Pure joy flowed through Gretchen. She’d forgotten the magic the Lavender Festival contained, and her childhood memories seemed so close to the surface. She could practically feel the leathery, warm hand of her granddad as he’d kept her close so she wouldn’t get lost in the crowds. She’d done the same to Dixie while they explored, tasted lavender caramels, and rode the Ferris wheel.

Though she’d been back in town for three festivals now, she’d worked the shop, never venturing across the street to actually partake in the festivities. She’d felt a bit of guilt that she’d kept this tradition from Dixie, but she’d stuffed it away.

Watching Drew get fitted with his gaudy, gold crown made her laugh, and Dixie’s face held a glow like it was Christmas morning.

“I can’t believe he won,” Donna said, to which Dixie replied, “I knew he was going to win. I wished it.” She beamed at his mother, who put her arm around the girl’s waist and pulled her close.

“Of course you did. I guess all those bottles you labeled are worth it now, huh?”

“Totally!”

The crowd started to wander away from the sidewalk as the music for the dance lifted into the purple-hued air. But Drew still lingered on the platform, collecting something from Mayor Lambert and shaking hands with the other judges.

“Gretchen, we’ll take Dixie to get some of his ice cream, okay?” Donna held Dixie’s hand so she could jump down from the folding chair. “Then we’ll head back out to the farm. You and Drew stay and dance.” Donna looked radiant and happy, and Gretchen couldn’t help smiling at her.

“Yeah, okay.” Gretchen hugged herself and watched Donna and Joel weave through the crowd with Dixie in tow. Pulling in a deep breath, she turned away from the sidewalk lined with lit lavender and took a few slow steps.

A whoop filled the air, and she spun back to the platform just in time to see Drew kissing Yvonne.

Gretchen’s throat felt like she’s swallowed liquid nitrogen, and everything turned to ice as she watched. The woman stepped back, smiling like she’d just won the Miss American pageant, and lifted Drew’s arm into the air.

His crown had toppled to the side, and he tried to right it with his free hand. Gretchen couldn’t swallow, and though the summer was warm and wonderful, she felt frozen.

“So he won.”

Gretchen tore her eyes from the tiny platform and focused on Janey. She didn’t know what to say, because that liquid nitrogen had gone up to her brain too, making her thoughts sluggish.

“I sent Jess out to the farm with Donna and Joel. He’s going to sleep over.”

Gretchen got her throat working enough to swallow. “Okay.”

“I saw him with Yvonne at the Anchor,” Janey said, finally turning toward Gretchen. “A couple of months ago. He told me it was nothing.” She looked like she might cry. “I’m sorry, Gretchen. I should’ve told you.”

Gretchen shook her head and looked back to the platform. Drew had vacated it, but she couldn’t quite see where he’d gone.

“Doesn’t matter,” she said, her dreams of arranging her indigo daisies on the tables at their wedding dinner at the Mansion shattering. Her heart hurt, and she couldn’t believe she’d invited Drew inside her life. Inside Dixie’s life. “I have to go.”

“You’re not going to talk to him?” Janey latched onto her arm as Gretchen tried to flee.

“Nothing to say.” She pulled her arm away and started across the grass toward The Painted Daisy. She saw his truck parked in the alley, suddenly remembering she didn’t have her van here.

She spun back to find Janey, to ask for a ride, and found her friend only paces behind her. “Come on. I’ll take you home.” Janey linked her arm through Gretchen’s and towed her away from the flower shop, away from the dance now in full swing, away from the man who had crushed her heart.

“My van is at Drew’s,” Gretchen managed to say. Her phone rang, and she looked at Drew’s handsome face on the screen.

“You can get everything later.” Janey took Gretchen’s phone and kept her moving. She drove to her house and got Gretchen situated on the back porch with a glass of lavender lemonade before Gretchen’s first tears fell.

Janey let her cry for a few minutes before she said, “It’s not like Drew to do something like this.” She flipped Gretchen’s phone over and over. “That’s why I didn’t say anything. And you two seemed so happy…” She looked at Gretchen’s phone again. “I sent him a text.”

Gretchen nearly slopped lemonade down the front of her festive lavender dress. “You did? What did it say?”

Janey held out her phone, her face a mixture of sadness and sympathy.

