Leaving Normal, Stef Holm [ebook reader screen .TXT] 📗

firefighter calendar at my gym. I keep telling you, if you filled a rack of them, they'd be sold out in one day."

"I'm not putting any hunky men in my shop," Natalie declared.

"But I'll bet plenty of hunky men will come and buy flowers and things from you. Maybe you'll date one of them."

"I'm not dating anyone. I don't have any time, nor do I have the interest."

Sarah frowned. "You've been divorced for almost two years and the only relationship you've had since being single went bust, but that's in the past. It's time for you to get back out there."

"Hmm." Natalie hoped her noncommittal response would end the discussion. She didn't like talking about Michael Williams, didn't like being reminded about the short-term relationship that ended disastrously just under a year ago. She'd felt more pain going through that breakup than she had ending a twenty-one-year marriage.

"Michael Williams was your transitional guy," Sarah went on, ignoring Natalie's warning glare. "So you dated some duds after him, so what if none of them panned out? You can't expect to meet Mr. Right when you do five men in five minutes."

"It was called speed dating," Natalie clarified, trying to tamp down her agitation. "And it was eight men in eight-minute increments. And, at the time, I wasn't looking for Mr. Right. I would have settled for Mr. Right Now to share the basics with—dinner and a movie."

"You were on the rebound without a clear perspective."

"I hate all this divorced-people language—rebound, transitional and newbie. It's all so horribly depressing. Sarah, I'm done with dating. I just don't want to go there anymore. I need to focus on the shop."

Hat and Garden had come to fruition at a time when she was looking for an outlet to channel her creativity and to make positive changes in her life. She'd always been a gardener, loved sunshine and flowers, making things grow, so this new shop offered a perfect blend of all her interests.

When her daughter, Cassandra, had entered high school, Natalie finally took a part-time job. As a floral assistant she learned a great deal, and found a deep sense of satisfaction in the work. She knew then what she wanted to do with herself.

Greg, her husband at the time, never thought she was up to the task of opening her own shop. Which is one of the reasons he was now her ex-husband.

There had been a time in her marriage when she'd been blissful and alive: her courtship, her wedding day, those years before she got pregnant. Even after Cassandra had been born, Natalie knew a limitless peace and satisfaction. But then things had changed when Natalie went back to work.

It wasn't so much being out of the house as it was discovering who she was without Greg. She'd married in her early twenties and had never completed college. She had been content to stay at home with her baby, loved every minute of it and didn't want to change a thing. She would forever be grateful to Greg's income for allowing her the opportunity of being a stay-at-home mom.

But when she was arranging flowers, blending colors and creating bouquets, she found a piece of herself she hadn't known had existed. She felt a self-worth that had purpose beyond that of being a wife and mother.

Natalie began to realize that she needed more from her marriage than what she was getting from Greg. Her husband had been content to maintain the status quo; doing no more and no less each day. Get up, go to work, come home, watch the evening news, eat dinner and go to bed. He liked the routine, the safety of it all. Natalie had become, in her older years, more of a risk taker. Life was short—she wanted to embrace it.

And yet, she hadn't had the courage to do so at the time because she worried about the effects of divorce on Cassie. She stayed with Greg who, in all fairness, hadn't changed from the man she'd married.

But she wanted more for herself: emotional balance and the desire to be loved and nurtured. They'd gone to marriage counseling, but the sessions only frustrated her and added conflict to the relationship. She hated the tension, the feeling of things unraveling with no way to knit them back together.

When Cassie entered her junior year at college, Natalie could no longer live in the strained marriage, so she finally filed for divorce.

There was no one to blame. Not herself. Not Greg.

It was just one of those things. You either grew together in a marriage or you grew apart.

They'd grown apart.

The twenty-one year union that had been dying a slow death for years had been dissolved. At forty-three, for the first time in her life, Natalie had confronted facing things on her own, making her own decisions—both good and bad. And, in the past two years, she'd lived with the consequences.

It had taken a year to regroup financially, going from part-time work to full-time to support herself. Then she'd temporarily been distracted by her brief romance with Michael. A mistake she was not going to repeat.

In a moment of retrospect, Natalie conceded, "Sarah, I don't want to be alone all my life, but I'm not going to worry about it. I'm going to enjoy what I have around me." Sitting on the cash-register counter was a box of miniature Saint Therese statues. They could be arranged in houseplants or in window gardens.

"She's pretty," Sarah said. "Who is she?"

"Therese of Lisieux. The saint of flowers." Natalie sighed, a feeling of contentment settling through her. "To me, she also represents patience and simplicity. I love appreciating the curling detail of rose petals as they form a flower, the textures and smells around me. I have to live for the moment, Sarah, and not focus on the big picture or I'll go crazy. In my marriage, I focused on my husband and what was going wrong and how I could fix it. Even when I