Page 20 of Embers in Autumn
Before I could reply, the bell above the door jingled again. A young man stepped in carrying a large bouquet wrapped in pale brown paper. The flowers were breathtaking—roses the color ofmulled wine, deep orange marigolds, sprays of golden wheat, tiny white asters tucked between. An autumn arrangement that looked like it had been plucked from the season itself.
“For Amber?” the delivery boy asked.
My mouth went dry. “That’s me.”
He handed them over with a polite nod, and as I cradled the bouquet, a small card peeked out. My name written in neat block letters. Beneath it, just a few words:For your shop, and for you.And at the very bottom, a phone number. Dean’s.
Before I could breathe, Carol was at my elbow, eyes gleaming. “Oh ho. What’s this, then?”
“Flowers,” I said weakly.
“I can see that. Who from?”
“Someone,” I muttered, cheeks burning.
She gasped, delighted.“Someone?Someone has good taste. Look at these roses, look at this balance. And the wheat! A man who knows symbolism. Do tell, who is he?”
“Carol,” I said, burying my face in the bouquet. “You’re not my mom.”
“Of course not. My children have manners.”
I rolled my eyes. “Sure. But that's because back in ancient times when you raised them, people still beat their kids with clubs and threatened to feed them to dinosaurs.”
She laughed, a regal sound that filled the shop. “Touché.”
But then she leaned closer, her voice lowering. “So. Are you going to call this fine gentleman?”
I hesitated, fingers tightening on the stems. “I don’t know. We went for coffee once, but…”
Her expression softened, the humor fading into something far more genuine. “Listen to me, Amber. A man from your past hurt you. He taught you to doubt yourself, to expect pain. That’s his legacy, not yours. You can’t let one man’s cruelty chain you to suspicion forever. Every new person deserves the chance to beseen with fresh eyes. If you keep looking backward, you’ll never move forward. Life is short.”
Her words struck deep, like warm light in a cold place. I swallowed hard.
“You should start a podcast,” I said faintly, trying to mask the lump in my throat. “Dating Advice from the 1800s.”
“If I did, darling, you’d be my first subscriber.”
Carol glanced at the flowers again, then at me, her eyes shifting from playful sparkle to something quieter, gentler.
“You know,” she said softly, “I wasn’t always so wise. Or so sure of myself. When I was about your age, there was a man I thought I would marry. He was handsome, charming, and he made me feel like the world bent in our direction. But one summer he went abroad for work, and the letters stopped coming. I learned through whispers he had married someone else. No explanations, no goodbye. Just silence.”
Her fingers brushed over the string of pearls at her throat, the tiniest tremor in her voice. “I thought my heart would never heal. For years, I wore that betrayal like a heavy coat. It took me too long to learn that sometimes people leave because they don’t know how to stay—not because you weren’t worth staying for.”
I stood frozen, holding the bouquet against me like a shield, but it was her words that truly held me. I had never seen Carol this way before—stripped of her armor of wit and poise, even for just a moment.
“I never knew that about you,” I whispered.
Her smile returned, sly again, though her eyes still carried the shadow of memory. “How could you? We only met four months ago, when you finally started stocking smut. Hardly the place for tragic confessions.”
The laugh tore out of me before I could stop it. Not a polite chuckle. A real laugh. The kind that pulled from the stomach, that startled me with its brightness.
“There. That’s better. You sound alive again.”
Carol finally settled on a small picture book with a fox in a scarf, the cover painted in warm autumn tones. “For my granddaughter,” she said briskly, tucking it under her arm as though she hadn’t just peeled back a piece of her own history moments ago. “Something wholesome for once. Don’t tell anyone or it will ruin my reputation.”
I rang her up, still smiling from our laughter. The bell jingled as she left, her perfume lingering in the air long after she was gone.
The shop quieted again, but the flowers on the counter refused to let me slip into routine. Every time I passed by, their colors caught my eye—the deep wine-red roses, the golden marigolds, the wheat that looked as though it had been pulled straight from a sunlit field. And every time, my thoughts circled back to the little card tucked inside. His number. His hand reaching out in the simplest, most honest way.
