Chapter 4 Grady
GRADY
This time of year, I only opened the shop for a few hours in the morning.
Today, a dad came in looking for a board for his twelve-year-old’s Christmas present.
We’d talked for a while about beginner boards, fin setups, and what size his son would need by spring.
He’d left without buying anything but promised to return before the holidays.
After I closed up, I walked to town, thinking about Esme and the Morrison wedding centerpieces. Maybe if I showed up and refused to leave, she’d accept my help.
When I reached Wild Petal, the CLOSED sign was up, but I could see Esme through the window, moving fast between the cooler and the worktable, arms full of white roses.
The shop looked like a florist’s warehouse had exploded inside it.
Every surface was covered, with greenery spilling off the counter, ribbon and wire and floral tape scattered across the table.
Trevor spotted me through the glass and immediately got up, tail wagging, and he trotted over to the door. Oh, Trevor. You’ve got no poker face, I thought. When it came to Esme, neither did I, but at least I didn’t have a tail to give me away.
Esme looked up and smiled when she saw it was me, then hurried over to let me inside.
“What are you doing here?” Esme asked, tugging at her green apron.
“I was thinking about you—wondering if you needed any help with the Morrison order.”
She tucked a strand of blonde hair behind one ear.
Her face was void of makeup, looking dewy and fresh-scrubbed, other than a meal of yellow on her cheek.
Most likely pollen. I’d have liked to brush it away for her but didn’t dare touch her.
I never wanted her to feel violated or frightened by anything I did.
But sometimes my imagination went there anyway.
“You’re so sweet to come by,” Esme said. “As you can tell, I’m in the weeds. Or flowers, as the case may be.”
“I’ve got nothing going on this afternoon. The shop’s depressingly slow.”
“I’d love to say no, but that would be foolish.
” She picked up her water bottle, shaking its contents.
“I’ve done twelve centerpieces. I need eighty.
The bride wants them to match exactly, which isn’t really possible.
But she’s the type to notice every detail.
You’d be surprised how particular some brides can be. She’s the worst I’ve ever had.”
I made a face. “That sounds hard.”
“These young brides have watched too many wedding videos on the internet.” She reached for her tablet to show me a photo of what the bride wanted.
“White roses, white ranunculus, cream spray roses, seeded eucalyptus, and dusty miller for the base greenery. Even though she makes me want to roll my eyes, I need the money, and this is the biggest order I’ve had all year. ”
“You’re a saint, Esme Taylor.” I took off my jacket and hung it on the hook by the door. Cuttings were scattered across the floor in back of the counter. I found the broom leaning against the cooler and started sweeping.
“You don’t have to do that,” she said.
I ignored her. “Eighty of those? That’s a lot.”
“Plus boutonnières, corsages, and six bridesmaid bouquets, but those I can knock out in the morning
“Give me a job,” I said. “Please.”
“Can you strip and cut stems? I’ll show you the length.”
“I’m on it.”
Esme handed me a pair of floral shears and pulled a bucket of roses toward the edge of the table.
“Take the leaves off below here.” She marked a spot on the stem with her thumbnail.
“Cut at an angle. About this long.” She held her hands apart, roughly twelve inches. “Flat cuts will dry them out too fast.”
“Angled cuts. Yes, ma’am.”
She watched me do the first three, adjusted my angle once, and nodded. “That’s perfect.”
“My mother loved her roses. I used to help her in the garden.” I rarely mentioned my mother and hadn’t intended to just now, but roses always made me think of her.
“Really? You never told me she was a gardener.”
“Yeah, she had a rose garden at the—.” I cut myself off before I said too much.
“Was it a big garden?”
I struggled to think of what to say. “Sure, I guess so. I don’t remember exactly. She died when I was sixteen. Gardens were the last thing I noticed back then.”
“And then it was just your dad, you, and your sister, right?”
I nodded. “That’s right.” All that was true.
Esme just didn’t know the details, but I’d shared a little about my family over the years.
Usually when she asked. But for the most part, I avoided the subject.
Given her own complicated relationship with her parents, she seemed to understand, never pressing too hard.
We fell into a rhythm. She built the arrangements, starting with the eucalyptus base, then the dusty miller, then layering in the roses and ranunculus. I prepped the flowers, stripping, cutting, and sorting them into buckets by type so she could grab what she needed without stopping.
