The Memory Keeper: A Heartwarming, Feel-Good Romance(41)
Fourteen
The least Hannah could do was help Gran get her affairs in order. She pushed up her sleeves and went over to the mass of papers on the center counter. Each pile was labeled with sticky notes in her mother’s handwriting. One heap was categorized “recycle”; another said, “file.” Hannah zeroed in on the pile marked “bills” and picked up the stack, flipping through them, her heart sinking. Gran had racked up hundreds—maybe thousands—of dollars in unpaid bills. She set them back on the counter.
Hannah stared at the invoices, thinking. She was thirty-five years old. She’d saved money for a family that, given her recent situation with Miles, and her age, she may never have… She set her phone on the counter and opened the calculator app, adding up every invoice in the pile, and even as the number got bigger, she knew she could still cover it with her savings. She could wipe these bills completely clean for her parents and Gran. But if Gran kept the shop open, the bills would keep mounting.
The old bells on the door jingled, startling her. She looked up to find an elderly woman shuffling in. She had a purple cane with a swirling pattern that matched her skirt. The woman peered over at Hannah and puttered over to her.
“My gracious me!” she said when she reached Hannah. “You’ve done gone off and got fancy on us.” Her voice had that smooth southern drawl to it that made even her poor grammar sound like music. “The door said closed,” she said, throwing a thumb over her shoulder, “but you’re usually open at this time a’day, so I just tried the knob.”
“Have we met before?” Hannah asked, the woman looking familiar.
“My name’s Darlene Buxton. I’ve been friends with your gran since we were girls back in Kentucky.” Darlene gave Hannah a direct but polite appraisal. “You’re all your gran talks about, you know…” Her eyes squinted shut with her smile.
“I remember you,” Hannah said with a tickle of delight, recalling Darlene and her grandmother dancing together in the shop.
“She was so apprehensive when you left to go to college in New York,” Darlene said, tipping her head up to view the empty silver buckets near the ceiling. “She worried about you like crazy, all alone in that big city. It was so hard for her to let you go. But she told me once, ‘Hannah wants a different life, and I know firsthand how that feels.’”
“I had no idea,” Hannah said, thinking back to Liam’s comment about how Gran had saved all her trophies because she’d missed her. Gran had always been so supportive. She hadn’t given Hannah a single clue that she’d felt anything other than complete joy about her move to New York.
“Well, dear, I’m absolutely delighted to see you’re taking over the shop for her since she can’t be here to run it. I’m sure she’s over the moon about it.”
“Oh, I’m…” Hannah let the words trail off, the ever-present guilt surfacing. “I’m happy to do it,” she said instead. No sense in getting into the details right now.
Darlene beamed. “The entire time I’ve known your grandmother, she was a different person among her flowers. How wonderful it will be for her to know that her memory and the memory of this place will go on for generations. I suppose that makes you the new Memory Keeper,” she said with an excited grin. “That was what she always wanted. I’m proud of you for coming home to do that for her.”
Hannah stared at her, speechless. Gran had wanted Hannah to run the shop? She’d never said anything of the sort…
Hannah’s phone lit up with another notification from work. She clicked off the screen, her mind still going a mile a minute.
Darlene took in a long breath through her nose as she surveyed the rundown space. “I’m here to grab a quick bouquet for my book club. Something spring-like to give the ladies a touch of brightness to look forward to in these last few cold days.”
“Of course,” Hannah said, rushing over to the inventory boxes full of flowers. “I just got here,” she explained. “I haven’t whipped the shop into shape yet.” Hannah grabbed a handful of pink tulips and white lilies that were still in good shape and set them on the counter, having absolutely no idea why she was pretending to keep the shop open.
“Oh, darling, I can’t afford that many,” Darlene worried aloud.
“It’s no problem,” Hannah told her. “It’ll be my treat for not having the shop ready when you came in. I’ll just charge you for a small bouquet.”
Hannah grabbed a large glass vase from a box next to the counter and began to arrange the flowers, the white and pink color of them resembling a box of candy.
She trimmed a tulip stem and slipped it into place in the vase.
“Here you are,” Hannah said, sliding the bouquet toward Darlene.
Hannah didn’t know what she’d do if Darlene came into the shop again and found it in the same state, or what the fate of The Memory Keeper would be by next week, but what she did know was that her remorse had subsided when she’d told Darlene she was taking over for Gran.
“It’s so beautiful,” Darlene said, admiring her work. “I don’t know how you can just throw flowers together and make them look like that.” She turned the bouquet around to view it more closely. “It’s a gift. I’ve only ever seen it in Faye and my mother before now.” She looked up at Hannah. “And you have it too.”