Rose walks in, beelining for the supply shelves. She stacks three receipt rolls in her hands, her brief laugh stuck in her throat. “What is the point of paper receipts anymore?” she muses. “They just wind up in the trash. Or we have to sweep them off the floor.”
She turns to swan out again, her skirt swishing around her, but she pauses. Her curiosity proves my poker face isn’t any better in here than it was out there. She comes closer. “Is something wrong?”
“Not wrong, just…unexpected.” I hand her the letter. She has to clutch the receipt rolls to her chest to take it.
She reads through it, her mouth twisting into a deeper frown than I thought she could make. Her eyebrows tug together, and her gaze clouds over. She looks like she’s going for extra credit in my grump lessons.
“This means someone wants to buy Perk Me Up?” she asks.
“Looks like it.” Despite the law office’s letterhead, the text itself is written to sound like a friendly note. Just a casual inquiry as to whether I’d be interested in selling the coffee shop. But the inclusion of the price—far above what the realtor I talked to months ago suggested—and the lawyer’s countersignature prove it’s more than just an informal whim.
“Who even is this?”
“I don’t know. I’ll have to do some research.” He seems to think his decades owning coffee shops in Seattle, Portland, and Boise put him in prime position to take Perk Me Up to the next level. And, as the letter not-so-subtly hints, I don’t have the experience needed to do that.
Whoever he is, he’s not wrong. My job experience is better suited to that makeshift summer camp Jovie wanted than to turn Perk Me Up into a small-town sensation. I almost tanked it the first year I owned it, and it’s only doing well now because of Rose and Troy. I don’t know how to get the shop to grow along with Sunshine.
I don’t know if I want to.
She reads the letter through again. “He’s not giving you a lot of time to think about it.”
Ten days to get back to him. The letter doesn’t include manydetails, but the dollar amount and the deadline date are crystal clear.
I swivel my chair to face her more fully. “I don’t know what I should do.”
I like plans, routines, and dates written on a calendar. I like solid ground. This letter knocked me into a free-fall, and I don’t know where my feet will land next. I need time to right myself.
“It’s a big decision.” She sets the letter on my desk. “You said you’ve thought about selling it before. This sounds like it could give you what you want.”
She doesn’t put any inflection into her words. She’s not telling me what I should do, only what I’ve said. In this moment, I want someone wiser than me to tell me what to do. But I can’t ask her when it’s her livelihood on the line. I’m not that obtuse.
I look at the open letter, the exec’s signature scrawled above the lawyer’s. “Sounds like it.”
“I should get these out front.” She wraps her other hand around the receipt rolls to keep them from falling. “I’m sure you’ll decide the best thing to do.”
She’s so optimistic. As if it’s obvious to anyone that I can make the right choice.
Rose leaves, but I go on staring at the letter. I don’t have a clue what the best thing to do is. Sell, and betray Harry’s last instructions to me? Or don’t sell, and keep making myself miserable trying to live up to them?
Maybe the biggest sign of how clueless I am, I pull out my phone and invite my siblings to the one place I never thought I would.
33
rose
“I can’t believeyou scored that vintage gold Pyrex dish. What a find.” I am upbeat and cheerful. Totally casual and fun. It’s been a long time since I had a chance to make a new friend and I’m not going to mess it up just because my life feels like a rope bridge over a ravine and slats are falling away beneath my feet.
Cassie suggested we get together early so we could wander a couple of thrift stores before going to dinner. I didn’t get around to thrifting yesterday, so I told her that was perfect timing. We browsed vintage glassware with TV show characters from the 80s on them that you probably shouldn’t drink out of anymore. Classic wool blazers that made me sweaty just looking at them. An assortment of leather handbags tooled with various forest themes. And an astonishing amount of denim.
I also spotted one of the same metal donkeys that I moved from my living room to the garage with a tag on it that said fifteen dollars. I don’t think my mom would be too thrilled to hear her art pieces haven’t appreciated in value.
“Sometimes we get lucky, right?” Cassie slides into the booth across from me at Delish. We opted for casual, and the diner’s thebest at that. It doesn’t hurt that I could use a platter of salty fries right about now.
Amy walks over to take our orders. Her style is always top-notch. Wide-legged pants and a flowy, navy blouse with just enough ruffle at the edge to make it chic. Like a mom in a modern TV show. Which is probably not something I should ever actually tell her.
Nobody who’s not a mom wants to hear that they look like one.
“Cassie, have you met Amy Ellison yet?” I ask.
