Sweet Beginnings

by Nicole Ellis

  “That must be exciting, getting to see new places all the time.” Wanderlust slammed into her, followed rapidly by acid churning in her gut. She’d thought she’d repressed the urge to travel, but now it reared up, ready to lead her on a merry chase. Doubt spun around her. Was she ready to settle down in Candle Beach, even temporarily?

  “It is wonderful,” Wendy said. “Well, most of the time. Sometimes it can be lonely. But if things aren’t so rosy after a while in one place, I can move on to greener pastures. I don’t like to stay in one place for too long.”

  Dahlia said nothing.

  “Are you alright?” Wendy asked.

  “I’m fine. As a kid, I dreamed of living somewhere else. I always thought when I grew up I’d be free to do what I wanted.”

  “What is it that you want?” Wendy asked. “You’re young; you should go for your dreams.”

  “That’s just it,” Dahlia said. “I don’t know what my dreams are now. My great-aunt left me her bookstore, and it was her life’s passion, but I don’t know if it’s mine.”

  Wendy regarded her with eyes full of years of wisdom. “Keep an open mind and you’ll find your path.”

  Dahlia’s breath caught. Her mother had said the same thing when she had wondered whether to sell the store.

  “Enough of that,” Wendy said. “I didn’t mean to upset you.” She motioned to another piece of furniture in her space, a formal ruby-red brocade sofa with a matching high-back chair. “This set is stylish and would be a fabulous addition to your bookstore. What do you think?”

  She stared at the red sofa, but barely saw it. The red set was beautiful, but she couldn’t get the green out of her mind. She could see people sitting on it, relaxing with a cup of coffee. It was exactly what she wanted for the store. The trust Aunt Ruth had set up for Dahlia’s living expenses provided enough for her basic needs and some wants. It would be tight, but she might be able to use some of those funds to pay for this sofa.

  Wendy caught her hesitation.

  “Tell you what. I’ll sell you the green sofa for the price of the red set. I’ll even deliver it to Candle Beach. How does that sound?”

  “It sounds great, but why would you sell it for less?” It wasn’t the shrewdest business question, but it popped out of her mouth before she could wrangle it back in.

  “Like I said, I have family up there and I think it may be time for a visit. And I like you. I think your bookstore is going to be a success and I can’t wait to see it when you finish the renovations.”

  “Okay, then. Thank you so much.” Dahlia wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. “Can you deliver it by Monday?”

  “Sure,” Wendy said. “I’m thinking about moving on up there this week anyways. My space lease is up in a few days and I’m considering selling at the summer market in Candle Beach for the rest of the summer. A few of my customers have mentioned it. Do you know anything about it?”

  “Your furniture would sell well,” Dahlia said. “There’s a ton of tourists there who own summer homes and they’re always looking for new furnishings for their houses.”

  “What about lodging? Is there a cheap motel with rooms to rent?” Wendy asked. “I suppose I could stay here in Haven Shores, but I’d love to get out of the fleabag motel I’ve been staying at.”

  An idea formed in Dahlia’s head. “I have the perfect place!”

  “Really? What is it?” Wendy cocked her head to the side.

  “There’s a one-bedroom apartment over the bookstore. The kitchen and bathroom are small, but the bedroom is a nice size. It hasn’t been used in years, but it’s perfectly livable. I cleaned the whole place last night. There’s even space in the back room of the bookstore for you to work on your projects.” Well, there wasn’t currently space, but she intended to remedy that. The boxes in the hallway needed to find a new home and there were piles of books in storage that hadn’t sold since the eighties. It was time for them to go. “What do you think about a trade?” Dahlia asked. “The green sofa for two months’ rent?”

  “I’ll take it. It’s been a while since I had a place to cook. I was getting tired of TV dinners warmed up in the motel’s microwave or dinners at the local greasy spoon.” Wendy’s eyes shone. “My horoscope said today would be a fortunate day, but I didn’t expect this. Hey, what sign are you?”

  Dahlia grinned. “Pisces, why?”

