Free Turn My World Upside Down: Jo's Story by Maureen Child

eager shoppers would descend on Chandler to buy up the local growers’ supply of cut flowers, plants, bulbs and seeds. Then it would be summer, and the beaches would be packed with people determined to get a summer’s worth of tan in one weekend. In the fall the Autumn Festival brought out the local artisans, selling their wares in the open meadow outside town. By late October, streets would clog with people coming in to see the brilliant gold and scarlet foliage, and in winter, there would be the Victorian Christmas festival, when street vendors sold everything from hot apple cider to actual roasted chestnuts, and period-garbed carolers wandered the street, serenading tourists and locals alike.
    Contrary to popular opinion, something was
always
happening in small towns.
    But for now, Jo mused as she parked her car outside the Leaf and Bean, things were relatively quiet in Chandler. She stepped out of the truck and lifted her face into the wind sweeping in off the ocean. Smiling to herself, she listened to the distant bark of the seals angling for a handout, the conversations bubbling up around her, and underneath it all, the rhythmic sigh and hush of the ocean itself, like the heartbeat of Chandler.
    She slammed the truck door and headed for the sidewalk, waving absently to Gloria Harding as she dragged her tantrum-throwing three-year-old behind her.
    Jo shook her head, tugged her sweatshirt tighter around her, and stalked up to the Leaf and Bean. Maybe she was stalling a little before going out to thework site. But she’d already dealt with Nana and she figured she owed herself a latte before facing Cash.
    The minute she opened the door and was slapped by the combined scents of coffee and freshly baked pastries, Jo felt every cell in her body stand up and shout “hurray.”
    A dozen or so round tables were scattered across the gleaming wood floor and the people huddled around those tables sent up a muted roar of conversation that drew newcomers in. The walls were cream colored, with dark wooden beams as accents. Sunlight sliced in through the wide front windows facing onto Main Street and glanced off fern- and flower-filled copper pots hanging from heavy silver chains. Across the far wall, a long glass case was filled with the pastries Stevie Ryan Candellano baked fresh daily, and the hiss and sputter of the espresso machine drew Jo forward like metal shavings to a magnet.
    Her gaze swept the room as she headed toward paradise. At this time of year, most of Stevie’s customers were locals. In another couple of months, tourists would be battling for the seats and Stevie’s cash register would be singing. Jo waved to Trish Donovan, sitting in the corner, with a spread of tarot cards laid out across her table. Then she stopped when Phillip Howell called to her.
    “Jo! Going to need you and your sisters before summer,” he said loudly. “My roof sprang a leak in the last storm.”
    “I’ll call,” she said, smiling, and in her mind, she tucked Phil’s name into her file folder marked “pending.” “And,” she added, turning back to look at him again. “Don’t try to fix it yourself this time, okay?”
    “I remember,” he said with a grimace as his friends laughed.
    Last time Phil had tried a little roofing on the weekend, he’d put his foot right through the overhang and damn near broke his leg.
    Nothing like a weekend handyman to make a construction worker’s life happy, Jo thought.
    By the time she reached the counter, she was feeling a lot more cheerful. A latte was in her immediate future and she already had another job lined up.
    “The usual?” Stevie asked, grinning.
    “Oh God, yes,” Jo said, then stood back to admire the pastries lined up in the case in front of her. “And I think a cinnamon roll, too.”
    Stevie’s blond eyebrows lifted as she wielded the buttons and levers on the espresso machine she ran like a magician. Steam rose, hot milk bubbled, as Stevie bent to snatch up a pastry and