6. Chapter Six

The knock on my door startled me. No one ever knocked. If my family was coming over, they'd text first then barge in when they arrived. It was how we rolled.

I peeked out the window beside my door, and Nick waved at me.

Huh.

He'd never been to my place before. Well, not while I'd been living here. He'd probably hung here a lot when my oldest brother, Beau, lived here, but that had been years ago. Beau was married with a kid now, his days of living in the apartment above our parents' garage long gone.

"Nick." I leaned my shoulder against the half-open door. "What brings you here?"

"I was in the area. Thought I'd check in on you."

My natural instinct was to tell him I wasn't up for company. I hoarded my private time like a dragon with gold. But I had to go help my mother in half an hour. I could be hospitable when I had an escape hatch.

Stepping back, I opened the door wider. "Come in, but I have to warn you, I'm due next door soon."

His steps hesitated a beat before he closed the door behind him. "That's okay. I know you're not one for social calls."

"Nope." I poked my thumb toward the main house. "You want sweet tea and cookies, go see Whitney Mae next door. She'll even serve them on a cute tray and the glasses will have lemons printed on them."

He chuckled. "You think I forget the kind of treatment I always get from your mom? I still crave those little cookies with the raspberry jam in the middle."

"Thumbprint cookies are a Whitney Mae classic."

"Yes." He swiped his hands together. "If you get the chance, put in a good word for me and let her know I've been missing those things."

I shook my head. "Boys and their sugar."

"Yep." He zeroed in on my hair. "You cut it."

I touched the blunt edge that now ended at my jaw. "I did. I needed a change."

"Hmmm. It's different."

Before the breakup from hell, my hair had flowed to the center of my back. Andy had loved my hair. I'd loved my hair. About a week after ending things, I hadn't been able to stand it touching me. I'd cut it myself, and my mother had forced me to her salon to get it evened out.

Now, it was short. A "French bob," the stylist had called it. All I knew was I looked like a different person in the mirror, and that was what I'd needed.

"Different is good," I replied.

"It can be." He eyed my hair again. "You can always grow it back out."

"Yeah," I whispered.

He strolled around my tiny living room, which was also my kitchen and dining room. There wasn't much to see. Pale gray walls and crisp white trim. Two comfortable, worn brown leather couches—hand-me-downs from Beau. A couple stools at the narrow kitchen island. A desk with two monitors in lieu of a TV. When I was being a productive member of society, I spent most of my time doing freelance web design there.

"You've got a different aesthetic than Beau," he remarked. "No beer bottles lining the windowsills."

"I'm not much of a drinker, and clutter makes me twitchy." I perched on one of my two stools. "Plus, Beau had never rinsed out those bottles. I don't think you want to know what was living in them."

Nick shuddered. "I'll pass." He perched on the stool next to mine, his hands loose between his knees. "You're doing okay? After…you know…"

"You can mention his name. I won't fall apart."

He waved me off. "Personally, I'm cool with never saying his name again. I doubt we'll cross paths."

"Denver can be a small town like that."

The last few weeks, every time I'd left the house—which hadn't been often—I'd been on edge. High alert. Up until very recently, Andy and I had shared all the same haunts. We had the same habits, favorite coffee shop, grocery store. I didn't know where he was living or if he had a new favorite coffee shop. Thus, the knot in my stomach and feeling exposed whenever I was out.

"Right." He nodded. "So, things went well at the bar? You sold a lot?"

Releasing a sigh of relief, I nodded. "It was good to be back and doing things around other humans."

He snickered, and I wondered again why he was here. Nick was Beau's friend. They'd played in the same soccer league as kids and had remained friends, despite going to different schools. He was four years older, and I couldn't say we'd ever gotten close. Even when I worked at High Bar, I was always too busy to chat with him. If pressed, I would have called us acquaintances.

We had never been stop-in-and-check-on-you level friends. Nor tender looks and careful questions.

Nick plowed ahead like his presence here made sense. "I heard you met Miles."

"I did. You forgot to tell him about me."

He winced slightly. "Yeah, my bad. He told me he almost tossed you out."

I snorted. "It wasn't quite that dramatic, but he did eat a lot of my cupcakes."

"Heard that too." Nick tried to give me a long, meaningful look. I pretended not to notice and checked the time on my phone.

Shit.

I still had twenty minutes.

"Miles mentioned you exchanged numbers."

I shrugged. "He wants more cupcakes."

"Okay, maybe that's all he wants." Nick sighed, and it was loaded with sadness, which made no sense. What did he have to be sad about? "Look, Miles and I go way back, but as Beau's best friend, I feel obligated to tell you the kind of guy he is."

I started to tell him there was no need, that I probably wouldn't hear from him again since it had been days and he'd kept quiet, but Nick was on a roll, so I let him have the floor.

"First off, I don't know if he told you, but he's an Aldrich."