  Wendy nodded sagely. “Ah, a water sign. That explains the rainstorm today. And my horoscope said I’d interact with a Pisces today. We must both be having a fortunate day.”

  Dahlia didn’t believe in horoscopes, but to each their own.

  “You can move in anytime.” She plucked a pen and notepad from her bag, wrote down her address and cell phone number, and handed it to Wendy. “Just call ahead and let me know when you’ll be there so I can get everything set up for you.”

  Wendy smiled, then took a red pen from her pocket and wrote ‘Sold’ on the green sofa’s tag. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Dahlia managed to make it to the next section of the antique store before she danced a few steps. Something about the green sofa spoke to her and made her vision for the bookstore more real. In one of the collectible booths a few spaces down, she found a salt and pepper set in the shape of books. She took it as a sign that things would work out. After paying for the shakers, she left the store, feeling more positive than she had in a long time.

  To celebrate her new purchase, she stopped at a cute little café for lunch. She sat by the window and amused herself by making up stories about everyone who passed by. Before she knew it, it was after one o’clock. Lollygagging was fun but there was still so much to do. She paid her bill and hurried to her car.

  Next on her agenda was a paint store, where she spent a couple of painstaking hours picking out the perfect shade of aqua for the wall next to the one she’d already painted. In a furniture store, she selected an expensive dark wood bar to use as the espresso area. Her wallet screamed as her money flew out, but she was getting closer to making the bookstore seem more like it belonged to her.

  After picking up groceries and other odds and ends, Dahlia eased her aching feet back into the car. She sat in the driver’s seat and removed her wedge espadrilles to rub her toes. She hadn’t planned on walking so much in Haven Shores.

  The drizzle that had stuck around all day turned into a downpour, pelting her with droplets of cold rain. She shut the door, turned the ignition and cranked up the heat to defog the windows. The sky had darkened with the storm and she wanted to get home before daylight faded completely. The winding coastal roads weren’t fun to drive in ordinary weather conditions, but in a thunderstorm, they were dangerously nasty.

  About ten minutes out of Haven Shores, the engine light blinked on again, and stayed on. She groaned and pulled the car over into the entrance of an abandoned logging road. She turned on the emergency blinkers and popped the hood. Taking a deep breath, she opened the door and stepped outside, cringing as the icy rain hit her face. Her hair and clothes were drenched almost immediately. After checking the level of engine oil, she cursed and slammed the hood closed. The mechanics hadn’t fixed whatever had caused the Toyota’s oil leak, leaving her stuck now on an infrequently traveled two-lane road in the middle of a rainstorm.

  One of the few cars she’d seen out on the roads passed by, waterfalls of rain lit up in its headlights. She assessed her options. She could walk back to Haven Shores, but walking over eight miles on a road without sidewalks during a storm didn’t sound safe. Then again, hitching a ride wasn’t safe either. Her throbbing toes reminded her that she wasn’t wearing sensible shoes. Hitchhiking it was.

  She stood next to her car, feeling like a drowned rat. A semi flew by going ten mph over the speed limit and she jumped back. She leaned against the trunk of her car, hoping someone would stop.

  Then a car rounded the corner and slowed. She moved over to the passenger side, ready to jump in and lock the doors if needed. The vehicle halted and pa
rked behind her with its headlights on. She pushed sopping locks of hair away from her face and held her hand up to shield her eyes. A man stepped out of the car.

  When she saw who it was, she half wished it was a serial killer who had stopped.

  10

  “Do you need some help?” Garrett shielded his face from the rain with his jacket.

  “No, I’m standing out here to see how long it takes before I drown.” Dahlia folded her arms over her chest.

  “Looks like you’ve already achieved that,” he observed.

  She got back into her car and closed the door. Garrett knocked on the window and pantomimed opening the door. She unlocked it and folded her arms across her chest as he sat down in the passenger seat. Her stomach twisted. Why was she being so rude to him? Surely her jealousy had settled by now. It had been one kiss. He was free to talk to whomever he wanted.

