Chapter 5 - Seven Years of AshesSeven years passed.
I did not return to Blue Harbor for his funeral. I couldn't bear to see the lighthouse, the bakery, or the hill where we had planned our future.
I stayed in Boston, working seven days a week at Bell & Thorn Floral Shop. I became a ghost in my own life. I didn't date. I didn't make new friends. I lived in a quiet, sterile apartment, wearing gray sweaters, carrying Evanâs memory like a sacred, heavy stone beneath my ribs.
I believed my story was finished. I believed love was something that happened once, broke you, and left you to survive the quiet aftermath.
Then, in the autumn of my thirty-first year, my mother suffered a mild stroke back in Blue Harbor.
I packed my bags, took a leave of absence from the flower shop, and drove north toward the Maine coast for the first time in seven years.
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As my car crested the hill overlooking Blue Harbor, the bright autumn leaves of red, orange, and gold glowed under the setting sun. The lighthouse stood at the end of the peninsula, exactly as we had left it.
And standing on the wooden pier near my motherâs bakery, holding a set of architectural blueprints, was a man who took my breath away.
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