Chapter 3
three
A tulip doesn’t strive to impress anyone. It doesn’t struggle to be different than a rose. It doesn’t have to.
—Marianne Williamson
CLAIRE MURPHY
After three months, any normal person would’ve sat her best friend down and had a heart-to-heart talk about the fact that they hadn’t spoken in over seven years. Any normal person would’ve tried to clear the air and patch things up.
Did Claire? Nope. She just walked into Rose’s Flower Shop like she’d never left, tied an apron on, and got to work.
Jaime Harper, the best friend in question, had looked at Claire like she was seeing a ghost. Jaime, gentle Jaime, wouldn’t try to bridge the gap between them if Claire didn’t make the first effort. And Claire wasn’t going to touch it with a ten-foot pole. She was afraid that if she said a single word, she’d say too much, or the wrong way, or in a harsher tone than she meant, and just make everything worse. She had a habit of doing that kind of thing.
To be fair, when Claire first arrived in Sunrise a few months ago, after getting settled in an Airbnb room-for-rent that Chris had found for her, she had gone straight to Rose’s house, prepared to get things out in the open. She’d found Rose out back in the garden. It was a familiar sight to Claire—Rose wearing a big hat and thick gloves, kneeling on the grass, digging or pruning or some such garden task. Foraging, mostly, to add to the shop’s stock. Seven years ago, Claire had lived with Rose after her own grandparents’ home had been sold. If Rose wasn’t at the flower shop, she knew to look for her in her backyard garden.
On that summer day when Claire returned to Sunrise and went to find Rose, she paused at the garden gate. Chris had suggested that she say a prayer before talking to Rose. He pointed out that prayer was meant to be two ways. Talking and listening. He felt she had a tendency to overtalk and she didn’t disagree. If she was nervous, Claire’s yakyakyak switch flipped on. This was going to be an important talk, perhaps the most important talk in Claire’s life, so she took his advice and whispered a prayer: “Lord, remind me to shut up.”
Then she opened the garden gate and walked over to Rose. As she did, the tears started streaming. Rose seemed to sense Claire’s presence before she saw her. She set down her trowel and took off her gloves and sat back on her heels. She looked at Claire with that tender but firm look that only Rose could have, lifted a hand in the air, and said, “Wait. Let’s wait until Tessa comes back. Then we’ll have a good long talk about everything.”
End of discussion before it even began. Rose had a way of putting a period on things.
“Do you understand me, Claire, honey? Not a word.”
“Yes, ma’am, I understand.”
Carefully, gingerly, Rose got to her feet and wrapped her arms around Claire the way she used to—that amazing, engulfing Rose-hug. And in that hug, Claire knew she’d made the right decision to come back. Maybe things weren’t entirely resolved, but Rose had forgiven her. That’s all that mattered.
Well, that, plus knowing Rose had a plan to bring everything into the light. As Claire left Rose’s, with instructions to take a huge bucket of just-cut scented geranium stems to the shop for Jaime to use, it occurred to her that God had answered her prayer. She’d hardly said a word.
So Claire decided to leave the big ugly mess from the night of the fire in Rose’s hands and she would focus on her flower work. After Jaime’s shock at seeing her, they picked up where they left off, working side by side, ignoring the gigantic chasm of unspoken thoughts and feelings that lay between them.
And boy o’ boy did they work.
In the seven years that Claire and Jaime (and the still-MIA Tessa) had been away, the one competing flower shop near the town of Sunrise had shuttered their doors during the pandemic. Rose’s Flower Shop was the only game serving this mountain area, and business had exploded. No wonder Rose wanted her best workers back. No wonder Rose looked so tired. The poor woman needed a good long rest.
Claire and Jaime worked their tails off. Jaime managed all the weddings, which suited Claire just fine. She preferred taking care of the shop, ordering flowers and supplies, and creating single arrangements. She didn’t know how Jaime could stand making one matching bouquet after the other. Last weekend’s wedding in Sapphire had thirteen bridesmaids.
Thirteen! Back in Savannah, thirteen was just asking for trouble.
