The Note in the Vase — By the warm kitchen window, Junie counted the tulips in Aunt Lark’s tall glass vase and chose the bent one nobody would miss. Across the lane, Mr. Read the full story →
By the warm kitchen window, Junie counted the tulips in Aunt Lark’s tall glass vase and chose the bent one nobody would miss. Across the lane, Mr. Vale’s cottage had sat with bare curtains since winter, and Junie wanted to leave one bright bloom on his sill before the noon bell. When she lifted the tulip, something pale slid against the wet stems with a soft clink.
It was a folded note, curled small as a bean. The paper smelled like rainwater and old pennies. In Aunt Lark’s thin writing it said, For the person who notices the lonely window: take three, not one. Junie’s cheeks prickled. Three tulips would leave a gap in the vase, and Aunt Lark was away at market.
Junie carried them anyway, guarding the petals from the wind that hissed through the lane. At Mr. Vale’s, she found a cracked jar on the step and filled it from the pump, splashing her shoes. “For me?” he called from inside, voice rough as gravel. Junie hurried home with wet socks and something better than a secret: the empty space in the vase looked like it was smiling. Can you spot where the hidden note might have been tucked among the stems?
