Chapter 19 #2
I put both hands on the workbench and looked at my best friend. She and I always told each other everything … almost everything. Lately, I’d asked her not to tell me about the sex she had with my brother, because those were details I didn’t need to hear.
“Fine. He’s extremely attractive.” That was a total understatement.
He was one of those men who, even if he weren’t on a runway, you would stop in your tracks for.
You’d stop just to admire how he moved through the world.
He screamed capable. “And when he’s with Opal…
” I stopped myself, pressing my lips together.
“He’s so attentive and focused on her. He’s impressive. ”
I picked up the scraps from the table and was about to say something else, but Lila was watching me closely. Instead, I waved the shears I was holding in a circle, hoping it would convey the rest since I wasn’t sure that the words were coming to me.
“The whole package?” Lila supplied
“Yeah. He’s a bit too big.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Really? Like everywhere?” She waggled her eyebrows up and down.
I pointed at the door. "Don't you have cinnamon rolls to make?"
“No. They're in the oven. Phiny's watching them." She drew her knee up, settling in with the relaxing presence of a woman who wasn’t planning to leave. "I just want to say one thing, and then I'll stop."
"You've never said just one thing in your life."
“If he makes you want to jump him, you should do it.”
I was still working on a response—something dry and witty that could push me back to the realm of ‘that’d never happen’—when the door swung open. A deliveryman entered, holding a bouquet in his arms, and my stomach sank.
"Sage Holt?" he asked.
"That's me."
He held it out with impersonal efficiency rather than the friendly manner my regular delivery driver used. This guy was going through the motions and had no feelings about it. Or maybe he’s just having a bad day, Sage, I chided myself.
There was no space on the table, and I felt frozen. Lila glanced from the flowers to me and stepped forward to take them. It was brown paper wrapped in twine, the same style as last time, and confusion was written all over her face.
“Geez, this is huge. It’s beautiful, though.”
"Sender?" I asked.
"None listed."
My heart was nearly beating out of my chest as I cleared a spot for them. Lila and I looked down at the flowers for a minute, the brown paper still tied, the shape of the flowers pressing gently against the wrapping.
“This is the second one," she said quietly. “Right?”
Technically, it was the third, because I was counting the other one that was left in here, even if it was half dead.
Pulling the twine loose, I folded back the paper, and a breath escaped from me despite myself because whoever had done this had an eye.
It was an extraordinary and unsettling eye.
It was still a miniature reflection of a style I might have created on a day when I had no orders to fill and no customers coming in.
Dahlias in a deep copper that went almost brown at the petal edges, the exact shade that showed up on my journal pages, pressed between the September and October entries.
I’d posted a photograph of them once when I'd received a small personal order of them from my specialty grower, the caption something corny about autumn arriving early—and threaded among them, sweet autumn clematis with its tiny star-shaped blooms, and at the base where the stems met the paper, a sprig of rosemary that made my throat close without warning, because rosemary was for remembrance.
I had written that in a caption once, too.
Lila found the card and held it out without reading it, which was one of the many reasons she was my best friend. It was the same cream-colored stock as the last one, but this one had handwriting on it. Just on one side, it said:
I’m going to keep you.
"Sage," Lila said, her voice full of concern. “What the actual fuck.”
"I know."
"That's not—"
"I know." I placed the card face down on the workbench and looked at the flowers, which were objectively beautiful and had done nothing wrong. I tried to pinpoint the feeling. When I’d worked with my therapist when I was younger, I was encouraged to be specific.
“Find the emotion, Sage,” she’d say, leaning close to me and peering at me.
I could still remember her office and how I’d gone with East leaning on one side, all sturdy and tall.
We’d all taken turns there. Levi and Maggie had made sure that we went as long as we needed, but it was something I’d really connected with.
We’d always gone for ice cream after, and East would hold my hand.
There was a word that would go into my journal later, but I wasn’t sure I could connect it with the dahlias, or maybe I could.
Maybe I’d press one and put it in my journal, but something in me rebelled at that idea.
There was something here that was complicated, circling fear, but it wasn’t in the same zip code.
I needed to name it before I could decide what to do with it, but what I kept circling back to was that sprig of rosemary.
Dahlias were among my favorites, and I'd said so publicly more times than I could count.
The ranunculus and garden roses in the first arrangement could have been copied from any number of posts on the shop account, where I regularly photographed and captioned my own arrangements with small essays about the language of flowers that I had always found quietly meaningful but now sat differently in my memory.
