Cara’s eyes widened, and her jaw dropped. “Pull the plug? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just what it sounds like. It’s over, Cara. No more stalling, no more excuses. I’m calling your loan. It’s still the first week of May. Close up the shop. Call your landlord, let her know you’re breaking your lease. Maybe if you give her plenty of advance notice, she’ll prorate your rent.”
“Break the lease?” Cara’s mouth went dry. Her hands clutched the phone so hard her fingertips turned white. “Close the shop?”
From across the room, Bert, who’d given up any pretense of not listening in, looked as shocked as she felt.
“There’s no reason for you to stay down there in Savannah any longer,” her father continued, as though everything were settled, just like that, because he said so. “You’ve no ties, there, really. Leo’s not taking you back, and anyway…”
“Leo?” Cara screeched. “Dad, I left Leo, not the other way around.”
“A technicality,” the Colonel said calmly. “Let’s not split hairs. I think it would be better if you got a little place of your own. I could probably talk to somebody here at the school about a job, but if you think you still want to fool around with flowers, you can probably find something around town.…”
“Dad!” Cara shouted into the phone. “Stop. Just stop!”
“There’s no need to scream, young lady,” the Colonel said sternly. “I’m not deaf.”
You might as well be, Cara thought. You never hear a word I say. You never have. I’m thirty-six years old, as you dearly love to point out, and you’ve never really listened to me. Not in my whole life.
“I can’t discuss this right now,” she managed.
There was an extended silence on the other end of the phone. And then a dial tone. Even when he wasn’t speaking to her, the Colonel always managed to get in the last word. Or nonword.
Cara flung the phone onto the counter. The shop was quiet, except for the slow drip of the faucet in the sink. Bert tiptoed over, stood behind her, and placed his long, strong fingertips on her shoulders. Wordlessly, he began methodically kneading the knotted-up muscles. Poppy crept over, from her hiding place under the worktable, and tentatively placed her front paws on Cara’s knees.
At least, she thought wryly, she now knew what was off. Everything. Everything was off. “I’m screwed,” she whispered.
2
Cara bit her lip and did her best to blink back the tears of frustration that inevitably followed a conversation with her father. She looked over at the sad pile of flowers on the worktable. Without thinking, she reached for one of the few surviving roses. She clipped the stem end, then stripped off the remaining leaves, then added it to the hydrangeas rehydrating in the bucket.
She glanced around the shop. It was only three hundred square feet, but it was hers now. What was it the Colonel had called it? Her “little enterprise”? Not that he’d ever seen the shop. Her father had visited only once in the five years she’d been living in Savannah, and that had been shortly after she and Leo moved down from Ohio.
This was before she’d taken a job three years ago, answering the phone at Flowers by Norma. Her boss, a feisty octogenarian named Norma Poole, had been in business for thirty years. Norma’s specialty was funeral and hospital flowers. Her arrangements were as tightly structured as her trademark bright orange bouffant hairdo. A cantankerous chain-smoker, Norma had nonetheless taken a shine to her young protégé, and before she knew it, Cara was not only delivering bouquets, she was actually creating them.
Not two and a half years ago, Norma had walked into the shop and plunked a set of keys onto the same worktable Cara was now using.
“Today’s the day, Cara Mia,” Norma said in that raspy voice of hers.
“What day is that, Norma?”
“My last day. Your first.”
“Huh?” Cara gave the older woman a searching look.
“It’s all yours,” Norma said, gesturing expansively. “All three hundred square feet of it.” She tapped her chest. “Just came from the doctor’s office. He has some X-rays of my lungs that don’t look so good.”
“Oh, Norma!” Cara clutched the old lady’s arm. “Is it…?”
“Yup.” Norma shrugged. “He wants me to do chemo, but I’m eighty-two, for cryin’ out loud. I told him, ‘No way, José.’ My baby sister has a nice two-bedroom condo down in Sarasota.” She smiled. “Always wanted to be able to say I was spending my last days wintering in Florida.”
