Chapter 2
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 wedding 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.