A Story for Every “One Who…” — and a Peek Behind the Scenes

Five women. Seven moments. One thread running through them all.

Each of these seven short stories starts with “The one who…”

But by the end, you’ll wonder if they’re all about you. Fiction that explores the truth.

🍋 The One Who Left Out the Zest

The lemon bars were cooling on the counter when Quinn walked in.

“Your famous ones?” she asked.

“Almost,” Riley said. “I forgot the zest.”

Quinn raised an eyebrow.

“You know,” she said casually, “I used to juice your lemons back in Vermont.”

Riley turned.

“What?”

“Remember when you baked for that guy who hated lemon zest? I’d take the lemons off the counter and juice them before you were home. No zest!”

“You sabotaged my baking?”

“I was just trying to help. You always forgot and added zest. But to be honest, he wasn’t worth the effort, zest or no zest.”

They both laughed.

“He’s gone,” Riley said.

Quinn reached for a bar. “And the lemons are back.”

Later, Riley wrote a sticky note and tucked it in the recipe book:

🍋 Use zest. And don’t bake them for anyone who wouldn’t love it.

---

🌿 The One Who Will Always Be There

Val didn’t ask for help.

She never did.

So when Skylar showed up at her gate with gloves, pruning shears, and a cooler of lemonade, Val tried to wave her off.

“I’m fine,” she said. “Just behind on trimming.”

Skylar didn’t argue. She just opened the gate, walked to the back, and started cutting back the overgrown salvias like she’d been invited.

They worked in companionable silence until the last branch was hauled to the compost bin.

Val poured two glasses of lemonade and finally said, “Thank you for not making me ask.”

Skylar raised an eyebrow, then looked around the blooming chaos.

“You need a bigger garden,” she said.

Val laughed. “You offering to help plant it?”

Skylar just shrugged. “You’d do the same.”

🌱 Quiet friendship. Unspoken support. The kind that shows up with gloves and stays until the work is done.

---

🪴 The One Who Lost the Seeds

Riley had searched everywhere — kitchen drawers, garden tote, glove box.

The wildflower seeds she bought to honor her mother were gone.

Quinn watched her tear through the shed again.

“Where did you have them last?” she asked cautiously.

Riley sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe I never brought them in from the car.”

Later, while putting away laundry that had been sitting around forever, she found her mother’s gardening apron folded in the back of a drawer.

In the pocket: the seed packet.

She stared at it for a long time.

That afternoon, Riley and Quinn knelt in the corner of the yard and pressed seeds into warm soil.

No big speeches. Just a pause between birdsong and breeze.

“You okay?” Quinn asked.

Riley nodded. “I think she’d like it here.”

🧺 Memory has its own way of resurfacing—softly, in the folds of an ordinary day.

💔 The One Who Knows

At the community center plant exchange, Sue stood frozen over a cracked terracotta pot and a wilted basil plant.

Tears welled up.

“I don’t know why I’m crying,” she whispered.

Skylar stepped forward but hesitated.

Before she could speak, Eleanor stepped in and knelt beside Sue, gently touching her arm.

“I cried like that over a broken pot once,” she said softly. “But it wasn’t really about the pot.”

Sue gave a small, startled laugh — then let the tears come.

Skylar returned a few minutes later with a spare pot and fresh soil.

Together, she and Sue repotted the basil, gave it a deep drink of water, and carried it out to Sue’s car.

No one rushed her.

No one asked what it was really about.

❤️‍🩹Sometimes the healing begins when someone sees your cracked pot and says, “Let’s plant anyway.”

🪴 The One Who Changed Her Mind

“I almost retired south of the border,” Val said, sipping her tea.

They were gathered under the mesquites, the late afternoon sun casting dappled light across the table.

“I bought a condo—furnished. Gated community. Everything was beige.”

Quinn blinked. “You?”

Val nodded. “Walked in, took one look around, and thought, this isn’t me. I stayed one night. Packed up the next morning.”

Riley grinned. “And came here instead. You never told us this before.”

“It was only one day of my life. I planted herbs, pollinators and veggies instead of golf course grass,” Val said. “Learned the names of my neighbors. And my birds.”

Skylar raised her glass. “To second thoughts and better instincts.”

They all drank to that.

🌱 The freedom to pivot. And the power of choosing again.

🗺️ The One Who Knew a Shortcut

Ben and Raven loaded the last bag of compost into the truck and started down the road to the community garden.

Ben turned toward Main Street.

“Nope,” Raven said. “We’re taking the ridge road.”

“It’s slower.”

“It’s better.”

He didn’t argue. He knew better than to go against his cousin’s wishes.

They bumped along the dusty trail, windows down, Raven pointing out patches of prickly pear in bloom and the exact hill where their Aunt Jo once broke a shovel digging out an agave.

Ben pulled over. They gathered fruit from a low-hanging cactus and laughed over who got stuck the least.

“You ever think she took us this way just to tell stories?” he asked.

Raven smiled. “Of course she did.”

🗺️ Some shortcuts aren’t about saving time. They’re about remembering who taught you how to take the long way.

🪑 The One Who Left a Chair Empty

Riley set six chairs in a circle on the spacious verandah.

Quinn nudged them into a better arc. “Circles should never be square.”

Val brought out lemon and lavender tea, plus her usual rosemary almonds.

Skylar fluffed the cushions she’d insisted everyone needed.

Ben adjusted the umbrella to provide shade from the setting sun.

Raven pulled out her phone to take a picture, then didn’t.

Riley added one more chair, just slightly outside the circle, near the railing on the edge of the porch.

“Expecting someone?” Ben asked.

Riley shook her head with a slight smile, almost a wink. “Just in case.”

No one pressed further.

They told stories instead - old ones, ridiculous ones, the kind that wander.

Raven reenacted a scorpion-in-the-hiking-boot incident.

Skylar purposely misquoted a poem.

Val laughed so hard she spilled tea on Quinn’s sandal.

No one sat in the extra chair.

But they all noticed it.

Maybe for someone who hadn’t arrived yet.

Or someone who needed to know there was space waiting.

🪑 Sometimes what matters most is the chair no one sits in — holding space for the ones not present — yet still felt.

Be sure to watch for next week’s Daily Doses, either daily on Substack or here in your inbox on Friday.

The theme for next week will be:

Why Did I Stop?

And what would happen if I started again?

🌸 The Question We Don’t Often Ask

See you then!