The Memory Keeper: A Heartwarming, Feel-Good Romance(40)
Ethan turned onto the road that led into town.
When they’d finally reached Franklin, he pulled over at The Memory Keeper. “Well, here’s your stop,” he said, reaching over her and pulling the door handle to unlatch it for her—something he’d always done since they were young. “Call me if you need me, all right?”
“Okay,” she said, getting out. Hannah leaned back into the Bronco and gave him a quick hug. “Thank you for the ride.”
“No problem,” he said, slipping a ball cap with the logo for his dad’s shop onto his head, the brim tattered and torn. “See ya later.”
Hannah shut the truck door. As Ethan drove away, she stood in front of Gran’s flower shop and understood right away what her parents had been trying to explain to her. Walking up the overgrown sidewalk, the weeds tall enough to tickle her ankles, her gaze fell on the shriveled, brown remnants of the plants that flanked the door. She stepped closer, noticing the faded paint on the building, picking up the silver water bowl Gran always left out for pets, and shaking the rainwater and dead leaves out of it. She set it on its side against the building to dry.
The exterior wasn’t too bad, apart from needing a fresh coat of paint and some landscaping, but the wild overgrowth next to the side of it that separated The Memory Keeper from a strip of vacant shops had taken over, completely obscuring the freestanding store from Main Street that ran perpendicular to it. It looked as though construction was going on in the strip of shops, the orange cones on the curb narrowing the street further and making it nearly impossible to access.
Hannah fiddled with her key ring, locating the key Gran had given her years ago. She slipped it into the old lock and twisted the knob, pushing open the large wooden and glass-paned door. The hinges creaked with age, as if they were protesting her intrusion.
Once she got inside, there was an eerie silence. Sadness falling upon her, she turned the “open” sign to “closed,” realizing it had never been switched from the last time the shop had been open, and clicked on the lights. The old music Gran used to play on the antique record player at the back was absent, the bright streams of light now dulled with both the winter weather and cloudy windows that needed a good cleaning.
Hannah let her gaze wander over the wall of silver buckets. When Hannah was a girl, Gran used to keep bright bunches of flowers in the lower ones. Now, cobwebs stretched from one to the other. The old wooden counter in the center of the room—a large space that was both an arranging station and housed the register—was completely hidden with stacks of papers, the display case in the bottom holding a couple of drooping arrangements.
The grit on the floor crunched beneath her feet as she moved over to the open delivery boxes that lined the opposite wall and peered inside. They were filled with the latest delivery of stunning flowers—red and white roses, hydrangeas, gerberas, freesias, anemones, daffodils, and baby’s breath—all wilting. She pulled them out and filled the containers with water to save them.
Every day that Hannah could remember, Gran walked to work from her bungalow at the edge of town, bundling up if it was cold and wearing a rain bonnet on rainy days, absolutely delighted to get to work. Hannah had loved the effortlessness of Gran’s style, both at the shop and in her life. She played records and hummed along while she gathered bunches of flowers to make bouquets. The white interior had showed off the rainbow of flowers. But now it just looked tired, like Gran.
She went to the back door and looked through the glass. Her gaze swept across the yard for Speckles, but she didn’t see the cat. She turned the knob and stepped onto a small, cement landing, where Gran used to keep large bins to save discarded stems and leaves of cut flowers for compost. They were gone, the manicured garden now covered in leaves. A slip of white plastic jutted out from under the fallen foliage, so Hannah went over to retrieve it, recognizing it as Speckles’s food bowl.
Tears filled her eyes, her mind racing with the thought that the poor cat might have been forced to abandon Gran in search of food. She took the bowl back inside and checked the bar fridge at the back for milk, but it was empty. With a heavy heart, Hannah set the cat’s bowl on the counter where Gran used to leave a platter of fresh muffins for her customers, and returned to the front.
She caught the view through the display window to the tiny yard, past the walk from the road now patchy with weeds. The old sign out front was faded, making The Memory Keeper look more like Th emor eep r.
Once, when Hannah was about ten years old, she’d asked Gran why she’d named the shop The Memory Keeper, and Gran had explained, “Every time I create a bouquet for someone, I’m creating a memory. Think about it,” she said, taking Hannah’s hands and filling them with a bundle of hydrangeas. “Someone might get this bouquet for her birthday, and it will sit on the kitchen table while her family gathers around a cake full of flickering candles, singing to the girl they love.” She leaned in close enough for Hannah to see the twinkle in her eye, and whispered, “She’ll remember it.” Gran took the bunch from Hannah and twirled around, holding it into the air. “And we’ll have been a tiny part of that.” She placed the flowers into a vase of water and began hunting for other blooms to complement it. Gran was right about the flowers making memories for others, although they made a whole lot of memories for Hannah too.
No one would make any memories in a place like this. As she stood in the old space, she decided it was time to figure out what she was going to say to Gran.