Save the Date

Chapter 3

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.

“Close the door!” Cara hollered. “Don’t let the dog get…”

But it was too late. Sensing an opening, the seven-month-old goldendoodle, Poppy, streaked toward daylight.

“Grab her,” Cara called to the startled stranger who’s just entered Bloom. He paused for only a split second, pivoted, and lunged toward Poppy, managing to grab on to her collar. But Poppy, an obedience-school dropout who was as determined as she was undisciplined, easily wriggled out of the collar and was out the door in a flash, joyously running full-tilt down West Jones Street.

“Shit!” Cara cried.

“Not again,” Bert echoed. “Not today.”

“Sorry,” the stranger said, turning from Cara to Bert, still holding the collar in his right hand. “I wanted to get some flowers sent to my sister in the hospital…”

“Can you help him?” Cara gave Bert a pleading look. “I’ll go after Poppy. If I’m not back in fifteen minutes, start loading the van without me.”

Cara sprinted out of Bloom without looking back.

***

“Poppy!” she called, cupping her hands over her mouth as a makeshift megaphone. “Poppy, come back!”

She passed the restored nineteenth-century town houses and elegant storefronts in her block, and dashed across Barnard Street, dodging cars as she ran.

Three tourists with cameras strung around their necks and unfolded street maps stood on the corner, arguing loudly about where to have lunch.

“No more barbecue,” snapped a twenty-something girl in a tie-dyed shirt and white shorts.

“Did you see a dog run past just now?” Cara interrupted. “Curly white hair, maybe thirty pounds?”

“That way.” The girl’s middle-aged father pointed east. “She sure can run.”

Cara continued east down Jones. She paused by the line of people still queued up for lunch outside Mrs. Wilkes’ boardinghouse. “Did you see a dog run past here?” she asked breathlessly.

“Thataway,” volunteered a bespectacled senior citizen with a plastic tour-company lanyard around her neck.

Cara ran on, crossing Whitaker, Bull, Drayton, and Abercorn. Her thin-soled sandals flapped against the steaming concrete sidewalks. Her face was sheened with sweat, her T-shirt glued to her chest.

“See a dog?” she asked, pausing beside a college kid locking his bike to a utility pole in front of a classroom building on the art-college campus.

“Huh?”

Twenty minutes had passed. But nobody else had spotted the puppy. Reluctantly, she started jogging back toward Bloom, breathing heavily and sweating profusely.

Bert had the van pulled around to the front of the shop by the time she got back. “Anything?”

“No,” Cara said, near tears. “Look, just wait here. I’m going to take the van and see if I can spot her.”

“Cara? Lillian has called back twice, and now Torie’s started calling. And her wedding director wants to know why we aren’t already out at the church. You know it’ll take us thirty minutes to get out to Isle of Hope.”

“Stall ’em,” Cara said. “I can’t let Poppy just wander around downtown. She’ll get hit by one of those tour buses, or run over by one of the horse-drawn carriages. And even if somebody does find her, they won’t know who she is, because she’s not wearing her collar. Please, Bert?”

Bert shrugged and went back inside the shop to try to mollify their clients.

Cara drove east and north this time, trolling the side streets, leaning out the window of the pink-and-white-striped van, calling her puppy’s name, straining for a familiar glimpse of curly white fur, but to no avail. While she cruised, her cell phone rang and pinged and buzzed, with incoming calls, texts, and emails, all of which she ignored.

She was backtracking toward the shop, turning up Habersham at East Charlton, when she saw a tall, bare-chested man dressed in nylon running shorts and expensive-looking running shoes, tugging a medium-sized, furry white dog by a piece of rope. He was walking down the lane behind Charlton.

“Poppy!” Cara cried. She veered left and into the lane.

“Hey!” she called to the man. She leaned out the open window of the van. “Excuse me, that’s my dog.”

He was in his mid thirties—the man, not the dog. His dark hair was pushed back from his forehead and his chest gleamed with perspiration. Even in her extreme distress, Cara noted that he was seriously ripped. The man glanced down at the puppy, then back up at Cara.

He frowned. “The hell it is. This is my dog.”

“No.” Cara put the van in park. “Honestly. That’s Poppy. My goldendoodle.”

“No,” he said impatiently, starting to walk away. “This is Shaz. Unfortunately, this is my goldendoodle.”

Cara climbed down out of the van and hurried after him. “That’s impossible. There aren’t that many dogs like this in Savannah. I had to go all the way to Atlanta to find mine. And that one is mine.” She searched in the pocket of her shorts and held out one of the doggie treats she always carried. “Here Poppy.”

The puppy looked up at Cara and wagged enthusiastically.

