by Nina Bocci
I was so deep in thought that I hadn’t noticed that the double doors to Pop Pop’s office were propped open. Normally, they were always closed. Even as a kid, I hardly ever went in there because it always made Gigi sad. This year would mark twenty-five years since he had passed.
Tonight, I didn’t know if it was accidental that they were open or if Gigi had been in there and didn’t close them all the way. I tiptoed over and peered inside. Like every other room, save for the As Seen on TV room, it was meticulously maintained. Gigi had a pair of cleaning professionals come in weekly, but this was more than that.
The shelves were all perfectly aligned with rows and rows of books. Peppered in between were photos, much like the ones that dotted the walls throughout the house: Pop Pop stationed at various locations in World War II. His and Gigi’s wedding, Dad’s first birthday, and more highlights of their amazing life together.
Pop Pop’s desk appeared as if it was in the same condition as it had been just before he passed away. The wheeled leather chair was even pivoted as if he were going to walk in at any moment and sit at his typewriter. There was even a sheet of paper popping out of the top of the typewriter waiting for his words. “Do you remember him?” Gigi said from behind me.
My hand flew to my chest, and I turned. “Gigi, you scared me.”
“Apologies. I was just wondering. I’m at the age where I’m forgetting the little things, and that bothers me. It never felt like we had enough time together.”
“Quality not quantity, right?” I said, taking her hand.
She smiled in agreement, squeezing my hand. With a quick sputter, she pushed the joystick to guide us around the room, pausing every few steps to explain a detail.
“Nearly everything in here is older than you; isn’t that incredible? These books have lived such a life. There’s so many stories in here.”
“I bet there’s a lot that aren’t even in the books,” I said, taking a book down from the first shelf in the corner.
“Is this Pop Pop’s first?” I asked, reading the dark green spine. It had ornate gold letters on the fabric cover.
No dust jacket like the newer books had. Just old craftsmanship.
THE CATACOMB MYSTERY
Gigi took it carefully, cradling it in her delicate hands. “Yes, I was so proud when this came home with him. It was the first copy ever printed, too. He got to watch it being made. I don’t know if that’s even allowed anymore.”
“Maybe Henry will know. We can ask him when he gets here,” I said, hoping she’d nod or give me some indication it was Henry we were waiting for.
“Good try. Be patient. That goes for everything, too. Don’t be in such a rush. Time moves fast enough the way it is. Don’t go chasing it with a stick to get it going quicker.”
“Okay, okay, wise one.”
Gigi slapped me on the rear end before scooting forward with the original book on her lap. Each one she picked up had a story. I knew Pop Pop was prolific, but I hadn’t realized how many books he’d actually penned. “Gigi, have you read all of these?”
“Most, not all. Once he got sick, I had a hard time keeping up with them. He had so many written and they were publishing them slowly, I think to stretch it out after he died. After he passed away, dozens more came out in the years that followed. They sent them, of course, but I just had Mancini, or your father, put them away in here. I never opened many of them.”
“Can I? I won’t have time for all, but I’d love to read some of them.”
Gigi smiled. “Darling, these are as much yours as they are mine. Read whatever you like.”
There was a quiet knock on the door. “Coming!” I called, looking to Gigi for some indication of what was going on. Of course, I got nothing.
“Have fun. But not too much fun.” Gigi winked.
“Scandalous!” I joked, kissing her cheek before stepping out of the room.
I braced myself, still hoping it was Henry.
But Henry made it clear …
I know, I know.
I took the final step to be directly in front of the door and looked up expectantly, only to have my heart speed up double-time.
“Hi, Charlotte,” he said, standing on the porch, looking shy and awkward. I couldn’t understand why, but whenever I saw him, he appeared unsure of himself.
“Henry.” I gave him a small wave.
“Oh, for pity’s sake, invite him in, girl!” Gigi howled, zipping behind me to wave to Henry.
“Blood orange, don’t forget it!” she shouted before disappearing down the hall and into her room.
