Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
SEAMUS
Conversation with Emma
I talked to Nicole. Your plan is ludicrous. My mother will compensate you for what you would have made next week. You shouldn’t be working.
So you unblocked me, huh?
We owe it to Shadow to keep an open line of communication.
But I’m guessing you shouldn’t be using your phone.
Probably not, but how hypocritical of you to say so given that you texted me.
It was a test. You failed. You should take the next couple of weeks off. Rest is the best cure.
Sorry, Dr. Google. I work for my keep.
You’re being a stubborn asshole.
Yes. They said it was only a mild concussion. A little rest, and I’ll be golden. I have until Friday.
You’ll be happy to know I have no intention of knocking down walls for any more women for the rest of the week.
I heard you puked on Chuck in the lobby of the hospital.
No big deal. He forgave me and offered me a mint.
Send me a photograph of Shadow. I want to make sure you’re treating him right.
Shadow’s a she.
Have you invaded the cat’s privacy to check?
It’s more of a soul-deep knowledge. But I’m confident the vet will confirm it.
What are you wearing? My soul would like that knowledge.
You’re ridiculous.
Obviously.
[Sends photo of the cat next to a large T-shirt]
You gave her a shirt?
That’s what I was wearing. ;-)
You’re going to kill me.
I don’t aspire to that. And you’re the one who started it.
You might like to flirt with everyone, Seamus, but I don’t lose the games I play.
But, seriously, check out these guidelines for dealing with a concussion. I really think you should follow them.
She’s wrong about one thing. I’m not trying to flirt with her. I can’t seem to help myself, though. It’s always right there on the surface—the desire to rile her, to earn one of her barbs. To touch her. But I definitely believe the last thing she said—which must be the real reason why she’s held off on challenging Jeffrey Nichols to a rematch. She wasn’t sure she’d win.
So I’m going to help make her sure.
A goal which would be easier to accomplish if I didn’t feel like shit.
Puking on Chuck in the lobby of the hospital was a bigger deal than I’d been willing to let on. There’d been talk of readmitting me, in fact, but I’d argued that I would convalesce better at home than in the hospital.
We got home late, I had my little text chat with Emma, and then I get to sleep—with every intention of sleeping the week away in preparation for Operation Love Destroyers.
But the thought of Emma taking that photo naked kept me up for hours, and at eight-fifteen in the morning, I wake up to the sound of the buzzer. Chuck murmurs to whoever had the indecency to bother us, and a few minutes later, there are several muted thumps. I pull on a T-shirt over my boxers and stagger out to see what’s happening, only to find several massive flower arrangements covering the available surfaces in the apartment, one of them so large it takes up most of the dining room table.
“Oh dear,” Chuck says as a deliveryman with a smug grin brings in yet another huge-ass bouquet.
Oh dear indeed. What the fuck are two grown men supposed to do with this many flowers?
“Who are these from?” I croak out.
The smug deliveryman, whom I mentally nickname the flower fascist, claims they can’t legally tell us who sent the flowers. That sounds like a bunch of bullshit, but the guy’s buddy brings up one last arrangement—a slightly smaller bushel of flowers with a card on it. I detach it, giving Chuck a quizzical look. He’s wearing plaid pajamas, bless his Brady Bunch heart.
“I’m guessing they’re from Emma,” he says. “She seemed mighty concerned about you yesterday.”
My heart beats faster, which is beyond ridiculous. Emma is not a woman who’d send flowers, nor am I man who’d be happy to receive them. But I’d like to think she’s thinking of me, because I’ll be damned if I can stop thinking about her.
“Bye,” says one of the flower fascists, smirking. “Enjoy the daisies.”
“Actually, most of them are dahlias,” Chuck says. “The lilies are stunning, though.”
The guy shrugs. “What they are is your problem.”
“You have yourself a good morning too,” I say with a grin, which means go fuck yourself , and from the quick retreat he beats, he knows it.
Chuck has a thoughtful look on his face as he studies the flowers, then it’s like I can see the lightbulb flashing on inside his head.
“ Dahlia . I’ll bet these are from that delightful woman. She told me she’s loved to grow them ever since she was a little girl and first found out she had a flower named after her. She told me she’d show me the garden at Smith House.”
Leave it to her to think the flower was named after her and not the other way around.
“The bump in my skull doesn’t find her so delightful,” I mutter, less annoyed by the mention of Mrs. Rosings than by the very plausible explanation for the flowers. They’re not I was worried, and I’m glad you’re not dead flowers; they’re I’m sorry I almost killed you, dear boy flowers.
I open the message, which says almost exactly that.
