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you?”
    “Not at all,” Lily exclaimed, smiling broadly. “Please do.”
    Coraline patted her cheek again and left her. Lily sighed, pleased. She felt that she had at least two friends now, Miss Ann Mars and Coraline Connolly. It would be stupid of her to wish that she might count Tate Bronson among their number; more than stupid. It would be part of the same unhealthy pattern of the past, part of what she’d left Boston to get away from, what she needed to leave behind and avoid in the future. No, she wouldn’t wish to count Tate among her friends, but if it should happen… Turning off that thought, she went back to work.
    * * *
    Miss Mars dropped in on Wednesday with both breakfast and lunch. Others came by to say hello, beginning with the shop owners on either side of Love in Bloom: Melissa Sweeney from the bakery on the corner and Allison True from the bookstore on the other side of the flower shop. Josh Smith went up and down the street distributing cups of coffee from his first official brew. The Cozy Cup Cafe—on the corner opposite the bakery—was ready for business, he declared, so he stayed to get Lily’s computer system operational before moving on to do the same for others. The mayor came by to say hello and welcome her to town, as did the chief of police, Joe Sheridan. Both were members of the SOS Committee.
    Whitney Leigh, a serious young reporter with the Bygones Gazette, spent a few minutes getting background information for Friday’s special edition, but Lily’s stammering answers didn’t seem to impress her very much, so she didn’t stay long. Other than asking how many years of experience Lily had as a florist and who she thought the mystery benefactor might be behind the grants, Whitney only asked a few questions about the specials Lily intended to offer for the Grand Opening.
    Lily knew she shouldn’t feel anxious, but she couldn’t help it. So much seemed to be riding on this enterprise, and she couldn’t help feeling unequal to the task. Even as the others ventured in and out of her shop, she wondered when Tate and Isabella would return. She considered calling Tate to ask his advice on a number of small issues but couldn’t bring herself to do it. Instead she got out the paint cans and a brush and tackled the counter.
    When Miss Mars closed her shop early and went upstairs, then came down again wearing a hat and gloves with her usual shirtwaist dress, Lily realized that she’d have to do dinner on her own. A moment later an aging but well-kept blue sedan pulled up to the curb, and Miss Mars got inside with another woman. The car drove away, turning left onto Bronson Avenue. Feeling abandoned, Lily gave herself a stern talking-to. She had moved halfway across the country on the basis of a newspaper article. The least she could do now was walk down the street to the grocery store on her own. Determined, she left the shop and set out.
    With only three checkout lanes, all currently unmanned, the Hometown Grocery didn’t have much to recommend it when compared to the stores in Boston. The fresh produce department would have fit neatly into the bed of a pickup truck, and the butcher department had obviously been shut down, leaving only a single refrigerated case of packaged meats. Lily wandered the aisles virtually alone, without even the company of piped music to mute the squeak of the wheels on the shopping cart. Nevertheless she found all the ingredients for a fine salad, including a small tin of cocktail shrimp and her favorite bottled dressing. She gave up trying to find a suitable bread to eat with it and settled for crackers, thinking that the new bakery was going to do well here. While she was at it, she bought a few things for breakfast and lunch the following day, too.
    Knowing that she couldn’t carry more, she resisted the urge to buy kitchen gadgets from the selection offered and approached the checkout, surprised to find that a tall thin brunette had materialized from