Chapter 10 - Wild June in Winter
By December, the first heavy snow of the season had fallen across Manhattan, cloaking the fire escapes of SoHo in thick, pristine white cushions that muffled the sound of the traffic on Broadway.
Wild June was warm, smelling of cinnamon, dried orange slices, and the sharp, resinous tang of Fraser fir branches piled high near the wooden counter.
The brass bell above the door rang with its familiar, cheerful chime.
Ethan walked in.
He wasn't wearing his boardroom charcoal. He was wearing an old, dark green wool sweater, broken-in corduroy trousers, and heavy boots that left wet tracks of slush across the wooden floorboards. He was carrying a cardboard tray with two large paper cups from the coffee roaster on Prince Street.
Mia looked up from the register, grinned, and immediately reached for her coat on the brass hook behind the counter.
"I'm going to lunch," Mia announced, not looking at either of us. "A very long lunch. A lunch that will take approximately two hours and forty-five minutes. Don't break any of the expensive ceramic vases."
"Take three hours," Ethan said, handing her a five-dollar tip with a wink.
Mia slipped out the front door, the bell ringing behind her, leaving us alone in the sweet-smelling, green-filled silence of the shop.
Ethan set the coffee cups on the zinc workbench, stepped around the counter, and pulled me into his arms. His coat was cold from the street, his cheeks flushed with the winter air, but his mouth was warm, tasting of dark roast and chicory as he kissed me with slow, lazy deliberation.
"You're late," I murmured against his lips.
"The board meeting ran thirty minutes long," he said, his hands slipping beneath my apron, settling against the small of my back with that steady, familiar weight. "My father submitted his formal resignation from the advisory committee this morning. He's moving to Palm Beach permanently on the first of January."
"And Victoria?"
"She boarded a flight for Geneva yesterday afternoon," Ethan said. "Christie's is cataloging the jewelry next week. Her family's London firm is under formal administration by the High Court."
I rested my forehead against his chest, listening to the slow, steady rhythm of his heart beneath the wool sweater. It was the same heart that had beaten against my ribs in the back of the car; the same heart that had survived thirty-five years of his father’s cold arithmetic.
"We have an appointment at three," I reminded him.
"With the real estate agent?"
"With the architect," I said, looking up into his grey-blue eyes. "The plans for the rooftop greenhouse are ready. The city approved the permits for the steel reinforcement this morning."
Ethan looked around the shop—at the zinc tables, the buckets of winter berries, the dried hydrangeas hanging from the rafters, and the small framed photograph of my mother sitting beside the register.
"A greenhouse on Mercer Street," he mused, a soft, beautiful smile touching the corners of his mouth. "My grandfather would have called that an inefficient use of downtown air rights."
"Your grandfather had no imagination," I told him, reaching up to twist a stray lock of dark hair that had fallen across his forehead.
"No," Ethan agreed, his voice dropping into that quiet, reverent murmur that always made the rest of the world fade into white noise. "He didn't. But I do."
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, worn object.
It wasn't a diamond. It wasn't an antique emerald set in blackened platinum.
It was a small, brass botanical tag, tarnished with age and slightly bent at the corner, with the words Orchidaceae – Species 12 stamped into the metal in faded block letters.
"You kept it," I whispered, my fingers touching the cold metal in his palm.
"I took it off the workbench the day you graduated," Ethan said. "I've carried it in my wallet for twelve years, Claire. To remind me of what was waiting on the other side of the glass."
He took my left hand, slipping the brass tag into my palm, then closed his fingers over mine, his platinum wedding band catching the pale winter light that filtered through the snowy windows of Wild June.
May you like
"Now we're both on the same side," he said.
"Yes," I smiled, pulling his face down to mine as the snow began to fall again outside, thick and quiet and covering the city in silence. "We are."
