She’d asked her friends and family to stay away today. They’d struggled with that, she knew, especially Scottie. She wanted to be there for Adley on such an emotional day, but Adley didn’t think she could take the pity. No. She would do this on her own.
Doing her best not to look at the For Sale sign on the front window, she slid the key into the door and entered Get the Scoop for the last time. Her landlord had decided to sell the entire building. His family had owned it for nearly forty years, and he no longer wanted the hassle, just the money. Adley couldn’t blame him, really.
It wasn’t a surprise that it felt different inside, but the stab of pain was. She pushed her fingertips against her chest and rubbed as she closed the door behind her and stepped all the way in.
It felt almost foreign now. The emptiness was palpable. She’d sold the furnishings, with the exception of one of the stools near the window, which was now in her own kitchen at home. She sold off the equipment, the utensils and bowls and coolers and scoops. She’d taken home everything she wanted to keep, things that reminded her of her grandfather. In addition to the stool, she’d kept a set of spoons, a couple scoops, and some of the ice cream art on the walls—not because it was good, but because it represented a time in her life that meant more to her than she could put into words.
She wandered through the front dining area and into the back to the kitchen. God, how many ice cream flavors had she created back here? Dozens? She’d spent so many nights, especially in the beginning, just experimenting. Mixing fruits and syrups and chocolate and candy, sometimes making a mess, sometimes coming up with gold.
“We’re so sorry to see this place go,” one woman had said to her on the last day she’d been open. “My grandma brought me here when I was a kid, and now I bring my granddaughter. It’s been a family tradition for us.” The woman had honest-to-God tears in her eyes when she’d said it, and Adley had barely held it together in front of her, thanking her for her business for so long, her jaw aching from clenching it to keep her own emotion at bay.
Another customer, a man in his forties, had scoffed. “The folks that run Sweet Heaven wouldn’t know decent ice cream if it walked up and slapped them in the face.” No, it made zero sense, but she appreciated his sentiment and his anger for her. And she quietly admitted to herself that she loved the dig at Sweet Heaven’s subpar product.
“I agree,” said the woman behind him in line. “It’s so…bland. Artificial. You can tell it’s mass-produced.”
Adley knew all of this but had to admit it was nice to hear it from her customers. Too bad it didn’t do any good.
She’d spent her entire last day kicking herself, wondering what she could’ve done differently, sooner, that might have saved the place. Lower prices wouldn’t help the bottom line. Newer equipment would’ve been nice, but with what money would she have purchased it? Maybe asking for help sooner? A better business plan was probably the key. Damn her and her stupid pride that let her believe she knew what she was doing just because she’d watched her grandpa for years. A business manager would’ve been smart. Somebody who knew how to manage the money better, how to plan so they could afford newer, better equipment when the time came. How to market and advertise.
“Coulda-shoulda-woulda,” she muttered now into the empty space. That’s what her dad would say when she was a kid and expressed some kind of regret. “Coulda-shoulda-woulda, Adley. You’ve got to let it go. The past is the past.”
The past is the past.
Well, no shit.
The past is the pastwas the easy part. The letting go? Not so much.
She dragged her fingers across the smooth surface of the counter where she’d been her most creative. It was so weird to see it empty. No bowls, spoons, ingredients. She moved so her back was against the wall, and she stood there, just staring. At the kitchen. At the emptiness. She slid down the wall until she was sitting on the floor.
She pictured her grandpa at the counter, like he always was when she was a kid. He was a small man, only about five foot five and thin. Ironic for a guy who ate more ice cream than anybody she’d ever met. He was cheerful. Always smiling. He would pull a step stool close so Adley could stand on it and see what he was doing, help if she wanted to. And she did want to. She was helping him make ice cream from the time she understood what ice cream was. His’sistant, she called herself until she was a teenager.
“Maybe love of ice cream making skips a generation,” her grandmother had said one day, her smile soft and tender, like it always was when she watched Adley and her grandpa working together. Adley’s mother had never had any interest in the art of making ice cream, and Adley had always been a little sad for her because of it. There was nothing more in the world that Adley wanted to do.
And here it came, the emotion, just like she knew it would. It was the very reason she didn’t want anybody here with her. Her eyes welled up and a lump lodged itself solidly in her throat. Her chest ached as her memories played in front of her like a movie. She literally watched herself grow up in her mind as she sat there, envisioning her younger self and her grandpa, heads together, both in their white ice cream clothes, as she’d called them when she was little, creating the most amazingly rich and creamy vanilla ice cream she’d ever tasted. Crushing mint leaves to make peppermint syrup that had just the right zing for their mint chip. When they decided to make their own birthday cake ice cream, how they’d spent an entire Sunday, from sunrise to sunset, getting it exactly right. When he’d finally rewarded her for her efforts by showing her how to make the most perfect waffle cones on the planet, how to mix the batter, when to roll them so they’d harden up just right. She could see his smile, his soft and gentle brown eyes. She could hear his soft voice as hecoached her in making her first solo batch of chocolate almond. She had hoped to pass down the recipes, the skills, to her own children one day. Now, she never would, and she was pretty sure she could hear her own heart cracking in her chest.
She cried then. Quiet sobs that echoed off the ivory walls of the empty kitchen, bounced off the stainless steel counter. Time passed. She might have been there for hours, she wasn’t sure. But she let herself sit on the floor against the wall for as long as she needed to, and to cry as much as she needed to, as she watched memories play out in front of her like movies. Laughter and concentration andlove. So much love. That was the hardest part. It wasn’t like she didn’t know in her heart that her memories would stay with her, that she didn’t need the Scoop to call them up. It was only a building. Only a shop. But still. She felt like she was losing a part of her, and it hurt. It hurt more than she could put into words.
And so she sat.
It was only when she blinked and realized she was having a little trouble seeing that she knew it was time. She inhaled slowly, filling her lungs with her last big breath of Get the Scoop air. It wasn’t quite the same, not having the scents of chocolate or peppermint or roasted nuts hanging in the atmosphere, but it was still her place. It was still her identity. Exhaling, she finally pushed herself to her feet and stood in her kitchen one last time.
Hands on the counter, fingertips sliding subtly back and forth on the smoothness of it, she whispered into the emptiness. “Good-bye, Grandpa.” She pictured him smiling at her, could swear she felt him laying his cool hand against her cheek. She closed her eyes and soaked it in. Then she left her keys on the counter, as the Realtor had asked her to, locked the doorknob lock on the back door, and left Get the Scoop for the final time, tears coursing silently down her cheeks.
When she turned away from the building to go to her car, she was surprised—and also not surprised at all—to see Scottie standing there, leaning against her own car, arms folded, waiting for her. She didn’t say a word. She simply walked to Adley, opened her arms, and wrapped her in a gentle hug.
Adley thought she’d cried it all out inside the Scoop.
She was wrong.
She felt Scottie press a kiss to her temple.
And she cried.
* * *
“Close the door.”
The tone of Sabrina’s mother’s voice was stern, but it was always stern, so it was hard to gauge what was up. She did as she was told and shut the door of the office behind her. When her mother indicated the maroon velvet chairs in front of her desk, Sabrina took a seat. She hadn’t been there in several months, as she was usually in some other city, but currently, she was in the midst of three weeks at home in Atlanta. And she was honestly feeling a little bit stir-crazy. She tried to seem relaxed in the chair but knew her foot was moving back and forth in a constant rhythm. She hoped her mom didn’t notice.
