Fire In My Heart

The Artisan's Shop

His uncle still paces around the store, sure to have missed her. The burly man stood hunched over as he did in the tiny establishment. He scrubbed his gnarly old hand over his face then let it hover right under his lip, partially hiding his fully greyed beard. It was the way Daniel came to know that the man was trying to work things out in his head. It was his cerebral reset, one that even now Daniel would do out of unrealized practice. It wasn’t until he stood beside the man that Daniel even noticed it and neither verbally acknowledged it was it was.All the while his thoughts continued, pulling him along the aisles, further from his main goal. He remembered the shop as it was instead of how it was now. One wall was lined with lit showcases, modeling sets of candles for weddings and keepsake moments such as baby showers and religious growth stages that provided items for christenings and bat or bar mitzvahs. There was another line of shelving in the middle of the room, making a space for boxed candles to sit on one side and ornate holders, he assumed, were just store bought and marked higher for the artisan’s shop. 

“Isa?” Uncle Garrett finally let his voice boom louder than it was a moment ago. He then added a little piece of information Daniel filed away about the woman losing her hearing which he felt the need to nod at and use immediately. 

His older self groaned at that point too. 

But then she emerged from the very door he sought to go through, the one that he sees her in every time. 

Isabelle Miles, the shortest woman he had ever seen. She stood at four feet nine inches, nearly a two foot difference from the top of his head to hers given the way her back hunched over, but not even her height difference could discourage the woman from grinning up at him. Daniel remembered that moment most of all. This old lady looked him over as if she already had a plan as to how to use the hours of community service he had accumulated within a moment’s notice. It was unnerving and respectable at the same time. A woman with a vision, or however the saying went had him wondering if that was it or if she had time to think it over. 

Isabelle moved though. This woman got around for being so small and bent over. It was nearly alarming to see. He hated it, the way his teen self had strained backwards and away from her as she approached, knowing now how she was with people, but back then the whole moment rattled him. That woman, that would be the woman that either passed or failed him in terms of his completion and that woman, while she smiled kindly at the two of them, gleefully that they made it and agreed to this… Isabelle very clearly personified herself as not the woman to cross… ever. 

Daniel gulped then as he did now at the thought of it. 

“Ah, Daniel,” she clapped her hands together once and loudly, echoing slightly around her space. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

It’s as if her clap is what he needs to be set free from the constant pull back into his mind. He can’t control it, can’t fast forward to it… he can’t really get out of it the way he wants to and he’s sure it all goes back to the result in how he had embarrassed himself and his whole family in the first place. That’s what did it. That’s what he can’t escape. 

No matter how hard he tries to open up that line, to hash things out with his family, he simply can’t. He can’t talk about it… can’t pretend it never happened. His family still looks at him like a criminal and he’s just so done with the way that stings that Daniel stands still. He stands there, waiting for the next wave to come through, the ones that usually come to him while he’s sleeping. He stands there, urging them on as if the cards are all stacked, that the space will play out in front of him and possibly even let go once and for all, but nothing happens.

His shop, while empty, is still open. There’s work that can be done. A few orders had been made via catalog from the local church and that would set him up for days. Another had been a design he was adamant about working on, but as he searched his list, trying to push on through that door, another vision pushed through his mind. 

For a moment, he entertains the thought that Isabelle is still running her shop, and again, is haunting it, but if he remembers correctly, Isabelle dreamed of a permanent island getaway with her late husband as her resting place. There was no way that she would trade that for being stuffed away in her shop for the rest of her afterlife, especially with how vividly he remembered her detailing out her schedule then. 

The woman was a real joy he told himself. 

She wasn’t haunting the shop…

Just like that his vision changed. Daniel could still see himself, the front of him at least, less his own eyes and face as he continued down memory lane. It oddly played out as a movie before him, luring his gaze to the center of the door once more. 

Daniel remembers the first several days of his community service with Isabelle, how spunky and on point she was. He remembers the way she would make sure his attitude was as upbeat and wonderful as hers when a customer would come in. She didn’t let him slouch or frown for that matter. He was never to use his phone unless it was an emergency, and even then she promised him she’d have him walk it off before the ambulance even arrived. 

Daniel shook his head at that. Not even then Isabelle considered herself as an old lady. She was always climbing on ladders and at each of  the shelves dusting daily, reminding him that as delicate as they were, they needed to be cleaned especially after customers tested her patience and touched every single one, which in turn became his job. 

One fateful day, when he opened his mouth to suggest another cleaning method using an air can had her grinning from ear to ear. 

“Oh, Daniel! You’re doin’ me proud,” she hollered her excitement to him from across the room. 

It felt… good, to be recognized as being good enough to hold that response from her. It felt really good. That same day she allowed him to use her ancient computer, use the dial-up service she somehow still had, and order a case of air spray to get to the tough places in her more ornate pieces, which took a whopping two hours out of his day to explain the glorious change wifi would bring her, and quite possibly even the customers. 

Isabelle, however, didn’t bite. The machine worked and that was all that mattered. 

After that, Daniel noticed his chores list had doubled, and oddly, he enjoyed it. The tasks he was put in charge of completing told him that she trusted him around her products and that was a glorifying feeling after being left to rot in societal betrayal by his so called friends. Isabelle would ask him to go clean up around the premises too which was another great leap in the right direction. She said it was so that the shop looked inviting but did so in a knowing way that she expected Daniel to pick up on. 

Daniel did too. 

On nicer days Isabelle would allow him out for longer. She would ask him to go to local shops for odd things and then the local deli for sandwiches, of which she paid for ahead of time, never allowing him to pay for his own meal.  

In a way he knew he never deviated from his choice sandwich or what was comfortable to him in terms of working for her either. Daniel was a creature of habit. When he was there, he mimicked what she would do. He would keep a slight smirk on his face when she was near and a scowl never rested there when he was without her. There were times he wasn’t sure if she really was the shopkeeper or not given what it was she was ingraining in his mind. Was she? Or was she really the parole officer testing his wits, his capability to follow through?

She could have been in another life, he told himself, but not then.