If Seattle’s April showers were supposed to be a pain, that was news to my daughter. Buttoned up in her waterproof coat and with a baby-blue umbrella in her hands, every puddle wasn’t so much an obstacle as an opportunity. Myself, I had too many memories of matted, cold fur to enjoy the rain — but nothing cheered me up like Josie’s happiness.

“Easy, Miss Merwolf,” I teased, hand clasped in hers as she leaped with both feet into a particularly deep puddle. The umbrella was doing a better job of poking me in the arm than it was keeping her dry, but I figured it was a dad’s business to put up with that sort of thing. “You won’t like it very much if your clothes are damp for school.”

“I’ll be careful.”

Judging by how damp my ankles were getting, we had separate ideas about the definition of the word ‘careful’. Even so, I couldn’t bring myself to tell her off. It had been a difficult couple of years for both of us. If she could enjoy the small things without getting bogged down by destiny and heart-twisting memories, then so could I. As we passed through the school gates, I let go of her hand and reached out for the umbrella.

“You have a good day, okay?”

Her eyes were already flitting between her friends and the school doors, but she spared a few moments to launch forward and kiss me on the cheek. “You have a good day. Sell all your flowers.”

“All of them?”

Josie nodded, turning her umbrella in her hands, a look of confidence and understanding on her face. “Because that’s how you make money,” she advised. A beat later, she finally handed the umbrella over. “Selling all of them.”

“Got it. I’ll do that. Might be tough, though.”

“Things are sometimes, Daddy.”

As she headed into school, bounding off without a care in the world, I couldn’t help but feel a tightness in my stomach. Kids came out with pearls of wisdom like that all the time, and usually their parents laughed about it — but for me, it was an uncomfortable reminder that Josie had already been forced to learn just how tough things could be.

It was too much for a six-year-old. And there was nothing I could do about it.

I wrung the umbrella in my hands on the walk home, barely shaking it out as I reached our apartment block again and dipped inside. Maybe it was stupid to get so affected by this. In all likelihood, Josie wasn’t even thinking about everything we’d faced when she said it. Right now, she was probably running around with her friends and waiting for Miss Okoye to start the day off, and here I was stewing over the notion that I’d already ruined her childhood.

I pulled my hood down and shook out my hair as I stepped through the door of the apartment. Miserable damn weather. I spared a brief glance in the mirror to check that the quiff I’d styled before leaving hadn’t completely collapsed. Now that we weren’t running out of the door to make sure we didn’t miss drop-off, I had a few spare minutes to tidy Josie’s breakfast things away… and maybe to arrange something more than coffee for myself, at last. With only the two of us in the apartment, there wasn’t much to clean up. Granted, since one of us was six, there were a few stray spots of cereal and milk splattered around the table — some of which had fallen on the drawing Josie had been making over breakfast.

I swallowed, lifting it out from underneath her spoon, and wiped away a droplet of milk with the dishcloth.

It was easy to identify the pretty little blonde-haired girl in the center of all the brightly-colored flowers. In real life, Josie’s hair was a much darker, ashier blonde, but few children’s coloring kits got more specific than neon yellow. She’d used the same color for me — but admittedly, it was the broad, carefree smile that seemed the most inaccurate, especially as my eyes drew reluctantly, inevitably to the dark-haired figure holding Josie’s other hand.

My heart stung. Looking away, I lifted the drawing to the fridge and stuck it up with a couple of magnets. Just because I didn’t want to look at it right now didn’t mean that this didn’t deserve pride of place in our home.

If you could call it a home.

I busied myself clearing away the dishes and wiping down the table. If I had to cough a few times and blink faster than an ordinary person — well. Nobody had to know about that. Least of all the sweetheart that had drawn this picture, and who deserved a daddy whose smile did stretch ear-to-ear, just like that blond stranger in the drawing.

As soon as everything was cleared away, I set about gathering my things to leave. Somehow, I just wasn’t hungry anymore. The picture felt like a ghost I didn’t dare to look at directly. It certainly haunted me as I made my way down the hallway and back out of the front door, hands buried deep in the pockets of my trench-coat and brows firmly furrowed. Only as I got further and further from the empty apartment, and the broader emptiness it signified, could I finally begin to focus on the real business of the day.

Josie was half-right, after all. Maybe I didn’t need to shift every bit of stock I had today, but I still had to get to work selling my flowers.

