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The front door closes.
Damien has every right to be annoyed with me. I haven’t been myself lately.
If I’m honest, it’s been a slow decline, beginning a year ago when my best friend Zoey married her soulmate, Ethan. I’m over-the-moon happy for her. For them.
And sad, too.
People talk about wrinkles a lot. There’s a billion-dollar industry founded on preventing the signs of aging. But no one talks about the other signs, the other wrinkles. The ones no one can see. Time leaves marks inside us, too, on our hearts. And my ticker is geriatric.
Dropping my spoon into my half-eaten bowl of cereal, I scoop up my phone and open an app. And there, at the top, is the local news article my son was referring to.
Beloved Landmark Sold to Adler Properties. Development Talks Underway.
My tired heart lurches, my fingers tightening on the phone. I read the first sentence as dread waterfalls from my head to my tingling toes.
Lucas Adler, founder and CEO of Adler Properties, is a Sun River native from Lincoln High Class of?—
I lower my phone fast, clicking the screen off. My heart pounds against the skin of my throat. The thick coat of fuzzy gold nostalgia I paint over the past shivers and thins in places, revealing darker threads beneath.
His name is turpentine on my happy past.
Lucas Adler.
Suddenly, I need to move, to get the hell out of my apartment. Rushing into my bathroom, I brush my teeth and splash cold water on my face, following that with a layer of SPF. Less than a minute later, I’m out the door with my backpack in tow, walking briskly down the sidewalk.
The weather is gorgeous, a perfect late-May day in Idaho. Elevation ensures that the breeze on my flushed face is cold, but the air itself holds space for spring warmth.
“I can’t believe you want to stay here.”
“I can’t believe you’re leaving!”
Shaking my head against the brush strokes of the past, I walk faster. Everyone I pass says hello—we’re that kind of town—but for the first time in years, my smile feels fake, my normally cheery waves unnatural.
Thankfully, Main Street Flowers is a five-minute walk from my loft. As I approach the open front door and see buckets of flowers in the process of being dragged outside, my anxiety melts away.
“Hey, Mom!” I call, swinging into the shop and tossing my backpack behind the counter. I breathe deeply, filling my lungs with the dewy-fresh scent of flowers and greens.
A silvery blond head pops out from behind a table displaying colorful, spring-inspired bouquets. “Hey there, sweets,” she replies, smiling warmly.
“Where’s Pop?”
“Morning confessional, where else?”
I grimace. “Gross. I’ll never understand why you call it that. Just say he’s in the bathroom.” Mom laughs as I head for the displays still waiting to go outside. “What are you guys up to this fine Tuesday morning?”
“Golfing,” she answers with an eye roll. “He’s been begging for weeks. I finally caved.”
I snort. “Good luck.”
My dad has a long history of boasting about his golfing skills, when in reality his swing misses the ball more times than not. When he does make contact, the golf ball is more likely to land in a sand trap or hit a tree than find grass.
In the four months I’ve been back working full-time at the shop, my parents have been exploring what retirement feels like. Not that they have plans for it. But it’s nice to see them relax a bit. In their mid-sixties, they’ve been running Main Street Flowers for thirty-two years, just the two of them with seasonal part-time support.
Visitors over the next few hours are steady, mostly locals who stop to enjoy the smells and chat. No one buys anything. Luckily, we don’t rely on foot traffic to stay afloat. We have a healthy weekly subscription flower program and rolling contracts with many local businesses.
Then again, having reviewed my parents’ books last week, afloat isn’t an accurate description of the shop’s financials. More like on life support. It’s my fault, too. When they wanted me to quit my job at the nursery, my condition for doing so was a salary match. I’m wrecking their bottom line.
I haven’t decided what to do about it, but every day I get a little closer to asking for my old job back.