My mouth fell open before I could stop myself. Aldrich was a well-known name in this town. First, as the old-money family whose name was all over hospital wings and concert halls, but in the past decade, the oldest son, Weston Aldrich, had become the one everyone talked about. His outdoor apparel company, Andes, employed thousands of people all over the world. The US team wore Andes clothes in the Winter Olympics. Even I had an Andes coat hanging in my closet.

"Miles…is related to Weston Aldrich?" I squeaked.

"Weston is Miles' older brother. They're not close, but Miles still has the Aldrich family money at his fingertips. Kid drove a Porsche in high school."

I wrinkled my nose. "Gross."

He opened his hands on his knees. "Miles is all right now, but back in high school, he was a mean, angry kid. We were friends, but I didn't agree with how he treated others."

"What do you mean?"

"He was a prick and a bully. He picked on anyone he thought was beneath him if he thought it'd make people laugh. And it did, you know? The people who weren't being picked on thought he was the shit."

"Of course," I grumbled. "I bet they thought he was hilarious."

I was all too familiar with bullies. Just hearing about Miles was bringing back the shit I'd had to put up with in school. That was a long time ago, but those had been formative years. It wasn't something I'd forget.

"I just thought you should know." Nick patted my knee. "In case you were actually thinking about texting him, better have all the information now, right?"

"I wasn't going to text him." I puffed up my cheeks and slowly exhaled. I might've replied if he'd contacted me first, though. "Thanks for looking out for me."

He gave my knee a lingering squeeze and stood. "Of course. I'm always here for you, Daze. Don't forget it."

My stomach churned after Nick left. Picking up my phone, I stared at Miles' contact. My thumb hovered over it for less than a second before I pressed down and deleted it. I had absolutely no need for his number. It wasn't like I'd ever planned on contacting him anyway.

After throwing on a pair of black trousers and a matching button-down, I crossed the back courtyard to the main house.

The home I grew up in wasn't just mine. The basement and first floor made up the Dunham Family Funeral Home, while our family lived on the top floor. Whenever I told anyone that, they automatically thought of ghosts. They might've pretended it wasn't the first thought that popped into their heads, but it was.

Unfortunately, nothing supernatural had happened growing up above a funeral home. The dead stayed dead and didn't reveal any profound wisdom to me from beyond the veil. That would have been far more interesting.

Living above a funeral home was just…normal. It was all I knew.

I found my mother in one of the visiting rooms, bustling around. She always bustled. Her hands were busy, and her steps were short and swift, no matter what she was doing.

"Hey, Mama," I greeted as I entered.

"Afternoon, Daze." She stopped wiping a table for a moment and pointed to a stack of programs. "Can you lay those out for me?"

"Here and there?" I asked.

"Just like always," she chirped.

Like the lack of ghosts, Whitney Mae Dunham also threw new people for a loop. When they met me and heard where I'd grown up, they expected my mother to look like Morticia Addams. She was the exact opposite.

Alabama raised, a southern belle to her core, my mom had big, blonde curls and a smile that was bright and sincere. She favored skirts over pants, in somber, neutral tones at work and colorful, cheery prints in her off time.

She doted on her children and loved her husband something fierce. And she gave of herself to everyone who walked into our funeral home in the throes of horrible grief. For someone so small, she gave the most comforting, warm hugs, and she wasn't stingy with them. Anyone who needed and wanted one got one. I'd seen her cradle sobbing grown men and embrace stiff, broken widows. They always melted into her, and she held them steady.

She helped people through one of the darkest days of their lives, and once they left, most hoped to never see her again.

Yet, she remained bright and happy. Loving and unfailingly kind. I had no idea how she could be so open to people who disdained her existence once they no longer needed our services, but she didn't seem to have any trouble with it.

I, on the other hand, had slowly built a resentment toward people who used, took, and discarded. Most of them wealthy, like the Aldrichs.

My mother followed me, straightening the programs I'd laid out. I waited for her by the sliding doors leading to the lobby.

"This is the last viewing today?" I asked.

"Yes. We had one this morning too, but it was small. We're expecting quite a crowd for this one."

"Who died?"

"His name is Frank. He was on the board for Rossi Motors and ran several businesses in town." She clucked her tongue. "The poor man was only fifty-eight. Much too young."

My mother probably knew a lot more about him than that. She always memorized the details of those who passed through here. It was part of what made her so good at this job.

We finished in the visiting room, and I trailed after her to her office. I wasn't an official employee, but I helped out when asked. My mother didn't ask nearly as often as she should have. She had this idea I needed time and freedom to pursue my goals—which had nothing to do with running a funeral home.

"All right, now that we've got everything ready to go, let's chat." She settled in the chair beside mine. "Tell me what you've accomplished this week."

"I got out of bed every single day."

She clapped. "Good job, babe. Your skin is glowin', so I suspect you got some sun."

"I went for a hike yesterday."