“Oh, this was on the door,” he said, holding up a small white envelope.
My eyes grew wide.
“Oh, shit. Thanks, I’ll be right back.”
The envelope felt like a grenade in my hand the way Henry eyed it suspiciously. In the small first-floor bathroom, I tucked it into the closet between two fluffy ivory towels and joined Henry back in the foyer.
“Everything okay?” he asked, glancing at my empty hands.
I nodded, adding a forced smile. Truth was, I didn’t have an honest answer for him.
14
If anyone in town didn’t know we were preparing for the grand opening of Late Bloomers, they weren’t paying attention. We papered signs all over the place. All over every. Single. Business. I was pretty sure my dad had informed everyone he knew in Barreton and Mount Hazel as well. Between his and Dr. Max’s coverage in the surrounding towns, we had almost the whole county covered and excited.
Between them, Henry, Nick, and Cooper, it was teamwork at its finest. Of course, Mancini and Gigi threw in their support by emailing the senior groups. Apparently, they were well versed in social media, because they offered to run a Facebook page for me.
I was starting to see why these people, my friends, loved Hope Lake so much. Everyone pulled together. There wasn’t a one-upmanship where one business tried to get ahead of another.
“Are you ready?” Emma asked, when I opened the door after she picked me up at Gigi’s to take me to the shop. The sun was barely up, just rising over the mountainside in a brilliant orangey-red like the petals of a lily.
“As I’ll ever be,” I said honestly, the butterflies erupting in my belly. “I can’t believe today is the grand opening.”
We pulled down the road, heading toward the diner. “Plan the same?” I asked.
The plan was to hit the diner sometime around ass-crack-thirty, then go to the shop by seven for one more walk-through/panic session. Gigi suggested I try a bit of yoga to calm down somewhere in there, but that wasn’t going to happen. I was way too anxious for that.
“Yep, breakfast and then your big day.”
“I’m not sure I can eat. I’m not nervous. Just sort of, I don’t know, overwhelmed.”
“Overwhelmed I can work with,” she insisted as we pulled into the lot of the 81 Café again. No surprise, even at 5:30 a.m. it was packed to the gills with cars.
“Again, I say to you, are they giving something away?”
She laughed. “Charlotte, you only had lunch here one time, and unless someone else brought you, you haven’t been back since.”
“Well, I did see Dr. Max here during lunch last week …” I raised an eyebrow, waiting for her reaction.
“Oh, really.” She pulled up her sunglasses to give me a look. “And?”
“Dr. Max has been great. He’s giving me space to figure out what the hell I’m doing with the shop, and with Gigi and the house. My free time has been at a premium, but he doesn’t seem to mind. I’m sure after the opening today, we’ll find time to get together again.”
“That’s a good sign. A guy who isn’t trying to wedge himself into your life in every free second.”
She zipped into the reserved spot for the mayor. “We don’t have a lot of time. What do you want?”
“It’s breakfast, Em. Get whatever you want. I trust you,” I insisted, really meaning it. Next to Parker, I knew that Emma was creeping into be
st-friend territory and that I could count on her for anything.
After she returned with our breakfast, we were on our way to Late Bloomers.
* * *
“SO ARE YOU still overwhelmed?” Emma asked as she moved some papers off the counter.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m just worried about your prospective numbers for the business.”
Emma had submitted projected reports to both me and Lucille of how the business would do. It was how she rallied support behind it. While I didn’t necessarily need to worry, I still did. If I failed, the business failed, and then I ruined a chance I had to really build something.
Emma looked mildly offended with thin lips and her brows furrowed, but it passed quickly, and her dark eyes twinkled. “I’ll have you know I’m like Santa. I always make my list and check it twice.”
“Ho, ho, ho. I get it. It’s just a lot of pressure. What if this is a categorical failure?”
She shrugged. “You have numbers to support it. If we didn’t, no one would have gone through with this in the first place. Charlotte, why the sudden onset of doubt?”
