Page 8 of Christmas in Watch Hill
“I do too.” I glanced at my watch. Every minute she stayed in the store meant more money I’d have to dig out from my dwindling budget, and while I enjoyed her company, I couldn’t afford much more of it. “Listen, I don’t want to keep you any longer . . .”
“It’s okay. You know, I didn’t want to say anything, but my dad told me the other day that Chadwick Properties wants to raise the rent on all of the tenants in this shopping center.”
I bit back a grimace. It didn’t surprise me that Tara knew this since her dad played a huge role in the daily operations of that property management company, but I still wasn’t prepared to talk to her or anyone else about it. Asking for help wasn’t easy for me to do. “I got the notice the other day. It’s not going to be easy to come up with the money.”
“Did you try to talk to them?”
“They won’t take my phone calls or answer my emails.”
A low whistle escaped her lips. “Do you want me to talk to Arthur?”
I shook my head. “You don’t have to pull that string. This is my problem, not yours.”
“But what are you going to do if you can’t come up with the money?”
I gave a helpless shrug, the defeat of the situation pushing through me. “I don’t know. Close, I guess.”
“No way.” Her eyes widened. “Youcan’t.”
“What other choice do I have? If we don’t start getting new customers and making more of a profit . . .”
“But your parents loved this store. They put so much time and effort into it. They would be devastated if you had to close. This place is a Watch Hill landmark.”
“Trust me, no one feels that more acutely than I do. I’ve thought about it a ton.”Prayed about it, worried about it . . .“But I can’t run a failing business forever, and people’s habits have changed. They shop online now, and the economy isn’t so great . . .” I sighed over the weight of it. “I’m sure Chadwick Properties will be able to get an amazing tenant in here if I leave. Someone or something more in line with what people want—like a salon, or a Pilates studio, maybe.”
“There are plenty of Pilates studios.” Tara looked around the room. “But this—this place has a wonderful ambiance to it. You can’t get this from online shopping.”
“I wish more people felt the same way.”
Tara didn’t stick around much longer after that, and when I was alone, the conversation we’d had played again in my mind. She was right—my parentswouldbe devastated if they knew I was considering shutting down the store after so many years in this little strip of Watch Hill. Owning a business like this had been their dream, and they’d been talented at it, working for years making sure that The Pink Box had a stellar reputation and a loyal customer base. But part of the magic had been my mother’s dynamic personality, her flair for cutting-edge style, and her eclectic taste. Without her selling expensive dresses under a cloud of French perfume and choosing pieces that made The Pink Box utterly unique, something huge was missing.
Try as I might, I couldn’t replicate her, no matter what I did.
Maybe I was hanging on because giving up the store meant giving up part of my parents’ memory, something I wasn’t ready to do because I was still grieving. And God, it felt like I’d been doing that for a long time, as if it were a never-ending process I couldn’t shake. That was one of the biggest things no one ever talked about when it came to death and loss. Grief hung around like a bad disease, always threatening to rear its nasty head.
One other customer came into the store that afternoon, a man I didn’t know, and he bought a dress for his wife along with a few accessories. He wanted the purchase gift-wrapped and the $236.96 he paid represented the largest single sale I’d had that month. It certainly helped ease the pain, but I would have given anything for at least two other customers to rack up price tags as large as that one.
When he left, I thought again about how my mom would have managed this, how she would have perceived the kind of setbacks I had since taking over the operations. She always had such great ideas, and always seemed to know what do, never letting the daily grind of owning a specialty boutique seem too challenging. How many times had I wished for that quality? It felt even more out of reach that year.
Three years was a long time, and not long enough.
I closed the store just after six and considered going home. It certainly sounded attractive. But going home would probably turn into a night watching made-for-TV holiday movies on cable and drinking whatever wine I could find in my kitchen, all of which simply sounded depressing. And while I would have probably used that term for the holidays in general, I wasn’t in the mood to make things worse.
Instead, I headed to Watch Hill Community Church.
The nondenominational congregation had been part of the town since its founding, and hosted services in a white clapboard sanctuary near the shopping center with an engraved cornerstone listing the date of the groundbreaking. I was by no means a member, but WHCC hosted a cantor music festival every weekend during Advent, and it had something of a following in the area. Church leadership brought in singers and musicians from across the region. A few years earlier, the local news rated the concerts as one of the top events to attend during the Christmas season.
It seemed like a decent way to get a least a little holiday cheer, and I certainly needed it as much as anyone.
I slipped into the church a few moments before the program began, took a bulletin from the basket near the entrance, and found an open pew near the back. Soon the organ began to play, high above the worship space in the balcony.
The organist had just made it through the first few notes when Scott Parker crept up the side aisle, passing the hundred-year-old stained glass and carved support beams as he went. It had been so easy talking to him that morning . . . For the first time in days, I’d been able to forget about the damn rent. Before I gave it another thought, I motioned for him to join me in the pew.
What would it hurt if he does?
And to my surprise, he sat down next to me.