Seamus-
My most earnest apologies for the lamentable mistake I made yesterday. I called the emergency room, and I’ve been assured you had the very best medical care that facility is capable of. The hospital staff was instructed to provide you with a premium dinner and a private nurse. If the conditions were unacceptable, please call me here at Smith House, and I will see to it that any mistakes are rectified.
Accept these flowers as a token of my gratitude for the hole you hammered into my wall. I’m confident you’ll finish it as soon as your medical condition will allow you to, and Emma has preemptively given you a five-star review.
Give some of these to a woman, if you like. They’re yours to do with as you please.
Regards-
Mrs. Dahlia Rosings
I laugh, and it hurts my head.
“They were from that delightful woman,” I tell Chuck, amused by her even if she’s most definitely a silver spoon lady with high-handed manners. I would have given good money to overhear those phone calls. Because there must have been multiple calls to have made the nurse at the hospital so nervous. This also explains the charcuterie plate that was brought to my room.
“She has a good heart,” he says, fussing with one of the bouquets, which looks very much like all of the rest. He plucks one of the dahlias and moves it to a new spot, which does look better, although how he knew is a mystery to me. My brother Declan is the plant guy.
“Oh?” I ask, because it’s impossible not to catch what he’s putting out. So he does have a thing for the battle-ax. The dessert invitation he made the other night wasn’t an aberration.
He turns and smiles at me. “She invited me over to Smith House on Friday night to make crème br?lée. You know…because we invited her over last week.”
“That was all you, man,” I say, relieved his interest seems to be reciprocated. Chuck’s a nice guy, and sure, Mrs. Rosings is an intimidating woman who tried to crack my head open, but I like her well enough. It would be hard not to, with how invested she is in helping Emma. “Just the two of you, huh?” I wiggle my eyebrows and immediately regret it. “Sounds cozy.”
“I’m sure she would have invited you too, if you weren’t doing your thing.”
I give him one of those are you for real? looks Emma is so good at. “You know this is a date, man, don’t you? She invited you over to make French desserts on a Friday night.”
“Oh, no,” he says, his expression shocked. “It couldn’t be. She knows I’m married. We had a conversation about it at the kids’ wedding. Dahlia’s had her share of marital problems too in the past. We commiserated.”
“And I’m hoping you mentioned the reason you want to get divorced is because your wife is—” fucking the swami , “—uhh, in a cult, and you haven’t talked to her for two and half years?”
He turns around the ring he’s still wearing on his ring finger, staring off into the distance. A deep sigh gusts from him. “Claire’s mother didn’t respond to my letter. And I know she received it, because I spoke with the young man who delivered it. I hired a courier so I could be sure. He took a video of her lighting it on flame after she read it. I’m sure someone else told her she had to do that.”
“Even so, I’d say it’s time to officially move on,” I tell him, hoping he hears me. Chuck is a nice-as-hell guy, too nice , and it’s past time for him to stop taking shit from a woman who left him without a backward glance.
“I suppose so.” He scratches the back of his head. “Emma did give me some good advice about going through with the divorce.”
This catches my attention. As far as I knew, Emma had discussed it with him at the wedding, told him there wasn’t a whole lot she could do since she wasn’t currently practicing, and left it at that. I’d been disappointed, to be honest.
“Yeah,” he continues. “She wrote me a long email after New Year’s. I couldn’t bring myself to read it until a couple of weeks ago. We talked about it a little at dinner the other night, too, right before they left.” His eyes brighten. “Maybe Dahlia was listening.”
“No doubt,” I murmur, rubbing my jaw, taken aback by how relieved I am to hear it. All of it. “That was good of Emma, huh?”
He gives me a significant look. “She’s a thoughtful young woman.”
“She’s certainly something.”
Sexy. Bossy. Funny. Smart as hell. And now compassionate. Everything you could want a woman to be, with a little more thrown in, just to mess with people.
Maybe Shadow will be okay, after all.
But I still can’t get involved with Emma.
“So,” I say, wanting to get the subject off Emma. “What’re you going to do? Are you going to treat it like it’s a date, or are you going to tell that delightful woman who wants to make desserts with you that you’d prefer to remain faithful to a woman who’s lived in another state for over two years and won’t go to her own daughter’s wedding.”
Chuck fusses with his hands for a second, as if he doesn't know what to do with them, then gives me a determined look and says, “I’m taking my wedding ring off.”
“Yeah?” I ask, getting psyched up for him. “Hell, yeah, you are. You’re going to be free, man. Have I ever told you about my close brush with marriage?”
“No,” he says and gives me his full attention.
Here’s something else I like about Chuck. He’s always truly hungry for other people’s stories, and not because he wants to run off and share them with someone else. He genuinely wants to empathize with everyone—swing up to their highs and bear with them through the lows. Of course, that’s not to say he wouldn’t run off and tell everyone, but my sister and brother know a bit about this anyway. Enough so it wouldn’t be news.