The store had been something of a salvation for me over the past couple of years. I had always felt an affinity with flowers. For starters, there was something kind of omega-like about the way they sat pretty and waited for pollination — but even if you took that heavy-handed comparison aside, I enjoyed their company. Flowers were varied and versatile and infinitely more complex than they were given credit for. They accompanied almost every major milestone in a person’s life. When they didn’t, their absence was often felt quite sorely. They meant something. They put smiles on people’s faces.

A lifetime before that rainy April day, someone special might have called me a flower fairy. He might have teased me, reminding me with a very exaggerated quirk of the brows that flowers weren’t sentient, regardless of what I may have seen in Alice in Wonderland. I could picture him smiling out from the confines of Josie’s picture — surrounded by all her flowers. Would he have rolled his eyes, knowing that I’d passed my love of them on to her? Held his hands up, and called himself outnumbered?

I fixed my eyes on the doorknob as I held it in place, unlocking the door of the shop. The sign overhead read Blessings, a relic from the previous owner. Pretty generic. I had always intended to change that, figuring that most of my customers would remember the location more so than the name. So far, I hadn’t gotten around to it. There were a thousand items on any business owner’s to-do list, and since I was a single father on top of all that… well. Like much of the rest of the things I’d like to get around to eventually, it could wait.

Inside felt a little more like me. On every surface, sat a different flower family, or pre made floral arrangement. Some had been designed for specific customers in advance; others had been arranged on a whim, simply there to decorate and show off my talents. Sometimes, customers who came in uncertain of what they wanted ended up buying them — or one of the potted succulents that filled any gaps left empty. It made for an ever-changing, bright and colorful environment. Whatever kind of mood I was in when I walked through that door, it was hard not to relax in the presence of all that beauty. I liked to think it had a similar effect on my customers.

That said, the weight on my shoulders might have been enough to crush even the most resilient flower-buds today. It was a relief when the first customer arrived to distract me from my mournful dusting.

“Morning, ma’am! What can I do for you?”

“Oh — you see, it’s my wedding in a couple of months, and my friend Allie said you took care of the flowers for hers last fall? Hers were just beautiful, so… if you’re still doing weddings…?”

Of course the first thing I had to deal with today was a marriage. What else? I fought to keep any frustration off my face, conscious that my bad feelings weren’t this young woman’s fault.

In the end, it was nobody’s fault but mine.

“Absolutely, we are!” I smiled, trying to reflect the excitement I saw in her. I remembered what it felt like to be that kind of happy. It wasn’t so long ago. “And congratulations. Who’s your lucky partner?”

“Her name is Holly. She’s about a thousand times cooler than me; I have no idea why she’s agreeing to any of this. She’s into motorbikes, so we’ve been thinking kind of a leather-and-lace type theme? Sort of hard and soft...”

By the time I’d finished helping her it was well past midday, and I was beginning to feel that my mood couldn’t be rescued. At the most, I’d be able to tell Josie that we’d sold an awful lot of flowers today, and hope she didn’t notice that anything else was wrong. Being a dad could be exhausting that way — having to think not only about the way you felt, but about what it could communicate to your little ones. She already worried about me way too much.

A knock on the window pulled me out of the negative stream and back into the present. I blinked, wondering who had decided to knock instead of just walking inside like a normal person, but I didn’t have to wonder for long. A grinning, familiar face popped up from the edge of the window, and finally poked through the door.

“Only me,” said my older brother Noah. “Keeping busy?”

“Always.”

“Doesn’t look like a whole lot of flowers are going on,” he said, gesturing at my desk as he approached. “Looks more like a whole lot of paper.”

“Do you know how businesses work?”

“Absolutely not.” He leaned against the desk, peering up at the bouquets hanging up behind me and eventually gesturing at one. “Mrs. Pink and Purple right there. How much is she?”

“Forty,” I said. It still felt instinctive to refuse his money, but I knew from many years of experience that this was a battle I’d lose. At 41 years old, Noah had 12 years on me — and he leaned into the big brother line hard whenever we had disagreements. In the end, I always lost. Of course, it wasn’t an unpleasant battle to lose; it was nice to know that he supported me. “Did I miss something? Somebody new in your life?”

“And in yours,” said Noah, pulling out his wallet. “Guess the news hasn’t reached you yet, cousin Emma’s pregnant.”

