This text comes from the very beginning of Hearts on the Window. The contraption on Jill's front door was inspired by real life. My first job (aside from a paper route) was working in a small grocery store. We knew when someone opened the door because of a handful of metal pipes tied together with string and draped over the handle. The door was glass and for the first several weeks, I was afraid it would break whenever the pipes knocked into it. It didn’t, and I eventually stopped thinking about it. But that initial instinct to cringe when the door opened left an impression. I envisioned something more elaborate and obnoxious for Jill.
From the book:
Jill shook her head as she put the lid back on the box and hoisted it to the top of the stack. Maybe she’d seen the jewelry making kits in stack five. She knew she could sell a few of those with St. Valentine’s Day less than a month away. But where had she put them?
She searched all the boxes in stack five and came up empty. Jill huffed out a breath of frustration, positioned both hands on her hips, and surveyed the haphazard assortment of boxes in her warehouse. The unfinished space behind her store was more like a back room, but she liked to think of it as a warehouse. She liked to think big.
The boxes were stacked around the space like random pillars, and she’d assigned each stack a random number. It was the most ridiculous organizational system ever. Organizing things had never been Jill’s passion though.
She temporarily gave up the search when Clanky alerted her to the arrival of a customer. Jill Anderson walked swiftly into her store while rolling her eyes in disgust. Not at the arrival of a customer of course, but at herself for referring to Gippy as Clanky. That was her brother’s uninspired name for it and he wasn’t even there. Seth. She’d yell at him for renaming Gippy if it wouldn’t mean admitting his name was sticking in her head. Fortunately, she had something else to yell at him about.
A tall, thin man with silver hair was looking over her silk flowers when Jill reached him. Mr. Lately exuded gentleman. She felt a bit uncomfortable calling him by his first name, but she knew and respected his preference.
“Andrew,” she said, “you strike me as a live flowers kind of man.”
“That I am, my dear.” He nodded thoughtfully, his kind eyes twinkling at her observation.
“What’s your favorite flower?”
“That’s not something I’ve been asked before. At least not that I remember. I tell you what though,” Andrew smiled as though he was about to share a secret, “I’m not sure anything beats a rose in full bloom.”
“Excellent choice.” Jill approved. “What can I help you with today?”
“An excellent question,” he said. “I believe I’m out of stationery. Is that in your purview?”
“Right this way.” Jill motioned him to follow her to some stationery. She could have led him there with her eyes closed. She knew the front of her store like the back of her hand. Better than the back of her hand actually. The warehouse was a different story, a messy story that she’d return to after Andrew was satisfied. “I’m afraid I don’t have a large selection,” Jill said to him. “Luckily, I believe this one with the gray border could work for you. It’s very stately.”
Andrew took the package she offered. “This will suit me just fine.”
“You wouldn’t be writing any love letters, would you?” Jill tried to sound teasing and not impertinent as she rung up the paper.
“Not of the romantic sort,” Andrew said. “But there should be love in any letter. I’m trying to convince my grandson of the power of old fashioned paper letters. Do you know my Charlie? He’s about your age.”
“Yes, s-Andrew. I remember Charlie. He was only two years behind me in school.”
Andrew looked wistful. “Too bad they had to move to the city. I hope I never have to say I remember my grandchildren.”
Jill nodded, trying to smile brightly. She hadn’t meant to bring him down at all. “But you enjoy sending letters to the city, don’t you?”
“Most definitely.” Andrew smiled again and waved his new purchase at Jill as he left. “Have a nice day, my dear.”
Jill checked the street out her front window. No one else was in sight. That wasn’t unusual for early afternoon in Hartford. It was a quiet town. Jill’s rush – if it could be called a rush – would come when people stopped in on their way home from work. She should have time to find those kits.
She returned to the warehouse and searched through all of stack two before she found the kits in the top box of stack seven. “Finally,” she mumbled to herself as she grabbed an armload of bags and took them into the store. Where would be the perfect place to display them? She’d already filled the space where she’d packed up the leftover Christmas ornaments. She’d put them in stack one, right? Maybe. She’d worry about those in November. The bags of beads were small. They could go on the bottom shelf by the calligraphy pens.
Jill made her way to the designated spot and sat right on the floor to arrange the display. She gave a mostly contented sigh. The cold seeping from the tile through her skirt was only slightly marring her happiness. This store had always been her dream. She’d been saving every penny since all she had was babysitting money. She hadn’t expected to open the dream so young. She’d made an offhand mention of her long-term plan to a family friend. It turned out that he owned this building that had been sitting empty for years. He offered to sell it to her below market value.
Trying not to get her hopes up, Jill agreed to look at the feasibility of his proposal. She nearly fainted when she saw the contract. He sold her the building for only a hundred dollars. The whole building. There was a small apartment upstairs where she could live without charging herself rent. It was perfect.