Cara swallowed hard. “Surely not your last days?”
“Close enough,” Norma said cheerfully.
“I’m so, so sorry,” Cara started. “What can I do? Help pack up the shop?”
“Why would you do that?” Norma asked. “I’m giving it to you, hon. Well, not the building. Bernice and Sylvia Bradley own that. But my lease has another year to run on it. It’s October now, and the rent’s paid up till January. All the equipment, and the inventory, such as it is, is paid for. And you’re welcome to it, if you want the headache.”
“Seriously?” Cara couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She knew Norma liked her well enough—but to just give her this business?
Norma coughed for a moment, and sat down to catch her breath. “I don’t have the energy to pack the place up. And it’d be a pain in the ass to try to hang around and sell everything. Not that it’s worth all that much. The delivery van? The odometer quit at two hundred thousand miles, and it’s a piece of crap, if you want the truth. But it’s a paid-for piece of crap. If you want it, I’ll get my lawyer to handle everything, get you the deed to the car, and we’ll do a bill of sale for everything else.”
“Uh, Norma?” She hated to broach the subject of money, but the fact was, she didn’t have much money of her own. Leo handled all their finances, and he considered her job at Flowers by Norma as more of a hobby than a career.
Norma must have read her mind. “I was thinking a dollar. Would that work for you?”
“A dollar? Are you kidding? Norma, this business is worth thousands and thousands of dollars.”
“And what would I do with that kind of money?” Norma’s pale blue eyes peered over the rim of her sparkly-framed glasses. “The doctor says I’ll be gone in a few months. My kid sister is the only family I’ve got left. She’s fixed fine, got more dough than I ever thought about having.”
“You could leave it to a charity.”
“Charity!” Norma made a face and coughed again. “Charity begins at home,” she said, when she’d caught her breath. “I don’t have much, but I don’t feel like giving what I do have to strangers.” She tapped Cara’s shoulder. “So. Looks like you’re an instant heiress. Kind of.”
* * *
Cara took a deep breath, and then another. Bert was hovering nearby, an anxious expression on his face.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
“Ask me later.” She picked up the telephone and made the call she’d been about to make—right before the Colonel decided to ruin her week.
* * *
Lamar Boudreau was Cara’s secret weapon. She’d met him at an industry trade show in Atlanta, not long after she’d transformed Norma’s into Bloom. Every week Lamar drove his refrigerated van to a wholesale warehouse adjacent to the Atlanta airport, and filled his “bucket truck” with choice imported flowers in unusual colors and varieties not stocked by her Savannah wholesaler—tulips, lilies, gerbera daisies, freesias, and snapdragons from Holland; roses, delphiniums, and asters from Ecuador; and spray chrysanthemums and alstroemeria from Colombia. From there, he made deliveries to fewer than a dozen florists around the state.
Under normal circumstances, Lamar and his bucket truck arrived in Savannah on Wednesdays. As far as Cara knew, she was his only local customer, and she intended to keep it that way. These days most of her brides didn’t want to settle for their mother’s same-old carnations and sweetheart roses. They wanted the trendy flowers spotted in their favorite high-end glossy wedd
ing magazines and, increasingly, on Pinterest. And that’s where Lamar Boudreau came in.
“Lamar? It’s Cara, in Savannah.”
“How you doin’, girl?”
“Not too good,” she admitted. “My cooler conked out on me overnight, and most of those flowers you delivered Wednesday are DOA. I’ve got a huge wedding tomorrow. Can you help me out?”
“Aww, Cara,” he moaned. “I can’t be coming all the way back down there today. I got other customers besides you, ya know.”
“I know, Lamar, but none you love as much as me.”
From across the room Bert rolled his eyes.
“That’s true,” Lamar said, with a chuckle. “But don’t you be telling my wife ’bout us.”
“What about it? Pretty please? This is a big order, so I’ll make it worth your while.”
“You know how much gas my van burns up when I make a trip clear down there to the coast? Anyway, much as I wish I could help, I can’t do it today.”