But the rosemary was the kind of detail that lived in a single caption, written in October, on a night when I'd been in a mood and had gotten a little more personal than usual, and the number of people who would have read that caption carefully enough to file it away was a number I didn't want to think about.
"You have to tell Wade," Lila said.
"I really don't." I could hear the defensiveness in my own voice, and I didn't like it. It was the same reflex that had driven every fight I'd ever had with my brothers about the solo hiking or the fighting they’d done on my behalf. They’d been amazing brothers, and I loved them, but there had been times it had been hard to find my own footing.
Telling Wade was the right thing to do. I knew that, but my mouth was still flapping. “Not yet. It's just flowers.”
Lila’s face pinched with disapproval. “This is exactly what you’d make. I heard Phiny when the other one came. We joked about it, but she thought it was a supplier. This note is creepy. Two of them? That’s not…”
“My social media is public." I pressed two fingers to the space between my eyes. "If I call Wade every time something feels a little odd, he’ll come in here and make a scene.”
Her expression said she wasn't entirely opposed to a scene, and I knew that if the shoe was on the other foot, I would have been the one insisting.
"Let me think," I said. "Just give me a day to think about it. If anything else happens, I'll tell him." At her expression, I added, “I promise.”
Internally, I was freaking out. There was just this sensation I couldn’t quite grasp onto, even for myself, let alone trying to explain to someone as logical as Wade.
Granted, the flowers and the deliveries were concrete.
Feelings? Those weren’t something police officers could file a report on. I knew that.
She looked at me for a long moment, obviously trying to decide how hard to push. Then she exhaled and nodded once in the way that meant she was agreeing while simultaneously reserving the right to revisit the decision at a later date.
"Thank you."
"Don't thank me. I'm coming back at lunch, and we’re going to talk about this again.” She slid off the stool but paused at the door, her hand on the frame, and her voice softened. “You don’t have to know what it is to take it seriously. If someone is sending you these, we should tell your brothers. Or tell Hattie. She still has those connections with her squad. She might be able to figure out who’s sending them.
Just think about it, Sage-O-Rama. Please? ”
“I’ll think about it.” She was right to press me.
Telling Wade so he could at least look into the deliveries was the right call.
I hadn’t been too concerned (that much) about the first two, but three?
I wouldn’t ask Hattie. She’d stopped the whole podcast thing, and I didn’t think she wanted to get back into that scene.
I knew she’d call in a favor, but I wouldn’t ask her to, not when she and Kipp were so happy right now.
“You’re coming to book club this week, right?”
“You know it. I’m all caught up on my chapters and everything,” I exhaled with relief that she was letting me off the hook and changing the subject.
“It’ll be fun. Isn’t this book good? A Curious Beginning. Awesome title too. I just love the Victorian setting and the mystery. It gives me all sorts of different directions to go in for my desserts and activities on book club night.”
Lila always had so much fun coming up with matching desserts, and they were always a hit. She consistently had full houses at her book club nights, to the point where we had to split into two discussion groups because attendance was so high.
“This is the first time I’ve picked a title that is part of a series, but Deanna Raybourn is really good. I was thinking it might be a good seller, so I stocked the rest of the titles in the shop.”
“Smart thinking.” One of the things that really helped us strengthen our friendship in adulthood was our shared interest in business.
Lila was always making steady moves. This was her way of thinking ahead.
“After I finish this one, I’ll definitely pick up the next.
You already have a customer.” I gave her a squeeze.
“I can always count on you. See you later, babe.” She gave me a pointed glance that told me she wouldn’t forget to talk to me about the flowers.
The bell sang over the door as she left, and the shop went quiet again—just the heater, the faint drip from the cooler. The arrangement with its perfect copper dahlias and that rosemary sprig seemed to mock me from my workbench.
I stood there for a minute.
Then I reached for my phone, opened my shop account, and pulled up the October post with its caption about remembrance. I read through the comments carefully. Nothing jumped out.
There was no comment or like on the photo that made me think it was from some weirdo.
It was just a few tags to friends and the cluster of regulars.
Tucking my phone away, I put the flowers in a vase and placed them in the sun near the window.
They were beautiful, and I wasn’t planning on throwing them out because then it would feel like conceding to a feeling I hadn’t decided on yet.
If I started being afraid, I’d never stop.
The copper dahlias caught the light and gleamed, so I took a picture of them with the soft light and the windows behind them, with the dahlias framed within a frame, and posted it to the shop account.
Something dumb about autumn flowers in spring, and then I waited for Cedric to get there so I could make the Handler delivery.
I just wanted to get out of the building. Everything felt wrong.