Gretchen looked at her text string from Drew. I saw you kissing Yvonne. I don’t want to talk tonight.

Janey did know her really well. Gretchen didn’t want to talk to Drew tonight.

He’d texted twice. That was all her, not me.

And I’m not with Yvonne. She knows that. Please call me.

The message was fifteen minutes old, and Gretchen inhaled and pressed the phone to her collarbone. “Do you believe him?”

“Does it matter what I believe?”

Gretchen watched the sun sink farther along the horizon, her heart still beating furiously fast in her chest, as if she were watching Drew kiss Yvonne again and again.

She needed to rely on herself. Take care of Dixie.

An image of her granddad’s farm floated into her mind, and along with it came that roaring anger she’d experienced when she’d asked Joel to sell her the farm.

Drew was standing in her way.

She’d once said she’d do whatever was necessary to keep Dixie safe and provide for her. The lavender farm would do that.

So does The Painted Daisy, she thought.

And so her thoughts and her feelings rode the merry-go-round of her mind as she tried to figure things out.

“Can you take me to get my van?” she asked, setting her lemonade on the glass tabletop between them. “I need to go get my daughter and go home.”

A half an hour later, Drew had called once and texted twice. Gretchen hadn’t answered any of his attempts to communicate. She pulled into the driveway at Donna and Joel’s, her nerves a frayed mess. Telling Donna and Joel she had to leave the farm was going to be hard. And getting Dixie out of there was going to be a downright fight.

She steeled herself and squared her shoulders as she got out of her van. The porch swing squeaked, and a figure straightened from it.

Drew.

Her heart catapulted to the back of her throat. His truck wasn’t anywhere in sight, and she felt tricked that he’d parked it somewhere else.

“I knew you’d come get Dixie,” he said, his voice so quiet. But out here, everything whispered, and she heard him just fine.

“We’re going back to our house,” she said.

“Don’t do that.” Drew stepped into the light bathing the steps up to the porch in orange light. “Yvonne was mistaken. She’s apologized for kissing me, and she said it won’t happen again. I told her it absolutely cannot happen again.” He looked fierce and as angry as she felt.

“This isn’t about Yvonne,” Gretchen said, climbing the steps and moving past him. She opened the front door and called, “Dixie! We need to go.”

“What’s it about?” he asked.

Gretchen folded her arms and turned back to him. “My granddad’s farm.”

Her daughter came down the steps from the second floor bedrooms, her face filled with confusion. “Where are we going?”

“Back to our house.”

“What? Why?” She held a handful of cards in her fingers. “Me and Jess are playing Hearts.”

“Get in the van.” Gretchen started away from Drew, no longer able to be so close to him.

“I don’t want to go,” Dixie said.

“Go with your mother,” Drew said quietly.

“Drew—” Dixie protested.

“Come on, Dix.” Gretchen spun back to her. “You don’t always get to do what you want. We’re leaving. Let’s go.”

Donna appeared in the doorway, and Gretchen’s eyes heated. She didn’t want to make a scene. She just wanted to take her daughter and go.

“Thank you for everything, Donna,” she said, her voice breaking. “I’ll come out tomorrow and get our things, get everything put back the way it was. I’m sorry.” She turned away from the kindness and compassion Drew’s family had offered her, unable to face them for another moment.

She climbed behind the steering wheel of the van, beyond relieved when Dixie stormed across the front lawn and joined her in the vehicle. “What is going on?” she demanded.

Gretchen couldn’t answer. She put the van in reverse and set them on the Lavender Highway toward home.

“Mom, I’m not a baby. Why did we have to leave?”

“Drew kissed someone else,” Gretchen said. “I—Joel won’t sell me the farmhouse next door.” She didn’t say that it was simply too hard to be around Drew right now. Too hard to look southwest and see the land she so desperately wanted and couldn’t have.

“But I wished,” Dixie said, her own tears falling. “I wished that you and Drew would fall in love and be together.”

“Yeah, so did I, baby.” Gretchen reached over and tousled her daughter’s hair. “Sometimes wishes don’t come true.”

“But Drew said—”

“Just because Drew says something doesn’t make it true,” Gretchen said with a heavy dose of harshness in her voice.

Dixie folded into herself and stared out the window. Gretchen had seen her do this exact thing after Aaron had died, and her heart shriveled to think she’d caused this sorrow for her daughter.