“Well, I guess I’ll see you at the meeting then.” I edged away from her, not wanting to get into any of it: how long I’d be in town or my new roommates-slash-employees, and definitely not my newly subversive sexual fantasies.
“See you there,” Clara said.
I’d taken a few steps toward the crosswalk when I remembered something. “Hey Clara?”
She turned away from the door and dropped her keys in her bag. “Hm?”
“When I went to visit Evelyn I noticed there were some other flowers on her grave. Peonies. Was that you?”
A gentle smile washed over her face. “Afraid not, although I am overdue a visit. That would have been Dane.”
“Dane?” I practically choked on his name.
“He takes flowers once a week. Like clockwork.” My brain stumbled over the information. “See you in a few!”
She floated away from me on a sea of patchwork fabric, leaving the scent of roses in her wake.
I stood in front of the flower store, trying to process the information.
Dane had been the one to leave flowers on Aunt Evelyn’s grave. And he did it every week. But the more I thought about it the more I realized it wasn’t the leaving of the flowers that wassurprising. Dane had been offended on Aunt Evelyn’s behalf that I hadn’t stayed in touch with her. He obviously cared about her.
It was the part before the cemetery that was hard to imagine: Dane going into Clara’s shop, making small talk while Clara wrapped the peonies for Aunt Evelyn, buying the flowers, leaving with them in his hand.
Dane with his tattoos and his scalding glare and the angry set of his jaw.
It was hard to imagine him holding a bunch of fragile, velvety flowers, carrying the bundle down Main Street on his way to the cemetery.
But according to Clara, he had. He did.
I was still standing in front of Clara’s shop when the street lights on Main flickered to life.
A glance at my phone told me I was running late for my meetup with Lena, so I crossed the street and entered the square, following a handful of other people who also seemed to be making their way to the town hall.
I followed the path past the playground and the dog park, hooked a right at the fountain, and followed the signs pointing to town hall.
The walking path became more crowded with people as I approached a two-story brick building. Cherry blossoms fluttered to the ground from the trees that lined the path, street lights lined the walkway leading to the wide front steps, and an old-fashioned clock tower rose into the twilight sky above the second floor.
I spotted Lena right away, standing out front and looking at her phone. She was still wearing the shorts and T-shirt she’d been wearing at Sugar Pine, but now I could see the T-shirt was vintage, the name of a band from the 80s that my mom listened to emblazoned on the front.
She looked up as I approached, scanned the crowd, and smiled when she saw me. Her glossy black hair, freed from its ponytail, swung around her shoulders as she walked toward me.
“You made it!”
“Yeah, sorry. Ran into Clara on my way.”
She did a double take on my face. “Everything okay?”
Was I that transparent? “It’s fine. I just…” How was I supposed to sum up my quandary with Beck, Noah, and Dane? “She told me Dane takes flowers to my Aunt Evelyn’s grave every week and I’m still getting my head around it.”
She looked confused. “Why?”
I laughed. “Have you met Dane?”
She shrugged. “Sure. He’s kind of a tough customer, as my grandma would say, but he adored Evelyn. I think he thought of her as a second mom or a grandparent or something, on account of what she did for him.”
I shook my head. “What did she do for him?”
Lena lifted her eyebrows. “Oh… you don’t know.”