“Shaz!” the man said loudly. The puppy looked at him and wagged her tail even harder.

“See?”

“She does that with everybody,” Cara said, desperation creeping into her voice. “She’s never met a stranger.”

“If she’s yours, where’s her dog tag?” the man demanded.

“Back at my flower shop, on West Jones. A customer came in, and he tried to grab Poppy as she made a break for the door, but Poppy managed to wriggle out of her collar.” She waved the treat under the dog’s nose. “Here Poppy,” she coaxed. “Come to Mama.”

The puppy’s ears pricked up, and she lunged toward Cara, but the man pulled her back.

“See?” Cara said triumphantly. “That’s Poppy.”

“No,” he said, wedging the now wriggling puppy firmly between his calves. “That’s a cheap trick. And this is Shaz. She’d kill her grandma for a dog treat.”

“If that’s your dog, where’s its collar?

“In my truck, back at my house. I was just taking her to the groomer, whom she hates, and the truck window was open, and she jumped out the window and took off. Come on, Shaz.” He started walking away, and the puppy trotted obediently at his heels.

“Poppy,” Cara called, near tears. “Come here, girl. Time to go home.”

“Nice try,” the man said, glancing back over his shoulder. “But I don’t have time for this. Good luck finding your dog.”

The puppy gave one backward look, but the man was jogging again, and the dog followed right on his heels.

Cara jumped back behind the wheel of the van. “Hey,” she hollered out the open window. She beeped the horn. “Come back here.”

The man jogged on down the lane, and she crept along right behind him, honking her horn every few minutes, and hollering out the window. “Stop! Come here, Poppy.” She knew she looked like a lunatic, and she just didn’t care.

Poppy, the little traitor, seemed quite content to follow along behind her new friend, never straying or yanking at the makeshift leash as she sometimes did when Cara took her for her morning walk.

Finally, they reached a block on Macon Street. The houses here were simpler than the grand brick and stucco townhomes farther west in the historic district. Mostly single-story wood-frame homes, they were known as freedman’s cottages because they’d originally been built after the Civil War by newly emancipated slaves.

The runner paused in front of one of the least distinguished cottages on the block. Paint was peeling from the dingy white clapboards, a shutter at the window was missing several slats, and the faded aqua door seemed to be held together with duct tape. There was a wooden window box beneath the double window, but the plants were dried up and shriveled beyond recognition. The man propped his foot on the top step of the stoop and retrieved a key from a pocket in the tongue of his running shoe.

That’s when he looked over and spotted Cara, parked at the curb, the van’s motor idling.

“Beat it,” he called.

She held her cell phone up for him to see. “Give me back my dog or I’ll call the cops.”

“Get away from my house or I’ll call the cops myself,” he retorted. He picked Poppy up in his arms and climbed the rest of the steps to the doorway. He unlocked the door. Cara jumped from the truck and ran for the minuscule porch, but he was too quick. He stepped inside and slammed the door in her face. A moment later, she heard a deadbolt lock slide into place.

“Dognapper!” Cara pounded on the door with her fist. “Give me back my dog!”

“Crazy stalker woman, go away,” came the muffled reply.

She banged on the door, and looked around to ring the doorbell, but it was defunct, dangling by a single frayed wire from the dry-rotted doorframe.

Cara gave the door an ineffective kick, resulting only in a badly stubbed big toe.

“I’m calling the cops,” she screamed, her lips plastered against the doorframe.

“I already called ’em,” came back his voice.

She paced back and forth in front of the cottage, waiting for the police. Bert called, and she instructed him to load as many of the flowers as he could into his own car, and start ferrying them over to the church. Torie and Lillian Fanning called, too, but she let those calls go to voicemail.

While she paced, Cara studied the house, hoping the runner would somehow relent and release Poppy. The cottage was a puzzle. It sported a jaunty new-looking red tin roof, but there were cracks in the wavy glass of the front windows, and she could see that two or three of the clapboards were perilously close to falling off the house.

Cara called the police again. This time, a bored-sounding dispatcher informed her that the police had actual crimes to solve, and that an officer might not show up for another hour.

“But he’s got my dog,” Cara protested. “And he won’t even open the door or listen to reason.”

“Ma’am?” the dispatcher said. “Try to work it out like adults, why don’t you?”

She disconnected and walked back over to the house. She climbed onto the front stoop and peered in through the dust-caked window. The room inside held a battered leather sofa and a flat-screen television squatting on a sheet of plywood stretched across sawhorses. The room was littered with stacks of lumber, tools, and paint buckets. There was no sign of Poppy. She would have cried, but she had a wedding to get to.