Page 12 of A Novel Love Story

I tried again.

And again.

“Not now, not now,” I prayed. “Pleasenot now. Let me get to the cabin first. Let me get lost in a book.”

But my car betrayed me, and the engine refused to turn over.

It wouldn’t eventry. I guessed the noise it had started making back in DC was bad, after all. Everything was falling apart—everything. Maybe I shouldn’t have gone on this trip. I shouldn’t have comealone. This was a mistake.

“Stop it,” I told myself. “Everything’s fine, you’re fine. You can fix this.”

Then I unbuckled myself from my seat, and rounded to the front of the car, where I unlatched the hood to look underneath.

I … didn’t even know what I was looking at.

The Pinto sat there like an aged, decrepit dinosaur, leaking oil like that was its last mission on Earth, and I knew about as much about car mechanics as I did brain surgery. So it looked like an engine, and it wasn’t like one of my Barbie cars from my childhood, where I could just switch the batteries and give it a few more hours of life.

I pressed my forehead against my forearm as I held the hood up.

“Okay, maybe youcan’tfix this, but you’re in a cute town! Someone’s gotta know something about cars,” I said, turning around to survey the town. “Or have a number for AAA.”

There were two old men walking their schnauzer. I waved to them, but they turned down the next street too quickly to notice me. The bar was closed, but the garden shop beside it had just flipped its sign over.

Perfect.

Hopefully, the owner would be alittlemore friendly than Anders.

I closed the hood and hurried down the sidewalk to the garden store.

The smell of wildflowers and freshly cut stems filled my nose as I stepped inside. Enormous pots of ivy hung from the ceiling, and fresh-cut flowers stuffed into tin vases hung across the walls in various colors: black-eyed Susans and roses and bright lavenders and soft asters, cornflowers and daisies and forget-me-nots. A woman was at the counter in the back, humming along to an old radio perched atop a shelf behind her. She looked about my age, with long copper-red hair braided into a fishtail down her back, dressed in a crop-top T-shirt and jeans that were already dirty at the knees. She wore a worn-looking apron in a cactus print, her fingers wrapped with multiple Band-Aids, as if she pricked her fingers often. She glanced up at me and smiled; there was a gap between her front teeth.

I felt a sudden rush of déjà vu—I’d seen her before.

But I couldn’t place where.

“Good morning,” she greeted happily. “You must be the one who stayed in Anders’s old loft last night!”

“I guess word gets around,” I said.

“It’s a small town,” she replied with a laugh, and then leaned forward a little to add conspiratorially, “You’d be surprised how quick news spreads. I’m Lyssa.” She extended her Band-Aid-wrapped hand.

“Eileen,” I replied, accepting it—and then frowned. “Lyssa with ay?”

She brightened. “Yes! How did you know?” She glanced down at her cactus-print apron. “I didn’t even put my name tag on yet! Has Gail been gossiping about me? Ruby? Oh, it was probably Ruby. Whatever you heard, it is definitely not in any waytrue.”

I hadn’t heard anything at all, but I knew everything was true. Because I realized where I’d seen her before—well,seenwasn’t exactly the right word for it. My mouth opened and closed like a goldfish gasping for water.Because surely it was a coincidence.Surelyit was. A ginger-haired woman named Lyssa with ay, tending to a garden shop in a small town. Surely she hadn’t threatened to bury a man when she’d caught him cheating on her sister. Surely it was a fluke.

The song on the radio ended, and the DJ came on with—

“Buzz buzz, Eloraton! Hope you’re kicking serious beehive butt on this glorious Saturday morning. That was the hit single from Dexys Midnight Runners, ‘Come On Eileen’ …”

I stared up at the radio. Beside it were certificates ofBEST IN SHOWandTOP BLOOMfrom the state fair and local garden shows.

But that didn’t—

That didn’t makesense.

“Eloraton? Like the book series?” I added, because she looked confused. “You know, the Quixotic Falls series by Rachel Flowers?Daffodil Daydreams?Honey and the Heartbreak?Unrequited Love Song?” She stared at me, nothing ringing a bell. “Return to Sender? Small town in the Hudson Valley, with a magical waterfall?”

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