“I was young and stupid,” I say. “She wanted me to be someone I wasn’t. Made me think it was a good idea for a while, but I saw the light.”
Chuck is already shaking his head. “It would be different with the right woman, son.”
I have to smile at that. “How would you know?”
Smiling back at me, he admits, “I wouldn’t. But maybe it’s time to admit that I’m ready to find her.”
“Fuck yeah. I’m getting you a drink.”
I couldn’t drink anything more exciting than water right now, but this is a big moment for him—and big moments should be celebrated with a “ Slainte .” I head into the kitchen and pour him some whiskey in a tumbler.
When I come back, he’s frowning at me, looking up as he gives the ring another tug.
“It won’t come off,” he says, fussing with it. His brow furrows. “Do you think that’s a sign?”
No way am I letting him climb down that rabbit hole and get lost there.
“No,” I say. “I don’t think it’s a sign of anything other than that you probably gained a few pounds since you got hitched.”
I head back into the kitchen and grab the olive oil, then hand it over to him when I get back to the table. He’s worried now, playing with one of the dahlias.
“Look, Chuck. There’s no way Mrs. Rosings sent over all of these flowers just because she nearly killed me,” I say, hoping to yank him out of this place where he’s going. I’ve felt that kind of doubt. I thought I was a goner for Lia—head over heels—but now that I can look back at the whole situation with 20-20 vision, I see the truth. I was young, dumb, and totally pussy-struck. I let her lead me around by the dick.
He needs to get out, just like I did, before he finds himself flying out to the Pacific Northwest to join that cult.
“You think?” he asks, perking up.
“You talked about dahlias, didn’t you? Hell, she’d know you wouldn’t come by too many, living in the city like you’ve been doing. And she invited you to come over for dinner and dessert. She’s into you, man, and she’s a special woman. Women like that don’t come around too often.”
I think of Emma, her hand cupped around the side of my face.
You’re alive.
She sounded pretty damn happy about it too.
“You’re right,” he says—and picks up the olive oil. He lubes up his finger, and thirty seconds later, the ring goes flying through the air like a missile and then seems to disappear into the space time continuum.
We spend five minutes looking for it before giving up for the time being. Me, because my vision’s blurry around the edges. Him, because he’s obviously agitated and will do better searching later.
“That felt an awful lot like a sign,” he says, his energy nervous.
“Yeah,” I agree. “A sign that your marriage ended years ago, and it’s past time to make it official.”
He considers this, his head tilted slightly, and suddenly I can’t take being in here, in this closed space, flooded with the scent of hundreds of flowers. It’s starting to make me feel queasy again.
“We’ve got to get rid of these flowers,” I tell him.
He gives them a doubtful look. “I don’t want Dahlia to think we threw out her gift.”
“So keep one of the bouquets and give it to her at dinner on Friday night if they’re still looking fresh. What goes around comes around. But she’d think even more of you if you did something nice with them. Why don’t we bring them around to the hospital, give them to the nursing staff?”
God knows Mrs. Rosings had terrified them enough that they deserved something for their trouble.
“Now that’s a capital idea,” he says, slapping me on the back before I can stop him. My head feels like it’s a child’s piggy bank getting shaken by an enforcer.
I get another whiff of flowers and cringe. “The sooner, the better, I think.”
My good buddy, old pal Paul is the on-duty nurse at the hospital—and when he finds out the flowers would be a regift from Mrs. Rosings, he turns the color of sour milk and practically pushes us away.
“No, no, I couldn’t possibly.” He glances around, sees no one watching him other than a man with a hopeful look and a blood-covered rag held to his nose, and then meets my gaze again. In an undertone he says, “You should keep them. You don’t want her to find out you gave them away.”
So Chuck and I are left with two armfuls of flowers, our good deed undone.
“I guess we’re stuck with them, my friend,” he says jovially. “Could be worse.”
Could it? The smell in the car was so overpowering I can still taste it in the back of my throat.
I turn toward all of the sick and injured people gathered in the emergency room on a late morning in late February. It takes half a second for my gaze to find them—a couple of bedraggled looking women, one of them is young and a bit mousy, wearing a Buchanan Brewery hoodie sweatshirt . She’s cradling her arm, giving us a good view of her huge diamond ring, and has tear tracks down her face. Her companion is an older woman with a cane.
Well, hell.
Mark, found. These two ladies would surely appreciate the flowers I’m desperate to unload.
I approach them, Chuck falling into step with me.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” he asks in an undertone.
“That we can unload the flowers on those women and look like heroes?”
He rubs his chin. “I was actually thinking we could stop by the drive-through on the way home. I could really use a spicy chicken sandwich. One of those biscuit ones from that one place. You know, the one that Claire brought us to last week.”
