Page 2 of When In Doubt

Which would be embarrassing for everybody, really.

I give a yank to the fabric, cringing when I realize what I’m doing. I picture the green wool tearing, the perfect vintage coat I found in a flea market two years ago lost forever.

Thank God, the material stays intact and I don’t have to make plans to set my car on fire.

I get out and start walking, keeping my pace brisk. I’m about to slip on my noise-cancelling headphones when my phone starts buzzing. I let out a sigh, but immediately feel guilty. What kind of daughter has that reaction to the idea of speaking to her own mother?

At least I assume it’s her. It’s not like anybody else is blowing up my phone.

I pull the device out of my pocket, ready to decline the call. I’ll just tell her later that I was with a customer. But when the screen lights up, it’s not Mom.

I rush to answer. “Elsie?” I say as I cross the street, the sidewalks starting to fill with all the trappings of a picture-postcard small town. Ornate lampposts and wrought iron benches populate the area, making it feel almost cozy, even as I pull my coat tighter around myself in an effort to escape the late-February wind.

“Little Peach!”

I grin at the nickname she’s been using for the last twenty-seven years. Something to do with my head of strawberry blond hair looking like the fruit when I was born. Two days feels too long to go between chats. Elsie’s an old friend of my parents, practically family, and she’s been my biggest supporter ever since I moved back from Connecticut to open the store. Even if she did ditch me three weeks after I got here to be closer to her son in Colorado Springs.

“Hey, Els.”

“How are you doing, my girl?”

“Oh, you know.” I’m glad she can’t see my grimace. Before she can call me out for being evasive, I change the subject, thinking about the interaction I had earlier. “Hey, can I ask you something about Joyce?”

Elsie makes a sound of begrudging assent and I almost laugh. The enmity between those two runs deep. “If you must.”

“Does she think I ran you out of town or something?”

“What’s that bat said this time?”

“She brought up the flower shop again. How she wanted to surprise her daughter but had to order them online.”

When Elsie decided that it was time for her to retire, she offered to lease me the storefront that had housed Cedar in Bloom for seventy-five years, ever since Elsie’s father opened the place in the forties. I knew it’d be a tough transition; if my childhood taught me anything, it’s how little changes around town. I always loved the constancy. It was steady, dependable when everything felt like such chaos for me. But now that I’m the one disrupting it, I’m learning just how stubborn some of the people around here can be.

“Tell her to fuck off,” Elsie says.

“Elsie!”

“What? I did it for years.”

Even from Connecticut, reports of Joyce and Elsie’s verbal smackdowns were legendary.

“I don’t know if that’s the solution.” I sigh. “I need her to like me.”

“Why? She never liked me and I did fine.” I can almost hear her grin. Elsie has no problem telling people where to shove it. I wish I had even half of her confidence.

“You didn’t need her to like you. You ran a flower shop.” A beloved flower shop. An institution. One that Joyce seems to think I’ve come in and bulldozed.

“You don’t need her either.”

“Yes, I do! She’s like the Genghis Khan of small-town knitters. I need her on my side otherwise nobody else will want to cross her.” Joyce rules the Cedar Creek over-sixties crowd with an iron fist, and like it or not, that’s kind of my whole market.

“It sounds like the store’s doing fine without her and her cronies.”

She’s half right. We’ve had enough foot traffic that I’m doing alright for the first few months, but I don’t want to just be getting by.

My chest twinges, old insecurities making themselves known. “I don’t understand what her problem is.”

“Whatever it is, it’s her problem.”