Chapter 411: Chapter 411: For Real This Time, I Promise

A very short twenty-four hours ago in a cute and messed up town in Vermont...

How weird to stand in the foyer at Petunia's and not hear a peep. So quiet, so still, mid-December sunlight streaming in the windows, the peaceful emptiness of a place so rarely without occupants making me a bit nostalgic for my childhood.

I'd spent so many summers helping my grandmother here, Iris Fleming's particular way of doing things, her dry sense of humor, her careful and precise language, the way she taught me with the steady and powerful self-confidence of a woman who didn't care one whit what others thought of her ingrained far more deeply in me than I'd ever imagined. At least, until she passed away and I'd come home to Reading.

To Petunia's, the place she loved so very much.