Her conscience insisted she try to offer a price that at least approached fair, but her benefactor wouldn’t hear of it. He insisted that Hartford needed her store and that getting it into her hands was the right thing to do. Jill honored him by naming the store after him. Sort of. She called it “Things to Do” and tried to spend as much time with her customers as it took to find each one just the right thing.
She’d had enough money left after fixing the place up to go a little overboard on the inventory. That was why her warehouse was such a mess and why she occasionally found stock she didn’t remember buying.
The sound of the pipes clanging against the opening door was so familiar by now it was like the voice of a friend. The echoing notes said it was time to help someone. Jill popped up to greet her customer. Her face immediately fell into a scowl at the sight of the guy with dark blond hair in a suit. He was wearing a bright blue tie that she’d given him, and it wasn’t going to help him one bit. “Seth Anderson,” she said, “I cannot believe you.”
“Hey, Sis. What’d I do now?” He wore an impish grin that said he kind of liked the idea of being in trouble. “Or rather, what do you think I did?”
Jill continued to scowl. The dimples didn’t work on family the way they seemed to charm every available woman in town. “Does the name Missy Gardener mean anything to you?”
“Should it?” His grin softened to feign confusion.
Jill stepped out from behind the shelf and jabbed his arm with her finger. “What were you thinking when you sent her flowers?”
“I was thinking that anything purple should be an easy order.”
A laugh escaped from Jill’s throat despite her annoyance. “What are you talking about?”
“I was having dinner at Fred’s, and I heard her tell someone she liked any flowers that were purple. That sounded easy.”
“But why did you send her flowers?”
“She said she liked them.” Seth shrugged. “Are you seriously mad at me for being nice?”
Jill noticed a FedEx truck stop outside her window and tried to remember if she was expecting a delivery while she continued to knock through her brother’s thick skull. “It isn’t nice to send flowers if they don’t mean anything.”
“They meant exactly what they said. 'I heard you liked purple. Have a nice day.' I didn’t sign my name so if she also happens to think she has a secret admirer, there’s no harm in that.” He glanced over her shoulder as he finished talking when Clanky clapped and clanked against the door.
Jill took in a FedEx uniform out of the corner of her eye and put a hand in that direction. “One minute, Larry. I need to yell at my brother.” Then she raised her voice and said, “It’s not a secret, you moron. This is Hartford!”
Seth looked as though he was about to laugh. “How did you find out so fast? She should have only gotten them today.” He didn’t wait for an answer before he added, “By the way, I don’t think that’s Larry.”
She turned to find that the man holding a box was in fact not the usual driver. He was much younger than Larry and stared at her with ice-blue eyes that seemed to be trying really hard not to ask any questions about the scene he’d just entered.
“You’re not Larry,” Jill said.
He shook his head as the corners of his mouth twitched. “I’m Jack. Larry got a promotion. I’ll be making the Hartford deliveries now. Can you sign this?”
His speech had a rehearsed quality. And yet he sounded amused by the repetition. Jill took the package first and thrust it at Seth to hold while she signed the electronic thingy. She examined this new delivery guy as she handed it back. “So you’re new?” she said.
He nodded.
“Are those guitar calluses?”
Jack checked his own fingertips. “I play a little,” he said.
“That’s awesome.”
“Uh…” He seemed uncomfortable. “I said I play a little.”
She nodded at him. She knew what he said. “Because you love it, right?”
“Okay.”
“That’s what’s awesome.”
“Okay,” he said again. Jack put his hand on the door, appeared to be about to say goodbye, then turned and left without another word.
“Congratulations,” Seth said. “I think that’s a new record.”
“What is?”
“You convinced the new guy you’re insane in about five seconds.”
Jill rolled her eyes at her brother as she took her package back. She was aware that she had a reputation for being a bit off her rocker, and she embraced it. “We’re not talking about me,” she said. “If you don’t stop being a glib flirt, you’re gonna be public enemy number one and I’m gonna be tainted by association.”
“Relax, Sis.” Seth pulled his phone from his pocket and checked the screen. “I’ll just send flowers to a few more people to prove what a nice guy I am.”
“That’s how you’re gonna fix it?”
“I can’t fix charming,” he said, flashing the dimples again. “I was born this way. But I gotta run. I’m meeting a client. They’re finally putting that building on the corner on the market.”
“The one with the cool purple stripe?”
“I think you mean the weird purple stripe. But yes, and I’m going to see if he’ll repaint that.”
“Oh, don’t,” Jill said. “That stripe is like the signature of the street.”
Seth wrinkled his eyes at her and paused as he opened the door. “A crazy random stripe – one that no one understands the logic behind and is kind of an eyesore – that’s the signature of the street? What a great town we live in.”
“You love it.”
He stuck his tongue out at her.
“Grow up.”
“I’ll grow up when you find someone else to mother.” Seth waved as he let the door fall closed behind him.
Jill shivered at the January air he’d let in, and also at the unintentional sting of his comment. She’d be thirty in a few short months and wasn’t even dating anyone. She might not find anyone else to mother. Jill blew aside the momentary malaise and thanked God that she had her store to be her baby.
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