"Brilliant. My baby girl is doing this thing." Her eyes twinkled with pride. All I had to do was get some sunshine and drag my corpse out of bed to make my mama proud. "Now that you have more time on your hands not carryin' that albatross around with you anymore, have you made any inroads on your business plans?"

My mother had loved Andy—or so I'd thought—but as soon as we broke up, she'd begun to refer to him as "that albatross." Whatever her feelings had been, if any, were long gone, and she seemed pleased he was too.

"I hate to let you down, but I haven't done anything. I've thought about it, but I've been frantically trying to catch up with work I'd set aside last month and truly haven't had the time."

She nodded. "Sure, babe. That excuse works this month. What's it going to be next month?"

My brows dropped. It wasn't like her to be so…blunt. That was my thing. "Is this what they call tough love?"

She tilted her head and tapped her cheek. "You know, I think it is. You've had this business idea for a long time, and it's just wasting away. What's stoppin' you now that your primary naysayer is out of the picture?"

"Don't mince your words, Mama."

She rolled her eyes. "I bit my tongue for a long time because you loved that boy and I love you, but I don't have to do that anymore. He held you back from living as big as you deserve. Now, you get to do what you want. Start your business. There's no reason not to."

I threw my hands out. "This is bigger than a little web design or what I do at Nick's. I don't even know where to start. I'm assuming I need a commercial kitchen, but maybe I don't. And that's just the logistics. There's also all the marketing material, the graphics, making contacts…I have no idea what the first step is."

One of her dark blonde brows winged. "That sounds like a pile of excuses."

"It might be, but it's also the truth."

Shuffling came from outside the open office door. A moment later, two women dressed in black appeared. My mother popped out of her seat, her professional mask on in an instant.

"Mrs. Goldman, I'm sorry I wasn't out front to greet you." My mother clasped hands with the woman who couldn't have been older than thirty, her eyes red-rimmed and glassy. This must have been Frank Goldman's daughter.

The woman's chin quivered, but she waved my mother's concerns away. "No, it's not a problem. We're early. And please, call me Shira. Mrs. Goldman makes me sound like my mother-in-law." Her sad eyes fell on me. "I'm sorry. We heard voices in here and—"

The other woman placed her hand on Shira's shoulder. She wore a no-nonsense suit, and her hair was cut into a shoulder-length bob with edges as sharp as glass. "To be blunt, we were eavesdropping."

My mom let out a soft giggle. "Well, it's a good thing we weren't discussing state secrets. This is my daughter, Daisy."

I stood, giving them both a solemn wave. I'd learned long ago never to say "nice to meet you" to someone here for a funeral. There was nothing nice about being here for them.

"Is there anything I can get for you?" I asked.

The no-nonsense woman spoke first. "Actually, we were thinking there's something we could do for you." She pressed her hand to her chest. "I'm Clara Rossi, by the way. My sister-in-law, Saoirse, owns a business strategy firm. She does exactly what you need."

I blinked at this woman I'd never seen before but whose last name I immediately recognized. Rossi Motors was the largest manufacturer of motorcycles in the United States. There was no doubt Clara Rossi was part of that dynasty.

At my obvious confusion, Shira softly clarified. "What Clara means is, Saoirse and her partner help new businesses form plans from scratch. Everything you said you need, they will either do for you or find the answers."

"Oh." I shook my head. "I'm just thinking of starting something small. They probably work with much larger clients."

"They work with clients of all sizes." Clara pulled a business card from her wallet. "Call Saoirse. Tell her Clara sent you. She'll hook you up, I promise."

Peak Strategies

I'd never heard of them, but that didn't mean anything. It wasn't like I had my finger on the pulse of the business world. I liked their card. It looked like a piece of wood with the silhouette of Denver's skyline "burned" into the grain. My mind started whirring with the type of business card I would have. Reality struck before I could get lost in my fantasies, though. I had to have a business before I could have a cool card.

Shira took a step forward and reached out but didn't quite touch me. "Frank and I had this game. We'd ask each other to name the bright side of a tricky or shitty situation. I—well, without him, I can't seem to find the bright side in anything."

She broke off to dab the welling tears in her eyes, and I inwardly kicked myself for wrongly guessing Frank Goldman had been her dad. Shira was here to lay her husband to rest.

Shira took a deep breath. "But I think this must be the bright side. I'm not one to eavesdrop, but something compelled me to listen to your conversation. You can't deny serendipity, can you?"

I sucked in a shaky breath. "Helping me out would be your bright side?"

She nodded. I glanced at my mother. Her hands were tucked under her chin, and she looked like she was about to burst, but she didn't say a thing, letting me decide.

Was there any other choice? It wasn't like I could say no to a grieving woman who saw giving this card to me as the bright side of her husband's funeral.

I tapped the card on my palm. "Thank you. I'll call Saoirse tomorrow."

Maybe this would turn out to be exactly what I needed to truly move on with my life.