Glennis & Raymond

They met late in life.  She ran a small antique shop that took up four rooms of the downstairs.  He had pretty much spent his working life in the city, in the back room of a tailor shop making alterations.  They were like little school kids when they met; giggling, staring at each other, but it was so much more than puppy love.  Almost instantly they became inseparable, and four years ago they were married.

She ran the shop while he stayed upstairs doing the books, paying the bills and taxes and setting up their weekly shopping excursions.  Every Thursday they would close the store and head out to barn sales, garage and estate sales and surrounding small towns searching for more antiques to put into her shop.

She was always great with the customers.  She had a gift when it came to interacting with the public and it was her gift that usually got things sold.  People just gravitated to her. She was like everybody’s grandmother, and it didn’t hurt that she always had fresh, home-made cookies up by the register.  Instead of her store smelling of old, musty antiques, there was a hint of bakery about the place.

From upstairs he could hear the little bell on the front door whenever someone came into the shop, and he could hear the muffled sounds of talking and laughing, and after a while he would again hear the little bell on the door jingle when they left.  At lunch time she would bring up a bowl of soup and a grilled cheese sandwich.

The little sign on the front door read, back in one hour, but she never did lock it.  If anyone came during their lunch she would go down stairs and wait on them and even if they didn’t buy anything she’d make sure they got a cookie before they left.

His view was of the side yard.  It wasn’t much and yet it was everything.  Having spent 30 years in the back room of the tailor shop, without a window or skylight, to him this view was amazing.  He watched the winter lock up the landscape in a frozen silence, and he got to see the leaves and robins return in spring.  He particularly enjoyed the thunder storms of summer; rain pounding against the windows and the deep rumble of excitement when lightening would crack its whip across the sky.

Unknown to her, once a month he would slip extra money from his retirement into the shop account, just to watch her face light up at seeing they’d made a profit and could buy more things for the shop.

Unbeknownst to him, she'd always known.