I start to laugh, but the things it does to my head convince me it’s not as funny as I thought. As we get closer, I hold out the huge bouquet of dahlias and lilies.
“Looks like you had a hard morning, ladies,” I say with a wide smile. “We have some flowers for you.”
“Excuse me?” the older woman says with a scowl, tapping the linoleum with her cane.
“They’re for you,” I repeat.
“ Do you think this is funny ?” the older lady asks scathingly. She looks like she’s five seconds away from getting up and beating me with her cane.
“Uh, no?” I say, shifting my weight from one foot to the other. In another five seconds, I’m prepared to say screw this good deed and go find the nearest dumpster. Or leave the bouquets on someone’s gravestone, even if their relatives end up thinking they must have had a secret life.
The brunette woman reaches out with her good hand to touch the older woman’s arm. “It’s not his fault, Aunt Penny. How was he supposed to know?”
The older woman gives me a distrustful, narrow-eyed look that says otherwise.
Staring up at me, the brunette says, “It’s just…I’ve had a bit of bad luck related to flowers. My fiancé proposed last night, and he gave me this bouquet he made himself, which was just so sweet, but it had poison ivy in it.”
The older woman, who’s got to be her great aunt, makes a pfft sound.
“And then this morning, I woke up to find out my favorite pansies had died. Not ten minutes later, I got hit by one of those bicycle delivery trucks, carrying a bunch of flowers. Aunt Penny thinks it’s a bad sign because Jonah and I want to get married at a flower farm. She says we should see a psychic.”
“For goodness sake, Sophie,” the old lady says, shaking her head. “You’re going to get yourself murdered someday. Don’t talk to strange men who come offering you gifts.”
Sophie smiles fondly at her. “If I didn’t, I never would have met Jonah.”
From the pursed look on Aunt Penny’s face, she thinks this example proves her point, but she settles for a grunt.
Chuck eases out a gusty exhale and rubs his bare ring finger, no doubt thinking about the lost ring.
“I don’t believe in signs,” I say pointedly. “Why would God bother with signs when he could just pull fast ones on us? That would be way more entertaining for him to watch.”
The older lady gives me the stink-eye. “You’re still talking to us, young man?”
Well, goddamn, what’s it with me and pissing off older ladies all of the sudden?
“Look, I have no interest in murdering anyone,” I say, giving her a broad smile. “I’m just allergic to flowers, and someone bought me this bouquet. I figured I’d pay it forward, that’s all.”
“It’s kind of you,” Sophie says with a soft smile, “but we’d really better not. You know…just in case my aunt’s on to something.”
Chuck clears his throat, glancing at Aunt Penny. I silently will him not to speak, but he blurts, “I believe in signs too.”
Oh, here we go…
But Aunt Penny, who looked about as charmed by me as if I were a sewer rat, brightens instantly.
“I think we’re getting more of them right now,” she says, tapping her cane for emphasis, “with Leap Day upon us. Friday, right around the corner. Did you know there’s going to be a full moon? The odds of that happening on Leap Day are astronomical. I think that kind of thing draws in more statistically unlikely happenings.”
I watch with amusement as Chuck opens his mouth in wonder.
“Goodness. I didn’t know. I lost my wedding ring this morning, after I finally admitted to myself my marriage was over. I wonder if that’s related.”
Turning to me, he asks, “You think this is why Dahlia hit you over the head with that paperweight?”
“No,” I say bluntly. But I can’t deny that my mind darts to Emma’s Honey Do request. What are the odds of that happening? Or of us finding Shadow within the walls of Smith House?
Hell, what are the odds of me deciding to take on karma for Emma and getting a paperweight to the head?
I swallow, trying to stuff that bullshit down. I meant what I said. I’ve never believed in signs or fate. Because good people face ruin and death as often as bad ones.
He scrunches his mouth to the side. “Darned if I know.”
Aunt Penny glances pointedly at Sophie, as if she’s hoping her niece will spontaneously toss her own diamond ring.
When she doesn’t, Aunt Penny pouts but turns back to Chuck. “Nobody believes me, but the approach of the full moon Leap Day is making everyone act screwy. My grandson who doesn’t drink came home swaying and slurring last night. You tell me that’s not a sign of something. I’m telling you, we’re all going to be seeing strange things unfold.”
Sophie coughs to cover her reaction. “We’ve got it, Aunt Penny. We’ll all keep our eyes open for signs.”
Suddenly, this feels like one. These women have had a shit morning, and if Aunt Penny has a reason for disliking this Jonah character, Sophie’s in for it. This day is probably unredeemable—the feeling in my head guarantees it—but we can do something to help them and make their day better.
“Would you ladies like some spicy chicken sandwiches?”