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“A flower shop?” Macie asked. “Then people wouldn’t have to go to Mountain Springs for corsages and boutonnieres for school dances.”
“That sounds like a lot of fun. I’ll add it to the list.” She clicked back to the tab where she was typing in everyone’s suggestions and added it before going back to chopping veggies.
“Hey,” her brother Zach said from across the great room where he was on the floor playing with his little kids, “you should do one of those spas with a massage therapist! Lia is always saying she wishes she could have a spa day.”
“That’s a really great idea,” Joselyn said, pointing the knife she was holding in his direction. “Especially since we get so many tourists.” She added it to her list. It was probably a great idea, but in the nearly forty places she had worked side jobs at, a spa was never one of them, so she didn’t have any spa-specific knowledge.
She was just clicking save again on the file when she heard the front door open and Marcus’s booming voice call out “Hello, Zimmermans!” like he had done since he was nine and a half and first claimed her family as his own. Her nephews ran into the great room, and her brother and Marcus followed closely behind.
“Guess who is going to open an ice cream shop on Main Street?” Everett said, then clapped Marcus on the shoulder. “This guy!”
Joselyn’s confusion was echoed by everyone in the room, then after a short pause, Hannah squeaked out, “In the hardware store building?”
“Yep!”
Both Everett and Marcus were grinning ear-to-ear, and Joselyn’s stomach fell.
“It was perfect timing that you told me today,” Everett said.
“Larry already told you that you got the building?” Hannah looked between her husband and Marcus and then at Joselyn.
“No,” Marcus said. “It’s not a done deal like Everett’s making it sound. I called Larry on the way here and told him I wanted the building. He said he had one other offer, and that he was going to decide who got it next week.”
“But,” Everett said, dragging out the word, “Larry couldn’t stop talking about how incredible Marcus’s ice cream was at the Fire and Ice Festival, so I’m betting he’ll choose Marcus over the other guy. Isn’t that fantastic? Why are you all not showing more excitement?”
Joselyn was having a hard time keeping her emotions in check. She had gone through way too wide of a range of them today to deal with this news after being so excited about her own possibilities for the building.
“Because the ‘other guy,’” Hannah said, “is Joselyn. I showed her the building right after we left the festival.”
“Oh,” Everett said. “That’s bad.”
“No, maybe it’s perfect,” her mom said, smiling broadly like everything was somehow going to work out. She turned toward Joselyn. “You’ve been looking for the perfect business, and it looks like you found it! You and Marcus can just team up.”
“No!” Joselyn said at the same time that Marcus, Everett, and her dad said the same thing.
Marcus met Joselyn’s eyes, and it was clear that the thought horrified him just as much as it had her. She was surprised at the intensity of her dad’s “no,” though. Everett and her dad were both looking at the floor, and everyone else in her big family was looking at each other with awkwardness, confusion, or pity on their faces.
Joselyn set her knife on the counter, shut her laptop, took off her apron and laid it over the back of a chair, and headed out onto the back patio, closing the door behind her. She hadn’t even taken time to grab her coat, and she sucked in a gasp as the cold air bit into her.
Wrapping her arms around herself, she looked out toward Oliver’s, Zach’s, Nicole’s, and Everett’s homes, and across the deep snow that covered the field that would one day hold hers, Kennon’s, and Macie’s homes. It wasn’t a big deal to not lease that building on Main Street. Sure, it had excited her more than anything in her adult life ever had. But yesterday she hadn’t even known about the possibility and she had been just fine. She would be fine without it.
Bored, stuck in a life that wasn’t moving, and feeling vast amounts of potential built up inside of her that she couldn’t seem to tap into, but fine nonetheless. She could go back to that state again and survive.
The door opened behind her, and the warmth from the house touched her backside for a fleeting moment before she heard the door close. Macie stepped up next to her and held out her coat.
“Thanks,” she said, slipping her arms into the sleeves and crossing them in front of her again to help hold in the heat.
Macie zipped her own coat and put her hands in her pockets, looking out across the field with Joselyn.
Joselyn didn’t want to turn around to face the windows of the house in case all eyes were on her, but she was curious. “What’s going on inside?”
Macie lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “Mom and Hannah are leading the charge that you two should work together. Everett and Dad, surprisingly, are saying what a bad idea it is and how much potential it could have to cause a rift in the family.”
“And Marcus?”
“He wanted to come out here and tell you that you could have the shop and that he would withdraw his offer from consideration. Nicole and I asked him to wait. You both need some time to think.”
“I’m going to tell him that he can have it.”