I sighed. “I really didn’t want this to turn into a friggin’ therapy session.”
“If I promise not to charge you for the advice, will you let it all out?” she said, grabbing my hand.
“Maybe not all of it—that still needs those beers you promised.”
“Deal.”
“I just keep hearing my mother in my head telling me that this place ruins people …” I took a deep breath.
“Why now, though? Or has she been in your ear since you arrived?”
I swallowed, thinking of a way to explain this without sounding like someone who needed to be committed. “It feels like whenever I think I’m happy, or could be happy here, it starts up.”
“I suppose that’s possible, but I also think you’re afraid to let yourself be happy.”
I parroted the words back to her. “I suppose that’s possible. My focus has been on the grand opening since you told me about this harebrained idea. To make it wildly successful, to drive excitement, but think about it, would people be interested in a flower shop? Especially one run by a has-been florist? Could this town even sustain it after being so used to whatever was included in the Shop n’ Save?”
Emma cleared her throat. “First of all, it’s a little late to be asking that now, Charlotte.” She tried sounding aloof, but worry betrayed her smooth voice. “Charts and numbers seem to think so, but who knows for sure. Death and taxes, my friend. Those are the only two guarantees.”
I shrugged. “What’s the second of all?”
Her answer was quick this time. “Honestly? What do you care if it fails? You won’t be here.”
I reared back. “Ouch.”
“Honesty, my friend. I’m not a fan of lying. Especially not to friends who are doing me a serious solid. If this goes belly-up, it’s my head on the line, but—and this is a very big but—I don’t believe it will. I’ve seen what you can do and what you’ve created in a short amount of time. I think people are going to fall in love with your creativity and your infectious spirit and keep finding ways to come back to Late Bloomers. So, chin up. I have faith in you. You need to have it in yourself.”
“You’re right. Okay, let’s get to work,” I said, putting all my fears aside to open my first shop.
* * *
WE WERE HIDING out in the back room. We’d done the walk-through, artfully arranged the vases what felt like a hundred times, rearranged my desk by stacking and restacking the order forms that would hopefully be filled. Emma even went so far as to vacuum the floor because it would pass the time. With just a half hour to go before showtime, we holed up in the back near the coolers so we couldn’t obsessively stare out the front window looking for potential customers.
“Maybe we should just take a peek?” she sputtered, and it was a relief to see a nervous Emma.
“Aren’t you nervous? Why aren’t you nervous? Why am I nervous? You look calm. What the hell, man? This isn’t my venture, it’s yours,” Emma rambled, biting at her smartly manicured nail.
I spun around, pointing a finger accusingly at her. “You ass. I wasn’t nervous, but now I am. Why are you talking? Stop talking.”
“What if no one shows? What if the flyers blew off the poles? What if it’s just your dad, Dr. Max Hotness, Gigi, and Mancini here?”
“Dr. Max Hotness?” I laughed, grateful for the bread crumb to focus on instead of the doom and gloom what-ifs.
She looked at me with a confounded expression. “Don’t tell anyone that I call him that!”
“Sure, sure. I’ll keep your squirrelly nicknames to myself.”
Emma turned, advancing on me so quickly I stumbled back. “While I’m thinking of it. Did you ever figure out if he sent the obnoxious bouquet?”
I nodded, popping a Tic Tac into my mouth. “He basically said it was him without actually confirming it was him.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“I asked him, and he said something like ‘Secret admirers never sign their cards.’ ”
“Oh, good. At least you know it was from him and not some rando trying to fix you up.”
“There have been a couple others, though. He hasn’t mentioned them, and I haven’t brought them up, either.”
“Other what? Flowers?”
“No, no. Envelopes with nice messages. Heartfelt quotes from famous poets or lines from love stories. I’ve been researching them because I’m not familiar with any of it.”
