Marcia
There is no time more beautiful in Mapleton than when the purple tibouchinas are in bloom in the village. One may feel spring coming even though it is still August. A whim, an impulsive pressure drove the assistant from the pharmacy to the shrubs beside the grand hotel. She had to see one, just one tibouchina, spilling its mauve to pink petals upon the kerbside. The plant was sheltered behind tall palings. You could always tell them by their masses of flowers; their lushness and almost fleshy texture ...and the bees. Today, the buds were there. Too much in the shade of towering Norfolk Island pines, the shrub was not yet in bloom. Behind the wall, the hotel car park ... nothing more. Marcia always had that burst of expectation; that impulse to catch a moment and the all too often instant of her disappointment when the expectation was unrealized. So it was with her Adam. He was in the bloom of manhood. Ready for most things. Pleasant. Feeling the youth of spring in the spring of his youth. Marcia, however, lapsed into the routine of killing the evening hours before a log fire and watching some travelogue DVD. Then, work the next day. Yet, one must own, her heart did flutter at very simple things; things we ought hold holy.
Honorable mention
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The story has a peaceful, alluring essence to it. 
Dee