“How far south are you coming?” Cara persisted.
“On my way to Macon next,” Lamar said. “Last call of the day.”
“Perfect! I’ll meet you anyplace you say. I’m working with the pickiest bride on the planet, and her mother’s even worse, so make sure you save the good stuff for me, okay?”
“Don’t I always?” Lamar said. “I’ll see you at the Cracker Barrel on Riverside Drive at two.”
* * *
After tracking down the repairman and issuing dire threats about what would happen if he didn’t return to the shop to get her cooler up and running again, Cara sent Bert to the wholesale house to try to buy more stock, and spent the rest of the morning fielding phone calls and dealing with appointments and brides.
When Bert returned to Bloom at noon, Cara was waiting by the door. “I’m headed to Macon to meet Lamar,” she informed him. She glanced over at Poppy, who was lounging nearby, watching her every move. “Can you do me a favor and watch you-know-who? I’d take her with me, but you know she gets carsick after more than fifteen or twenty minutes, and I haven’t had enough advance time to give her the meds.”
“That’s cool,” Bert said easily.
“And if Lillian Fanning calls again, and she will call, lie through your teeth and tell her we’ve got her friggin’ ecru candles.”
“Got it,” he said.
3
After working all night on Torie Fanning’s second set of wedding arrangements, by Saturday morning Cara was operating on Red Bull and desperation. She would have given anything for an hour of sleep. But this was May, and she’d sleep, she promised herself, when wedding season was over.
Right now, she had a ten-o’clock appointment. She took another covert sip of Red Bull and poured two flutes of orange juice, topping it off with Sam’s Club champagne.
She set the silver tray down carefully on the big worktable in the shop and beamed at today’s couple, Michelle and Hank.
“All right then, you two,” she said, hoping she sounded cheerful. “Let’s talk about your big day!”
* * *
Michelle pushed her iPad across the zinc top of the worktable. She poised one pink polished fingertip on the screen. “This is my board for the altar centerpieces. As you can see, I’m looking for something loose and relaxed, in the blue and purple range, with greenery that’s a softer silver, gray. For the containers, I’d like big ironstone pitchers like these.” She tapped one picture on the screen, then slid her fingertip across the screen.
“Now. Here’s what I’m thinking for my bouquet and the bridesmaids. White tea roses, white Stargazer lilies, pale, pale yellow stephanotis. Hand-dyed ribbons in the colors of the girl’s dresses.”
She slid over to the next board. “These are the girl’s dresses. I’m having ten attendants. I would have kept it at eight, but his mother”—she cut her eyes sideways at her fiancé, a budget analyst named Hank—“is having a cat fit and insisting I have his sisters—and I’m sorry, honey, but Geneva is clinically obese, and LeAnne has that unfortunate red hair, so I can’t have anything pink.…”
She sighed heavily, then clasped her fiancé’s hand and wrinkled her pert button nose. “You agree, don’t you, Hank?”
Hank’s hair was also what Cara thought of as an unfortunate shade of red, but he nodded agreement. “Geneva’s thinking about gastric bypass. If she goes in this summer, I think we can count on her being a size sixteen by October. Anyway, pink does nothing for Michelle’s coloring. So that’s why we’re thinking mostly blues, purples, some silver and gray for everything at the church.”
“Right,” Michelle agreed. “Then, at the reception, which will be in the Westin’s ballroom, we’ll segue into deeper, more dramatic colors.”
“Show her the tablecloths,” Hank urged. “Ombré! Michelle got an unbelievable deal on the fabric at this online store.”
Michelle slid her fingertip and a new Pinterest board popped up. This one was labeled “Ideas for wedding receptions.”
Cara Kryzik nodded and jotted down notes. “Got it. Blues, silvers, purples. No pink. Loose arrangements. Mostly white for the bridesmaids. Are we doing anything else at the church? Pew bows, anything like that? You did say it’s at St. John’s, right?”
“No pew bows,” Hank said emphatically. “That’s just so … nineties.”