  The tension in the air was as thick as Maggie’s banana cream pie. Her stomach grumbled at the thought of pie. She’d opted to skip dinner in town in favor of making it back to Candle Beach before the sunlight waned. Look how that had turned out.

  “Engine trouble?”

  “Yes. Stupid mechanics didn’t fix it and now I’m out of oil.” She stared straight ahead, not making eye contact with him. This was one more reason for him to think she was irresponsible. She knew she should have checked the oil levels herself, but she’d just had her car fixed three months before. The repair should have lasted longer than that.

  “I don’t have any oil with me, but I can give you a lift home.”

  “That would be nice,” she said stiffly. “Thank you.” She knew she’d been rude to him the night before and she wasn’t sure how things stood between them.

  “Sure, that’s what neighbors are for.” He looked at the bags of groceries in the back seat. “Do you need a hand with these?”

  She nodded and they each grabbed a few bags and stuffed them in the trunk of his car before she darted in through the passenger door.

  They sat in their seats, their drenched clothing dripping onto the cloth upholstery. Garrett turned up the heater, but she still shivered.

  “You’ve got to get out of those clothes.” He turned to check out the contents of the backseat. “Here, take off your shirt and put this on.” He handed her a fleece zip-front jacket.

  She looked at him pointedly and he turned toward his window. Then she peeled off her wet top and pulled the fleece over her head. The men’s jacket engulfed her and fell in folds against the car’s seat, warming her instantly despite her wet hair.

  “Thank you.” She leaned forward to catch the heat emanating from the vent.

  Garrett turned in his seat and put his hands on the wheel. “Ready?” he asked.

  She nodded, burrowing into the comforting warmth of the fleece’s collar. The garment smelled like his aftershave, reminding her of how she’d felt with his arms wrapped around her. She surreptitiously took another breath of the tantalizing scent before pushing the collar down and busying herself with drying out her purse. He pulled out onto the highway.

  “So what were you doing in Haven Shores today? Just grocery shopping?” The rain pelted the windshield and he increased the wiper speed.

  “A few errands,” she said noncommittally. She didn’t want to get into her plans for renovating To Be Read.

  “Have you given any thought to selling the bookstore to me?” he asked. “My offer still stands.”

  “I won’t be selling.” She gazed out her window and then over to him.

  “Oh.” He tightened his grip on the steering wheel. “So you’ll be staying in Candle Beach?”

  She breathed through her nose. Even if he wasn’t interested in her romantically, he’d been nice to pick her up and the least she could do was be civil to him. “I’m planning on staying for the foreseeable future. Actually, I was out buying paint and other supplies to renovate the bookstore.” Her hair was still dripping. She brushed a pebble of water off the fleece.

  “Look, I think you may have misunderstood my intentions,” he said. “I don’t want to take your business from you. If it works out for you—great. But if you decide being a small-town bookstore owner isn’t your cup of tea, come find me.”

  Dahlia remembered how she’d felt listening to Wendy talk about the freedom of not being tied down to any one place or job. Her head pounded. Thank goodness Candle Beach was only ten more minutes down the road.

  “You think I’m flighty, I get that. And maybe I am, but I’m doing the best I can.” She jutted out her chin. “I’m going to renovate the bookstore and make it a success.”

  “That’s great. I’m happy you decided to stay here. And I never said you were flighty,” he said in measured tones. “But I grew up with a free-spirited mother and I know how hard it was for her to stay in the same place.” He glanced out the window at the angry ocean surf, pounding against the beach. “Heck, I must have attended twenty different schools before I left for college. I never had a chance to make friends or get settled. I vowed never to live like that again. That’s why I want to put down roots in Candle Beach.”

  “I’m not like that,” Dahlia said. “I’d never do that to my future children. But that’s part of the reason I want to see the world now.” Her heart flipped at the thought of future children and she wasn’t sure if it was due to being scared about that image, or from the idea of giving up her freedom at that point.

  “I’m sure my mom never intended for me to suffer from her actions, but she couldn’t help herself. She’s not a bad person, but the feelings of others don’t rank high on her priority list,” Garrett said. “What about your ex-husband? How did he feel about it?”

