Business blooming.
That and the select events we hosted on the farm. Weddings and showers and celebrations in the meadow beneath the trees surrounded by flowers.
Daddy had started Rolling Wallflowers from a small flowerbed and three rose bushes in his backyard right after he’d come to Dalton and decided it was home. He’d been passing through from Charlotte on his way to Colorado and had fallen in love with a dream.
It’d probably helped that he’d fallen in love with my mama as he’d been passing through, too.
I carried the first bucket to the trailer hitched to the back of my truck—white lilies, as gorgeous as could be.
I went back and forth, loading everything.
Roses of every color.
Sprigs of greenery.
Baby’s breath.
Orchids.
I double-checked my list of orders.
Saul came carrying the two pygmy willows planted in pots.
“Perfect, thank you, Saul.” I brushed the dirt from my hands. “I think that’s it. If you could prune the palms at the back, we have a big order for those goin’ out to Charleston next week. That should be good for the day.”
“Already on my list.”
“You’re always two steps ahead of me, aren’t you?” I said with a slight smile as I shut the doors to the trailer and started to work the metal lock into place. “I don’t know what I would do without you.”
He’d been working here for the last year and had quickly become invaluable.
He reached out to help me get it latched. “Ah, I’d say two steps behind.”
I froze when his hand touched mine.
When it lingered.
I stared at his thumb that slowly brushed across the tiny tattoo at the inside of my wrist.
A music note.
Just lookin’ at it made me ache. But that was the thing about taking something on as permanent. It was written on you forever. It didn’t matter if I had the tiny design removed. It would still be marked on me. Scored on my soul.
“I always wanted to ask you about this. Do you play?” he asked, his head tilting to the side. Handsome in his unassuming way. Dark eyes and dark hair.
A quiet kindness in his demeanor.
I knew where his mind had been going of late. The way he’d been lookin’ at me. The way his smile had gotten softer and his stare had grown longer.
Slowly, I tugged my hand away, trying not to be rude, trying not to make a big deal out of him touching me that way, but sure I was doing it, anyway.
An uncomfortable smile wobbled on my mouth.
“No,” I mumbled.
“But you have a music note tattooed on your wrist,” he asked, half confused, half amused.
My trembling lips pressed into a flat line. “I guess it’s just a reminder of how easy it is to get lost in a song.”
I thought maybe he felt the undercurrent. That there was so much more to that statement because he frowned.
Searching through my expression as if it might give him the insight to understand.
Awkwardness hovered in the space between. Finally, he stepped back as if he could burst the bubble of it, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “Well, I guess you better get going.”
“Yeah. I should.”
I fumbled away and into the truck, and I buckled as I watched Saul wander back up the trail into the rows of flowers, shoulders hanging lower than they normally did.
“Shit,” I muttered.
I squeezed my eyes closed as I tried to sort out what had just happened. How I felt about it.
Richard’s face flashed behind my lids.
I squeezed my eyes tighter as if it could purge him from my consciousness.
God. It wasn’t fair. Wasn’t fair that he was still there, haunting me like a flaw stamped on my soul.
I was so lost to thinking about it that I shrieked when my phone went off where it sat on the seat beside me. In my blundering, I knocked it to the floor, and I scrambled to pick it up from where it’d fallen onto the floorboards.
My heart took off at a sprint when I saw it was the private investigator calling. I hurried to accept it, pressing it to my ear. “This is Violet Marin.”
“Ms. Marin. It’s David Jacobs with Jacobs & Drow. Did I catch you at a good time?”
“Yes…yes, of course.”
“Great, I wanted to ask you a few questions about your sister. I’ve pulled some basic records, but I need a few more details to really get started.”
Grief billowed through my spirit. Part of me wanted to hang up. Tell him to forget it. That I couldn’t handle any news he might report.
I looked back at the house. At the window with the drapes parted where I knew my mama was inside. Prayin’ for a miracle. I couldn’t be the one to stand in the way of that.
“Yes, any information I have, I’m happy to share. Though I’m not sure I have much information that will help. That’s why I called you.”
I attempted the joke.
It creaked with despair.
“Why don’t you start by telling me about her? Her personality. The things she enjoyed. The things she might have been struggling with leading up to the day she disappeared.”
Emotions spun a web inside me. Anger and love. Hope and regret. The gift she’d given and the peace that she’d stolen.
Everything in the middle of it.
Every loss.
But I guessed she’d been responsible for my greatest joy.
I cleared the roughness from my voice. “We were close for most of our lives…”
Eight
Violet Eight Years Ago
“I have no interest in goin’ to some bar tonight.”
Violet’s older sister, Liliana, rolled her eyes at her.
“You have no interest?” Lily drawled as if it were the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard.
“Nope, none,” Violet spouted, returning her attention to the book she was reading where she lay sprawled on her bed.
Or at least she attempted to. Vainly, considering her obnoxious big sister ripped the book from her hands like she were twelve and not twenty-five.
“Hey. What is wrong with you? I was reading that, in case you hadn’t noticed.” Violet scrambled onto her knees