Michelle snapped the cover of the iPad. “So I guess that’s it for now. You’ll put together a mood board for me? And a proposal? By, say … Wednesday?”
“Wednesday will be fine,” Cara said. She glanced at Bert, who’d also been taking notes throughout the two-hour meeting. “I’ll email it, and then we can talk.”
Bride and groom stood and left, holding hands.
The bells on the shop door jingled merrily as the couple left.
Cara rolled her eyes. “Cute couple. Controlling bride. Passive-aggressive groom. I give them three years, tops.”
“Mmm-hmm,” Bert said, still jotting down notes. “Less than that if she wises up and figures out she’s married a raging homosexual.”
Cara Kryzik raised one eyebrow. “You think?”
“Takes one to know one,” Bert said.
* * *
May and June were always a blur for Bloom, but this year, Cara thought, might be the year that topped all years. If those talking-head economists wanted a real signal that the recession was over, they had only to look at her upcoming wedding calendar.
May was already manic, and it was just the first Saturday of the month. June would be even busier. Her calendar was full with showers, rehearsal dinners, and weddings.
But busy didn’t necessarily mean profitable. If she could just avoid any more equipment-related disasters, she might, just might, be able to put together enough money to send the Colonel a big fat check by the end of the month.
This morning she’d delivered the centerpieces for a bridesmaids’ brunch at nine, met with Michelle and Hank, and by one she was already behind schedule finishing up the flowers for the most demanding bride she’d ever worked with.
Cara wrapped a single white rose with green floral tape and inserted it into the already over-the-top centerpiece of white ranunculus, orange parrot tulips, and green and blue hydrangeas that were spilling out of an heirloom Georgian silver soup tureen destined for the buffet table.
“What do you think?” she asked, turning to her assistant.
Bert put down his scissors and gazed over the top of his wire-rimmed granny glasses at the towering arrangement.
“Baudy, gawdy, and fabulous,” he decreed. “But you know our little bride Torie. More is always more with that girl.”
“I know,” Cara said with a sigh, selecting another flower from the dwindling bucket on the floor. “Half these flowers would be a showstopper, but I can’t make Torie see that. She is determined to have the most ostentatious wedding in the history of Savannah. It’s too bad we have to waste all this effort and beauty on a girl who doesn’t know a pansy from a petunia.”
“As
though Torie Fanning would ever deign to sniff anything as incredibly middle-class as either a pansy or a petunia,” Bert said.
The shop phone rang and Cara glanced over at the caller-ID screen. “Speaking of which, there’s the smother of the bride now.” Her hand hovered over the receiver. “I swear, if Lillian calls me with one more demand, I am going to go stark, raving bonkers.”
“Think of the invoice we’re going to present when this whole circus is over,” Bert advised.
“No. I’m thinking of the look on the Colonel’s face when he opens the envelope with his check,” Cara corrected.
“Exactly,” he said, nodding. “Just hold your nose and smile pretty.”
The phone kept ringing.
“Brides!” Cara muttered. “If I ever even entertain the idea of getting married again, Bert, you are authorized to smack me upside the head and have me committed.”
“Never say never,” Bert warned.
“I’m serious,” Cara said. She looked across the workroom. “Here Poppy,” she called.
The curly-haired goldendoodle puppy raced over to her side and propped her front paws on Cara’s knees. Cara bent down to let the puppy lick her chin. “Puppy love. That’s all I need. No more men, and definitely no more weddings.”
Bert pointed at the phone, which was still ringing. “Really. Don’t you think you’d better get that?”
“I’m not answering,” Cara said defiantly. She got up from her stool and stretched. “And I am not stuffing any more flowers in this centerpiece. The wedding is in less than five hours. We’ve got to get these arrangements loaded in the van and get them out to Isle of Hope before three. Whatever Lillian wants, it’ll just have to…”
Before she could finish the sentence, they heard the tinkling of bells coming from the front of the shop. Poppy pricked up her ears and started toward the sound.
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