“That’s wickedly romantic, and I hate you just a little for it. Cooper isn’t a love-letter kind of guy. More like a sexy look followed by … TMI. Sorry. Anyway, the secret-romance stuff must be nice. Max doesn’t strike me as the romantic type, but I’ve been known to be wrong.”
“Anyway, you can keep swooning over Dr. Max, and I’ll keep it from your beloved fiancé.”
“Oh, please. He knows. I get a bit tongue-tied.”
I waggled my eyebrows. “Oh, really?”
“About a month ago, I stopped by Henry’s parents’ house to say hello, and Henry’s father was still on the treadmill. Sweaty gray T-shirt, Harrison’s normally perfectly coiffed hair was drooping in his eyes. Needless to say, I took one look at him, sputtered something incoherent, and promptly walked into the doorframe, knocking my sunglasses off my face.”
“Hopeless,” I added playfully.
Emma looked at her watch. “I can’t take it anymore. I need to look.” With that we both went up front and saw a group of people waiting out front.
“Still worried about my numbers?” Emma said with a laugh.
* * *
“THE LINE IS down the block,” I said, shaking yet another hand of a person whose name I couldn’t remember. Dozens of people poured through the front door when we opened and hadn’t stopped since. It was so busy that we had Nick working the door to welcome people in and chat while they waited outside.
“The good news is, the other businesses down this end of the square are loving the foot traffic!” Emma said excitedly, waving to someone she knew.
“Thank you! See you next week for the birthday flowers,” I said, smiling as the elderly woman teetered out of the shop holding a small bouquet of daisies.
Turning to Emma, I whispered, “We need someone else to take orders. We can’t keep up with me designing and taking payments and you schmoozing and barking orders.”
“I’m type A! I like to organize. Besides, forget the walk-ins for a minute, you need to hire someone to help with these orders. There are enough special orders here to keep you here day and night for the next six months!” Emma beamed, ripping another order slip off and filing it into the M–F binder she designed. It was going to help me stay organized and not overwhelmed. Until I looked inside and saw how many orders I had to complete, that was. “I’m going to be here all night just getting the wholesalers’ orders placed.” I called for Gigi to take over as I started going th
rough all the order slips. “Wait, some of these are months from now?”
She shrugged. “I’ll cross that bridge with whoever takes over after you leave.”
“Listen, Em … ,” I began, but another wave of people had just been let in by Nick, who was helping manage traffic since the shop couldn’t hold more than about a dozen or so people at a time. I still hadn’t been able to thank him for the help or the snack from Casey’s he brought as a congrats gift.
“This is going to be a long day,” Emma said, eyeing the crowd.
Around lunchtime, it began to slow, but I had a feeling once it rolled around to one o’clock, we’d see an uptick again. Hopefully, not as many at once.
“Where’s Henry today?” I asked. I was disappointed that he hadn’t been able to make it yet.
Emma slid me a glance. “Barreton U? He started his summer-school teaching a few days ago.”
“Oh, I was hoping he was going to be able to stop in.”
“I’m sure he’ll make it. I know he wouldn’t want to miss it,” she said, handing me a small knife to open another pack of order forms. Emma had made it clear that she thought I was walking a very tight rope without any safety net beneath me when it came to Henry.
The other night, I had explained to Emma what I was feeling toward Henry. She wasn’t surprised by it, but warned in the kindest way possible that while he might look big and imposing, he was soft and squishy on the inside.
“Emma, I know you’re looking out for him, but—”
She turned, smiling. “Henry is a grown man. I just don’t want to see his heart go through the blender again.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? Why would his heart be pulverized?”
“First of all, do I have to remind you about Dr. Max? You’ve been texting him since you got here. And while I’m a big advocate of that, I can’t sit by while you pine for Henry, too. And secondly, there is something about Henry’s past that explains why he doesn’t want to get involved with you. Henry should be the one to tell you this, but I know he won’t. Please, for the sake of our friendship, don’t repeat this.” She waited for me to nod before continuing.