  “We’re divorced. That says it all.” She looked up at the ceiling. This was the longest car ride of her life. They passed by the overlook where she had first seen Garrett. It seemed like a lifetime ago but had only been three months prior. “I spent my whole marriage compromising on things I wanted to do. After a few years, I’d had enough.”

  “So he never compromised on things he wanted to do?” The window had fogged up considerably and he turned the defroster knob to full blast.

  “Never,” she said, without even thinking about it.

  Had he though? She thought back to their honeymoon. Jeff had wanted to tour historic Boston, but she’d insisted on a cruise. He’d given in, although he was terrified of traveling outside of the U.S. When she’d wanted to take art classes, he hadn’t seen the point, but he’d offered to take a photography class with her. She’d told him it was the sculpting class or nothing.

  “Okay, so maybe it wasn’t as bad as I thought at the time,” she said grudgingly. “We still weren’t meant to be together—we were too different.”

  “Different isn’t always a bad thing,” Garrett observed. He expertly piloted the car around what she knew to be Bluebonnet Lake, although in this weather she couldn’t see it.

  “It is when it keeps a person from getting to do what they want with their life,” she said.

  “But isn’t that how a relationship should work? Two people should grow in their relationship and learn from the other’s interests and dreams,” he said as they pulled into town.

  She leaned back against the headrest, deep in thought. Before she could respond to his comment, he’d parked in front of what she’d always think of as Aunt Ruth’s house.

  The rain had decreased to a light sprinkle by the time they arrived. She jumped out of the car and he pulled the lever to release the trunk so she could retrieve her groceries. He didn’t get out or offer to help. She didn’t know if that stemmed from a desire to allow her space or if he was irritated with her.

  “Thanks for the ride.” She closed the door and waved to him before dashing for the front door. He waited until she had the front door open and then he took off. She watched his tail lights trail away as he drove down the hill to his rental cottage.

  It had been a crazy day. Or perhaps, as Wendy had said, a fortunate day. Only time
would tell.

  11

  The next morning, after forking over all of her remaining cash to have the tow truck bring her car to the mechanic’s garage in Candle Beach, Dahlia settled behind the desk she’d placed in front of the bay window in Aunt Ruth’s old bedroom. She hadn’t yet worked up the nerve to sleep in there, but she’d moved the hope chest over to the other side of the room and replaced it with a desk to allow her to work from home.

  She opened up her aging laptop and tapped her fingers impatiently on the desk while her spreadsheet loaded. As soon as she could, she needed to purchase a faster computer for the store. She reconciled her bank account with the purchases she’d made the day before in Haven Shores and the estimate the mechanic had given her. The result was sobering. Without additional cash, she wouldn’t be able to finish the renovation, much less buy a computer.

  She pushed the laptop lid closed, resting her hands on the top for a moment as she gazed out the window at the wide expanse of ocean. The waves lapping at the sand had always given her peace in the past, seeming to wash her troubles out to sea. The magic didn’t work today. Her thoughts swirled around her like the tide surging through a seastack.

  She only had one option, and it wasn’t pleasant. Agnes held the purse strings, and to get any additional funds Dahlia would have to request the money from her.

  She pushed herself up from the desk and went down to the kitchen to make lunch. Wendy had texted that she’d be in Candle Beach by five p.m. and Dahlia wanted to get a few more things done around the bookstore before she arrived, including moving the boxes that currently blocked the hallway leading to the upstairs apartment.

  She filled a kettle with water to make tea and opened the fridge to peruse the contents, but a steady plop, plop sound distracted her. She turned away from the refrigerator to ensure she’d turned the sink handle completely off. She had, but the sound of dripping water continued. Puzzled, she rotated in a circle to seek the source of the sound. Near the back porch, the ceiling sagged in an ominous, widening tan blotch. Beads of water hung from the off-color section and puddled on the floor below. The patch the handyman had installed had started to leak. He’d warned her that it would eventually fail and he wouldn’t be able to keep fixing it. She needed a new roof.