People could come in, drink lattes, and buy some pottery.”
I gave her a look. “The Morning Bell is barely thirty feet away.”
“True,” she admitted casually, but still appeared on edge.
I pushed the broom onto its hook in the closet. “Why don’t you brainstorm names instead? I’m stuck between Georgie’s Pottery Shop and something more… whimsical.”
Her phone buzzed against the plastic bucket. Margot’s hand darted out to silence it more quickly than I’d seen her move since her last high school soccer game.
I raised an eyebrow. “Secret admirer?”
She plastered on a fake smile. “Please. If I had one of those, you’d be the first to know.”
I wanted to say that was far from the truth, but I didn’t feel like pushing any further.
Margot tilted her chin, phone cemented to her lap. “So—name ideas. What about… Claymates? Or Mug Life? Even better—Kiln It!”
I groaned. “You are officially banned from brainstorming forever.”
She shrugged. “Fine. But admit it, Kiln It! is catchy.”
“Catchy in the way the flu is catchy.” I picked up a rag to wipe down the counter, only to realize it streaked mud across the surface instead of cleaning it. This was going to take a while.
We carried on like that for another hour, alternating between bursts of actual progress and stretches of chaos. At one point I attempted to hammer a nail into the wall for a mock display shelf, missed, and shrieked when the nail shot across the room like a tiny missile.
“Weaponized carpentry,” Margot had said.
By the time the afternoon sun angled through the front windows, the shop looked halfway like a construction zone and halfway like a garage sale gone very, very wrong.
Margot’s jumpsuit was streaked with dust and soil, the once-pristine fabric now the color of dishwater.
I should have felt triumphant, but all I could think about was Janice’s folder sitting on the counter.
When Margot left—claiming she needed a shower and a “decontamination face mask”—the silence pressed heavily in my mind. I locked the door behind her and leaned against it for a moment, letting my eyes travel the room.
Empty shelves. Scratched counters. Boxes of supplies I should’ve tried to sell.
I crossed the shop slowly, dragging my hand across the cool surface of the old florist’s counter. I could still see faint stains from years of flower stems in the grout. My grandmother’s fingerprints lived here, in every nick and scratch.
Now it was mine to shape.
Or at least, it could be.
If the grant came through. If I found other funding. If my heart could take another disappointment.
I sat on a bucket, the folder still waiting where I’d left it. For a long time I just stared at the neat stack of papers inside—charts, deadlines, bureaucratic jargon I barely understood.
Blowing out a breath, I stood and crossed to the big front windows.
The glass was streaked and caked in dust, but when I wiped it with my sleeve I could see the whole street—the Morning Bell across the way, a few kids riding their bikes to the beach, and Mrs. Henderson locking up the Market for the night.
Bluebell Cove remained small, stubborn, sometimes stuck in its ways. But it was also home. If I could build something here—something real and something entirely mine—maybe that was enough.
I pressed my palm to the cool glass, whispering a promise to my grandmother, and to myself. “I’ll figure it out.”
Behind me, the folder sat silent, propped open by Margot’s forgotten coffee cup, lipstick mark smudged on the rim.
I didn’t know what she was hiding, or if she’d even tell me when she was ready.
But for now, it was just me and Easton, the mess, and the thousand steps between this dusty room and Georgie’s Pottery Shop.