“That’s great!” I lifted the bouquet down carefully from its hanging container, and started preparing it for gift-wrapping. “I was beginning to think they’d stop trying.”

“I think that was the plan,” Noah admitted. “But here we are. Good news at last.”

“Thankfully. I kind of needed that today.”

“You did?” Noah eyed me, counting fifty bucks out of his wallet and tucking it directly under the cash drawer. Did he think I wouldn’t notice? I made a mental note to hide ten dollars in his pocket later. “Why? What’s up?”

I shrugged, nose wrinkled. I was grateful to have the bouquet occupying my attention so that I had an excuse not to make eye contact. “You know. The usual. Just one of those days, I guess.”

“Ah, kiddo.”

“I don’t know if I still qualify now that I’m only one year out from 30.”

“You’ll always be a kiddo to me,” he insisted. The joke didn’t sound as energized as usual. “Well, listen. Have you spoken to anybody about it?”

“Like I have the time.”

We stood in silence for a few moments. I finished wrapping the bouquet and tied a ribbon around it — white, in contrast to the bright colours of the flowers.

“You should make time,” he insisted. “I can take care of Josie for you whenever you need. You know that.”

I shook my head. I could feel my throat tightening up, so I was grateful when he didn’t press it. Instead, he took the bouquet out of my hand and turned it to inspect it.

“Y’know,” he said. “They’re not really my thing. Flowers. But even I can tell you’re really good at this.”

“Thank you, Noah.”

I met his eyes. In his expression was all the strength and support of our massive family, and the power of it almost pushed me too far. I cleared my throat, looking hard at the clock on the wall and watching the second hand tick by. Flowers weren’t Noah’s thing, sure — but talking feelings never really had been either. Now here he was putting effort in for me. Trying, just like I was trying.

I’d had a lot of bad luck in my life, but I couldn’t forget the lucky parts.

“If you won’t see somebody, maybe there’s something else you can try,” he said, after a long pause. If I wasn’t mistaken, I saw him rubbing a little dab of moisture away from beneath one of his eyes. My big brother, moved to this. I felt a swell in my chest, and resisted the urge to tell him so. I doubted he’d appreciate the extra emotion right now. “I don’t know. The tattoo, maybe.”

I glanced down at my hand. The wedding band on my ring finger had faded a little in the creases, as hand tattoos were known to do. The idea of getting it touched up had always been too painful. I imagined a lot of questions I couldn’t answer. Questions about the partner it signified.

“What about it?”

He shrugged, drumming his fingers on the countertop. “Friend of mine lost her husband. Had hers moved to the other hand. So it’s… you know. It’s not a wedding ring any longer. You can start to move on, but it’s still… there. You can still remember.”

I swallowed, staring down at his fingers on the surface of the counter. Watching as they drummed up and down, full of nervous energy. I could understand that. This was a very difficult subject to bring up.

“Listen,” he said eventually. “It wouldn’t take long, you know? They could laser it off and tattoo it back on in the same appointment. What time am I picking Josie up after school today? Three? It’s not art club today, right?”

“It’s three,” I confirmed, still looking right down at the desk. I figured I knew what he was about to suggest.

“Why don’t I hold onto her a little longer? You can go down some place. Find a place that does walk-ins. Actually — no, scratch that.” He tapped against the wood with his palm, drawing my eyes up to his face. “Don’t look for a place. I’ll find you a place. I’ll make you an appointment for after the store closes tonight. You go alone. Talk to the artist. If you want to get it done, that’s great. If you don’t — well. It was one idea. And me and Josie will be waiting.”

I ground my teeth together, turning over the idea. I could feel my foot tapping against the floor, refusing to be still.

“No pressure,” he said. I was grateful for the softness in his voice — for the fact that he seemed to understand my silence. When his hand came to rest on my shoulder and squeezed gently, I thought I really might be about to lose it. “You’re doing really good, you know?”

I nodded, short and slight.

“No, I mean it, kiddo. Real good. That kid of yours is great. You’re keeping this place open. You’re almost there. And for the record, we’re all really proud.”

He gave a weak smile. Neither of us dared to meet eyes now. Instead, he just tapped the counter again and headed out with his bouquet, turning back to give me one more thin smile as he walked away.

I wasn’t sure whether I could go through with this tattoo appointment, but I had enough faith in Noah to at least give it a try.