Chapter 10 Avery
AVERY
The sun was high overhead when I left the shop, a warm breeze drifting up Main from the lake shimmering at the end of the road.
There were more people out and about than there had been early that morning, and while there were a handful of cars parked outside the local stores, almost everyone was on foot, waving and chatting with each other as they passed.
Across the park-like town square, State Street ran parallel to Main and a short-haired woman wrote on a standing chalkboard in front of the Morning Basket market.
It was the kind of small-town scene I’d only seen in Hallmark movies. It wasn’t that people weren’t friendly in the city, but there everyone was too busy, too focused even to smile as they passed, let alone to stop and chat.
I hesitated outside Petals on Main, the flower shop on the corner, then stepped inside.
I was immediately engulfed in a cloud of moist, fragrant air, roses, lilac, and jasmine all competing for attention in an intoxicating blend.
A cooler filled with flowers hummed to the left of the door while an empty counter sat to the right. In between was a sea of color: deep pink peonies and lush red dahlias and perky yellow tulips and pretty much every other flower I’d ever seen and a few I hadn’t.
“Hello there!” A voice called from behind a giant vase of red and orange roses.
“Hello.” I stepped toward the roses, assuming there was a person behind there somewhere.
And there was: the woman I’d seen in the window that morning with Beck.
She stepped from behind the flowers with a warm smile. She was in her sixties, her graying blonde hair loosely pinned on top of her head, tendrils escaping around her face.
“Avery!” She beamed as she came around the counter to give me a hug. “I was hoping you’d stop by!”
She was familiar even though I didn’t remember her. I sank into her embrace and caught the scent of patchouli under the florals in the shop. “You’re… Clara?”
She pulled back to look at me, studying my face with a perceptive gaze, her blue eyes warm. “You probably don’t remember me, which is just fine, but I’m so happy to see you again!”
“I’m sorry we didn’t stop in this morning. Beck wanted to show me around the bakery, and I’m still getting my feet under me here.”
“I completely understand. There’s no rush at all.” She returned to her space behind the counter and slipped a card into the bouquet of roses. “I’ve got to get these beauties ready for delivery.”
“They’re gorgeous,” I said, looking at the lush blossoms.
“But not quite done.” She was tall and slim, her long skirt and oversized cardigan fluttering as she moved gracefully toward the cooler of flowers at the other end of the room.
She reached for two yellow roses and three bright pink Gerbera daisies, then all but glided back toward the counter to make fresh angled cuts in the flower stems. She placed them precisely in the bouquet inside the vase and stood back to study her work.
“What do you think?”
She must have been some kind of flower magician, because the bouquet had looked complete when I’d walked into the shop, but I could see now that it hadn’t been. It had needed the yellow roses and the daisies.
“It’s perfect,” I said.
She smiled serenely, like I’d given her an answer she’d already known. “I’m so sorry about Evelyn. She was a good woman, a good friend. The best actually. The town isn’t the same without her, but I’m sure you know that.”
“I’m sorry too. Although I actually don’t remember much about Blackwell Hollow.”
“That’s all right.” Her blue eyes sparkled with hidden knowledge. “I’m quite sure it remembers you.”
It might have sounded creepy coming from someone else, but Clara made it sound like it was a good thing, like Blackwell Hollow was an old friend inviting me in after a long journey.
“I thought I’d take flowers to the cemetery,” I said. “I… I wasn’t here for the funeral. I didn’t even know she’d died until a few weeks later.”
Clara pulled on a roll of cellophane affixed to the wall and cut off a piece, then laid it on the counter.
“Don’t let that get you down. I can promise you, Evelyn didn’t care about such things.
Funerals are for the living.” She headed back to the cooler.
"Anything in particular you’d like in the bouquet? ”
“Um… no. Whatever you think Evelyn would like.”
I felt ashamed all over again. I didn’t even know which flowers had been Aunt Evelyn’s favorite.
“That’s easy,” Clara said, plucking blossoms from the buckets inside the cooler. She walked back toward the counter with her arms full of plump red dahlias and lavish pink peonies, plus a handful of roses and assorted greenery. “Evelyn liked her flowers like she liked her life — full and fragrant.”
“Full and fragrant sounds good.”
She went to work trimming the flower stems behind the counter. “I’m sorry you had such a shocking reintroduction to Blackwell Hollow yesterday.”
I’d been so transported by the perfumed heaven of the flower shop that it took me a second to realize she was referring to the dead body — Harold Pembroke — in the gazebo. “Oh, yeah… it definitely wasn’t how I expected to spend my first day in town.”
“Lyle said he’d been stabbed eight times,” Clara said, calmly arranging the flowers in the cellophane like she was talking about her favorite recipe instead of a dead man.
“I don’t think that’s right,” I said, remembering the blood on the man’s head. Had there been blood on his body? I didn’t think so.
“Well, I’m not at all surprised Lyle got that wrong,” Clara said. “Trusting Lyle to deliver information is as bad as trusting Rosie.”
“Rosie?” Clara worked so fast with her shears, trimming each of the flower stems now that she had them in place, that I was mesmerized by her movements.
“Rosie O’Hare.” Clara set down the shears and wrapped the cellophane around the stems. “If there was an award ceremony for biggest gossip, Lyle and Rosie would tie for first prize.”
I laughed. “I guess that’s a small-town thing?”
Clara smiled. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never lived anywhere but here.”
She wound a tiny rubber band around the stems in the cellophane, reached for a blue ribbon, and started tying it around the bundle of flowers.
“It must be nice,” I said. “To have people who know you so well. To know other people so well.”
I didn’t have anybody like that. My relationship with my dad and his replacement family was distant at best, and my mom was busy with her career and life as a “perimenopausal empty nester.”
Her words, not mine.
Clara laughed softly. “Every bed of roses comes with thorns.”
She handed me the bouquet. I reached for my wallet, but she shook her head. “You never have to pay for flowers for Evelyn. Tell her hello from me.”
I smiled. “I will.”