the garden center instead, building it from a mom-and-pop store to one that drew gardeners from the entire region.
Some people loved nothing more than having their hands in the dirt and a flat full of flowers waiting to be transplanted. Though Olivia had spent so much of her childhood here, she had not picked up the gardening bug. She kept a few houseplants in her Seattle apartment, only one that had survived longer than a year or two.
Still, she loved the scent of the leather gloves hanging on a rack, the lemon smell of certain herbs, the rich, verdant scent of growing things.
She could think of worse ways to spend a workday. Like maybe staring at a screen for eighteen hours a day.
The traitorous thought popped into her head out of nowhere and Olivia frowned.
She didn’t mind her job. She did important work, keeping her medical group’s computers safe and up-to-date. She enjoyed the people she worked with and she especially loved her side hustle, helping her clients better convey their message to customers. She was good at it and had had more business than she could handle.
If she sometimes felt overwhelmed, as if the world was spinning so fast she was going to fall off the edge, that was all part of the price for success, right?
One of the garden center employees, a young college-age student with a goatee and a man bun, was watering the annuals from a coiled hose.
“Hi,” he said rather laconically as their gazes met. “Welcome to Harper Hill Home and Garden. We have all your gardening needs. May I help you find something?”
How about a little enthusiasm? she thought, in response to the lackluster greeting.
“Hi. I’m Olivia Harper. Juliet’s daughter.”
This didn’t earn her more than a blink of acknowledgment. “Oh. Then you probably don’t need help. You probably already know where everything is.”
“Not really. But I imagine I will figure things out over the next few weeks. I’m not here to buy anything. I’m going to be helping out, temporarily taking over for my mom while she recovers. Doug, is it?” she asked, reading his name tag.
“Yeah. Doug Carlson. How is your mom doing? It sucked, what happened to her. I had problems with that same ladder wobbling earlier in the day when I was pulling down a flower arrangement for a customer. Guess I should have said something.”
You think? Olivia bit her lip to keep the sarcasm inside. She couldn’t blame him. Her stubborn mother probably wouldn’t have listened to him anyway. She never should have been up on a ladder in the first place, wobbly or not.
“She’s all right. In a lot of pain, still.”
“Oh man. I’m sorry to hear that. She’s a nice lady. If you want, I’ve got some edibles that might take the edge off her pain.”
She could just picture her mother zoned out on enhanced brownies.
“Right now, she’s being followed pretty closely at the hospital. But who knows? She might take you up on that when she gets home.”
At this point, Olivia wouldn’t mind anything that might mellow her mother a little. Juliet still wasn’t convinced that Olivia was the right person to take over her job here at Harper Hill for the next few weeks.
“You don’t even like working at the garden center. You never have,” Juliet had repeated, her hands curling around the lovely turquoise knit blanket one of her friends had brought her in the hospital.
“That doesn’t matter,” Olivia had said, doing her best not to be hurt at her mother’s lack of confidence. “I’m only going to be there temporarily. I can handle it for a month.”
Juliet had groaned, only partially in pain. “A month. I can’t ask you to do that.”
“First of all, you didn’t ask. I’m insisting. Second of all, what’s the alternative? Do you want to close the place during the busiest season of the year? What will you do with all your inventory? Think of the carnage. All those homeless plants, left to wither and die!”
Her mother had made a face and continued arguing, until Olivia was tempted to walk out of the hospital room right then, hop into her car, grab her dog and drive straight back to Seattle.
She wouldn’t, though. She owed it to her father, if nothing else, to help keep alive the business he had loved during this temporary crisis.
“I’m going to be running things in name only. You’ll be telling me what to do behind the scenes. Just think of me as your arms and