Page 8 of Snowflakes Over Starr's Fall
Sometimes, in her bleaker moments, Jenna considered jacking it all in. Selling her share in the store and hightailing it to Bermuda or the Bahamas or one of those places. The money would last at least a year or two, and after that, well, maybe she’d have an epiphany. Or she’d open a surf shop or something, not that she’d ever surfed, or had even wanted to.
Jenna let out a gusty sigh as she closed her laptop. How could she be thirty-eight years old and still not know what she wanted to do with her life, or even who shewas?
Bizarrely, and uncomfortably, her thoughts drifted back to Jack Wexler. Again. Why on earth had a guy like him moved to Starr’s Fall? And those new hiking boots and fleece… They kind of screamed midlife crisis. Had something happened to him? Maybe that was why he’d been in such a mood, because now that she thought about it, he’d seemed irritable coming into the store, even before he’d asked about the smoked salmon, and she wasn’t sure it had been just run-of-the-mill snobbishness. Or was she giving the guy too much credit?
Remember what guys like that are like, Jenna, she told herself.They’re ruthless. Heartless. Liars…
She didn’t usually need the reminder. In fact, Annie would say that she thought about Ryan way too much, considering it was ten years since they’d broken up. Or, to put a finer point on it, since he’d ruthlessly dumped her when she’d been forming the wordyes, thinking he might propose after waiting with bated breath for two years, tying herself into knots to be the woman he wanted, to absolutely no avail.
Yes, itstillhurt, even if it shouldn’t. Maybe it always would.
As for Jack Wexler? Jenna was determined not to give him another thought.
She pushed her laptop away and headed into the store that adjoined the house, treading the old wooden floorboards in the dark, breathing in its familiar smell of dust and wood polish, pickles and popcorn. Not the most tantalizing aroma, but Jenna loved it. Maybe she would get the popcorn machine working again, she thought. The machine smelled enough as it was, and it was a cute and unique thing to offer. Maybe she’d even stock smoked salmon, like a joke, and advertise it in the window.Goes great with toasted sourdough!
The thought made her snicker, and she decided she felt better.
The Jack Wexlers of the world werenotgoing to bring her down, she told herself. Not back then, not now, and not ever.
4
THREE MONTHS LATER
Something had to change. It was a fact that had been dogging Jenna for months, maybe even years, but she knew she finally had to face it now as she stared at the spreadsheet of sales for August and the numbers didn’t remotely add up. There weren’t that many numbers to begin with; sales had been dipping steadily month on month for longer than she was comfortable acknowledging, even if she had to now, because the money, what there was of it, was running out.
If she kept on the way she was going, Jenna reflected glumly, Miller’s Mercantile might be forced to close its doors by Christmas, if not sooner. She’d known this, at least on some level, for a while, but now it was smacking her in the face, and ithurt. Her stomach felt as if it were lined with lead, and she had to swallow hard as she closed her laptop and stared into space, her mind too blank to think of options.
It had been a good summer in many respects. She’d had fun with friends, spending long, lazy evenings at Laurie’s or Annie’s, or hanging out with Zach and Maggie and her son Ben at Your Turn Next, the boardgame café Maggie had opened on Main Street. There had been hiking up to Starr’s Fall’s eponymous waterfall, and a day out at the beach on Bantam Lake, admiring the gorgeous lake houses with their own shore frontage.
Annie’s mother Barb was, amazingly, still hanging on, which had given Annie a new sort of energy, even though everybody knew the end was inevitable, as it was, Jenna supposed, for every person on this earth. Still, she’d enjoyed it all, and she’d been both glad and grateful for the needed affirmation that she really didlikeher life in Starr’s Fall. Plus, she hadn’t seen Jack Wexler once, which made her wonder if he’d limped back to New York in his shiny new hiking boots.Good riddance, she’d thought, with only a small pang of uneasy guilt. Back in July she’d noticed that his awful review had been taken down… Had someone complained or had he suffered a crisis of conscience? She didn’t know, but she was glad it was gone.
And now it was fall, one of her favorite times of year, the sky a deep blue and the air crisp, the leaves turning orange and red and crunching underfoot. Really, life, overall, was pretty good… if only her business wasn’t failing. If only she knew what to do about it.
As if on cue, her annoying little brother, who had known Miller’s Mercantile was struggling for longer than Jenna had, sauntered through the front door of the store.
“Hey, sis.” Zach gave her a lazy smile as he fished a pickle out of the barrel by the front door and bit into it with an audible and juicy crunch. “How’s life? Haven’t seen you in a few days,” he remarked around a mouthful of pickle.
“Life is fine,” Jenna replied, unable to keep a certain glumness from her tone.
Zach cocked his head. He was, Jenna knew, ridiculously good-looking, which had once made her—freckled, red-headed and slightly overweight—resent him, but she’d learned to if not love her body, then at least like it, and she no longer begrudged Zach his effortless boyband looks. “Life is fine, but…?” he prompted as he swallowed his bite of pickle, clearly clocking her sour emphasis.
“I’m going to have to close Miller’s Mercantile by January if something doesn’t change,” she admitted reluctantly, bracing herself for his inevitable told-you-so, even if it was just in the form of a cocked eyebrow. “And no matter what you think, Zach,” she couldn’t help but add, “selling a few ridiculously priced candles isnotgoing to fix things.”
He took another bite of pickle, looking bemused. “That was never my suggestion, you know.”
“I know,” Jenna grumbled. “It was all artisan-this and fancy-that. Right?”
Zach shook his head slowly. “I still don’t get your beef with quality.” Jenna pressed her lips together rather than reply and he continued, his eyebrow now raised just as she knew it would be. “Is it really just because some rich jerk messed with your heart ten years ago?”
“And now I feel pathetic, so thank you for that,” Jenna replied tartly. Her heartbreak summed up in one pithy sentence, so she felt like a teenaged girl who still couldn’t get over her crush. “There might be a personal element,” she conceded, “but it’s also common sense. We don’t get the tourists Litchfield does, we never have, so what’s the point catering to them?” She’d had precious few gracing the store over what were meant to be the most touristy months of summer.
“Youdon’t get the tourists,” Zach corrected her, “because Miller’s Mercantile looks like a cross between a goodwill donation center and a defunct Texaco.”
Jenna flushed. Therewasan old gas pump in the parking lot that her parents had bought in the hopes it might be put to good use—it never was—and Jenna hadn’t managed to get rid of it. It was kind of cool in a retro way, but it was also an eyesore and took up way too much space. As did the sagging sofa on the front porch that looked like a breeding ground for fleas. Zach had said he’d shift it for months, but Jenna had put him off, because she liked the idea of a sofa on the porch. Just not that one.
“Seriously, Jenna,” Zach said, gentling his tone. “I really don’t get it. Why are you so resistant to change? Any change?”
Jenna shook her head. “It’s not worth going into now,” she stated, “because I know Ihaveto change if I want to keep this place open. Whether I’m resistant or not”—and she had been, she knew that full well—“something’s got to give. I just need to figure out what—and how.”