“I don’t know how you make them so perfect every time,” I said.
“Helen used to say that the art of arrangement was in the composition.”
She often talked about Helen, who had been her mentor before retiring and selling the shop to Esme.
“Composition is about structure and balance. She would always tell me not to crowd the center. That sometimes less was more. The foundation’s important too.
It has to be layered right so the whole thing doesn’t fall apart.
” Esme tilted her head, studying the centerpiece from a different angle, then rotated the vase a quarter turn, assessing it again before reaching for another ranunculus.
“Helen was a riot. She always assigned our customers a flower—what they would be if they were a flower. Toward the end, I used to try and guess what she’d assign them before she told me.”
“Did you ever guess correctly?”
“Sometimes but not often. All in the eye of the beholder, I guess. I might guess a dandelion but she’d see a daffodil.”
“What flower did she say you were?” I asked.
She stared at me blankly for a second. “You know, I don’t think she ever did. Isn’t that funny?”
“I know what you’d be.” I smiled. “You’d be a sunflower.”
She made a face. “A sunflower? So ordinary?”
I laughed, shaking my head. “There’s nothing ordinary about a sunflower.
Their little seed just sits in the dark, waiting.
It has everything it needs inside it already and just needs to be coaxed out with a little warmth, a little water.
And when that happens, it cracks open and pushes through the soil. So brave. And bold.”
“You really do love sunflowers,” Esme said, looking at me sideways.
“How could you not?”
“I guess I never thought about them that much at all,” Esme said.
“My mother used to tell me sunflowers grow toward the sun because it’s what they’re made to do.
” I picked up another stem and cut it at an angle.
“Think about how resilient a sunflower is. Its stalk grows and grows—four, five, six feet. For weeks it’s just a tall green stem with a bud on top that hasn’t opened yet.
A person might look at it and think nothing’s happening.
But everything’s happening. It’s just not time for the big reveal. ”
“That’s the truth. They take forever to bloom,” Esme said. “When I was a kid, it seemed like years between planting and that first open flower.”
“That’s because the best things can’t be rushed.
And when a sunflower finally opens, it’s the most joyful plant in a garden.
Big and bright. A perfect mimic of the sun itself.
” I set down the shears. “And then, when it’s done blooming, it gives away its seeds.
Hundreds of them. To feed and nourish whoever needs them the most. Beautiful and life-giving all at the same time. ” I looked at her. “Just like you.”
She tilted her head to the side, her eyes misting. “I think that might be the sweetest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
Pleased, I picked up another stem and got back to it. Waxing poetic was something Esme brought out in me.
We’d been working for about an hour when the door flew open and a woman hurried in, heels clacking on the tile floor.
She was in her twenties, with dark hair in a high ponytail.
White jeans, camel coat, and a leather planner clutched to her chest emanated wealth.
A woman who had the luxury of worrying about every detail of what was probably a very expensive wedding.
That was not Esme’s world. Even though it should have been.
“Esme. Hi. I know I should have called.” She stopped in the middle of the shop, eyes sweeping the room, clearly taking in the buckets, half-finished centerpieces, and the stems and ribbon everywhere.
Then her gaze landed on me, standing behind the worktable with floral shears in one hand and a half-stripped rose in the other.
“This is my friend Grady,” Esme said. “He’s helping me prep.”
“Nice to meet you.” Courtney Morrison barely registered me. She was already moving toward the row of finished centerpieces lined up on the counter, her planner pressed to her chest like a shield.
“Oh, how pretty.” She leaned in close to the nearest one, examining it the way a jeweler examines a diamond. “These are perfect. Just like I asked for.”
“They’ll be slightly more open by Saturday,” Esme said. “Right now they’re about seventy percent, which is exactly where we want them for a Saturday wedding.”
“I’m sorry to barge in.” Courtney pressed her planner to her chest again and took a breath. “I just needed to see them. My future mother-in-law called this morning and asked if we should have gone with peonies instead, and I started spiraling.”
“Peonies aren’t in season,” Esme said. “And even if they were, these are what you envisioned. Don’t forget, it’s your wedding, not hers.”
Courtney sighed. “I kind of can’t wait until it’s over.”
“Don’t say that,” Esme said. “Just enjoy the next few days and trust that the people you hired will do what they said they would.”