The whole notion of thinking that a number had the power to bring bad luck was a leftover from living in Savannah. It was supposed to be the most haunted city in America, but Claire had lived there seven years and never met a single ghost.
Anyhoo, somehow Jaime had the patience for weddings and brides and brides’ mothers, and Claire did not. She’d always thought Jaime had a bit of a saint in her. Claire was famous for her temper, Tessa for her looks, and Jaime for her sweetness. That’s how Claire saw things, at least.
Here was something new after seven years: Claire had known that Jaime spent time in New York City after college, had worked for Epic Events, and had always had a special touch with flowers, but she was shocked by the advanced skill of Jaime’s floral artistry. Again, any normal person would’ve asked her to share her secrets. To teach her what she’d learned in New York City. Did Claire? Nope. Instead, she carefully watched everything Jaime created, and whenever the shop was empty or quiet, she practiced what she’d observed. Jaime was that good. Claire, entirely self-taught, was far behind. She had a lot of catching up to do.
And something else that was different in the flower shop: Claire and Jaime didn’t talk to each other, really talk, the way they used to. They communicated like two coworkers—clear and polite. Nothing more.
It was the same way with Chris. He traveled a lot with his magician gigs, so Claire didn’t see him often. Maybe once every two weeks, he’d drive back into Sunrise in his old Ford Mustang at the crack of dawn on a Sunday morning, check in on his aunt Rose, and do his laundry and spend time with Claire. They’d go to church together and take a long hike in the woods in the afternoon. She’d talk about the week’s flowers—what arrangements she felt good about, what she wished she’d done differently. He’d talk about his magic acts and how to tweak things and what worked and what didn’t. Sometimes it felt as if they were testing the edges of their friendship, but they avoided talking about the things that lay between them—finding Tessa snuggled in Chris’s arms on the night of Claire’s eighteenth birthday. The fire that burned down the shop and destroyed friendships with it. The year Chris spent in prison for it.
Once or twice, Claire had tried to bring it up, but Chris wouldn’t take the bait. After the third try, he said, “Look, Claire. I’m far more interested in what’s ahead than what’s behind.”
What did that mean? Did he think there was something ahead for them? Because Claire wasn’t at all sure about that. It’s not that she didn’t have feelings for Chris—she had plenty of them, so much she could hardly hold them in. She did hold back, though. After all, she wasn’t seventeen anymore. She knew to keep her feelings for Chris in check and under wraps. But whenever she heard that Ford Mustang roar into town, her heart leapt.
Today, Claire had gone to open the shop but found Jaime had already arrived and was in the back of the store, talking to someone. Jaime often scheduled appointments with new clients before the shop opened, so Claire knew the drill. She stayed in the front of the shop to get started on the day’s to-do list. She needed to clean out the walk-in cooler of leftover flowers from the weekend. She took a deep breath and turned in a circle. This was one of those moments when Claire knew she had outgrown Same Day Delivery in Savannah. Regardless of the circumstances of her departure, it was definitely the right time to go.
There was such a variety from yesterday’s wedding in this cooler! Dahlias and calendulas, sprays of Christmas boxwood, even a bucket full of bay leaf. Those cuttings made her smile. Bay wreaths on the front door of the house were a common sight in Savannah during the winter. Apparently, they kept bad witches away. In seven years, Claire had never met a witch, either.
She grabbed an empty bucket and started to collect all the stems that were past their prime. They could be tossed, but the salvageable ones would be separated into a bucket of fresh water. Later, she’d arrange those into casual bouquets, tied with a pretty ribbon and wrapped in wax paper, to be set in a floral display rack of galvanized buckets out in front of the shop. The outside display rack had been Claire’s idea, and Rose had loved it. It was something Claire had created during the pandemic for the Same Day Delivery shop in Savannah. It was a great way to boost walk-in sales and use up excess flowers. No flower should ever be wasted.
As Claire stepped out of the walk-in cooler with a bucket of old blossoms to toss, she felt all the blood leave her head. In the middle of the shop stood a man she would know anywhere—he was that famous in the world of flowers. Liam McMillan, the Scottish wedding-event wunderkind. It was like being in the presence of royalty. Claire thought she might faint dead away.