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He always used her favorite flowers, and this time of year was when the peonies bloomed, which was exactly where I headed. The little open shack next to the garden housed a few tools, so I grabbed the gloves, glancing inside dubiously, imagining a mama spider next to an egg sac in their depths. But in the end, I shoved both hands in without getting bitten, picked up the shears, and trucked into the flower bed.
It was an explosion of color and scent and texture so intense, one didn’t know where to look. Wild roses wound through sunflowers and dahlias and foxgloves. Honeysuckle climbed along the fence, occasionally reaching into the bed to mingle with the other more delicate stems. There was no rhyme or reason to it, just beautiful chaos. Pretty to look at but not easy to find what you were looking for, should you be looking for something specific.
Peonies in every color of pink caught my eye, the fuchsia plants first. Their blooms sagged, too heavy for the long stems to keep upright. The one unchanging feature of the garden was Grandma’s peony bushes in creamy peach, soft pinks, rosy petals, and into the deeper shades until they hit this crazy hot-pink.
I leaned in and lifted a bloom, bringing it to my nose for a deep breath of heady perfume. And with an outrageous smile on my face, I began to cut stems until I had a gradient of my favorite color cradled in my arms. A couple of white foxgloves and a handful of Russian sage later, and I had enough for two bouquets.
Perfect.
It wasn’t until I reached the porch again that I realized I was all cut up. Fine slashes on my arms from thorny roses, a deeper gash on the side of my index finger, and my bare feet scuffed up and raw on the bottom. Shrugging it off, I plopped down on the patio in front of my boots with my haul and arranged them in the necks, thinking of my grandmother.
She’d died before my parents, the stroke swift and fatal. I was six, so my memory of her was foggy and vague, but I knew her from stories Pop and Kit had told, from the remnants of her left all over the farm.
My hands paused. The old store—her old store—sat hidden behind a thatch of trees near the barn. Pop had locked it up when she died, and as a little girl, I used to sneak up to the porch and look inside. It was a time capsule, dull with dust, her wares spread over tables and displayed proudly on the walls and in the windows. I finally drummed up the courage to ask Pop to let me in, expecting a hard no and a potential talking-to. But he agreed, walking me silently up to the front door. Once unlocked, I wandered inside with my mouth hanging open, my hungry eyes eating up everything they saw. But when I turned to ask Pop a question, he was still on the porch side of the threshold, watching me with an unreadable expression on his face. At the time, I was too young to understand it was a mixture of pain and fear and deep, unanswered loss that kept him out. But then he smiled, told me not to break anything, and hoofed it to the barn.
I didn’t ask him again—I just snuck the spare key Kit “didn’t tell” me about and wriggled my way inside to sit among her things. Maybe it was the mystery of the place or that it felt like a secret, but for years, I couldn’t stay away. Sometimes, I’d read a book in the rocking chair. Others, I’d play with the old register. I was too little to think about cleaning the place up, but it didn’t seem to matter that the shop was a mess. Some of the candy was even still good.
But then I got a little older, and the place got a little sadder, and after a few years, the magic was gone.
Now? The magic was back. And the first of what I hoped would be many brilliant ideas struck me.
But first—
Once the bouquets were perfect, I scooted back, holding my camera low to take a series of pictures in every orientation. That giddy feeling slipped over me, that manic joy you experienced when something not even that funny happened and the giggles wouldn’t quit. The feeling grew until it was too big for my skin as I opened an editing app and filtered it to be crisp and bright.
And then I opened Instagram.
In the throes of my three-day fog, I’d thought a lot about starting an account for the farm, but I’d gotten stuck on a username—everything good was taken, and nothing was catchy enough to grab someone’s attention. But as I opened the app that morning, I knew what I wanted to do.