Courtney nodded, her eyes bright. “Okay, I’ll try. Thanks for the reminder.”
“That’s what I’m here for,” Esme said.
After Courtney left, looking much calmer than when she’d arrived, I turned to Esme. “I didn’t realize being a florist had elements of a therapist.”
“Me and bartenders.”
Robbie arrived then, backpack slung over one shoulder. Trevor rose to greet him, wagging his tail, pressing against his boy’s legs to enjoy a scratch behind his ears.
“Hey, Grady, are you helping?” Robbie asked.
“I’m not allowed to do anything artistic. I’m just the cutter,” I said.
“Thank you for helping her. That’s extremely kind of you. She’s been worried about this wedding,” Robbie said without obvious emotion. But I knew he meant what he said. Despite his analytical mind, he was extremely protective of his mother.
“How was school?” Esme asked.
“Fine. We started nonlinear regression in stats. Mr. Hall let me skip ahead to the multivariate section.” He set his backpack down and walked over to inspect a finished centerpiece. “These are geometrically balanced, Mother. Well done.”
“I’ve been doing this long enough, my hands just know where things go,” Esme said modestly.
“Unconscious mathematical competence. Impressive.” Robbie picked up his backpack. “I’ll be upstairs. I’m working on a probability set.” He headed up the stairs, leaving us to our work.
“Unconscious mathematical competence,” Esme repeated, shaking her head. “Only Robbie.”
“I know. He’s awesome.”
“Yeah, he is.” She shot me a grateful smile. “Thanks for always noticing.”
“How could I not?”
“His father never did,” she said under her breath.
Every time she said something like that, my chest ached for Robbie. And for Esme. Her ex hadn’t deserved either one of them.
We kept working. The light through the front windows shifted from bright to golden to amber as the afternoon deepened.
Trevor relocated from his bed to a sunny patch on the floor, stretching out with a groan of contentment.
She was working on the seventeenth or eighteenth arrangement—I’d lost count—when she reached for a stem and our hands met over the same bunch of ranunculus.
Her fingers brushed mine and stayed there for half a second longer than necessary. She pulled back first.
“Sorry,” she said.
“No problem.”
She didn’t look at me. I didn’t look at her. We both looked at the ranunculus as if it had the secret to the meaning of life.
The back door opened again and Madison burst in like a blue-eyed tornado.
“Grady, hi.” She ran straight to me, arms out, and I caught her, swinging her up.
“Hey, Sweet Pea. How was school?”
“We painted birds. Mine was a pelican. Mrs. Alvarez said it was the best one.” She leaned back in my arms to look at me very seriously. “It was the best one, but I didn’t say so because that would be bragging.”
“Very restrained of you,” I said.
“Also, Tyler H. took a bite out of the glue stick and had to go to the nurse.”
“Poor Tyler H.,” I said.
“He’s always doing things like that,” Madison said. “Last week he got a pea stuck up his nose at lunch.”
“Let me guess—school nurse again?” I asked.
“Yep.” She wriggled down and ran to the worktable, eyes wide. “Mommy, these are so pretty. Are these for the wedding?”
“They are. Grady’s helping me so I don’t have to be here all night,” Esme said.
“Can I make one?” Madison asked.
“Tell you what,” Esme said. “There’s an extra vase under the counter and some flowers in the reject bucket. You can make your own arrangement.”
Madison’s face lit up. She shrugged out of her jacket, tossing it onto a stool, then scrambled for the vase and the bucket. She set herself up on the floor beside Trevor, who accepted this invasion of his sunbeam by raising his head to lick Madison’s hand.
The three of us continued our task, Madison on the floor making something that was less an arrangement and more a colorful explosion stuffed into a vase. Trevor supervised with his face resting in his paws.
By five-thirty, we’d finished fifty of the centerpieces.
“I think I can do the rest by noon tomorrow,” Esme said.
“I’ll help you,” I said. “And you can’t say no.”
“Now that I know your secret cutting talents, how could I? Thank you for rescuing me.”
“Anytime,” I said. “Let’s order pizza to celebrate. My treat.”
“Are you sure?” Esme asked.
“Positive. I can hang out, watch a movie with you guys?” I asked. “If that’s okay?”
“I think I have a bottle of wine in the fridge,” Esme said. “Sounds like the perfect evening.”
With Esme and the kids, it always was.