Page 1 of A Bouquet of Dreams

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Even the tiniest of flowers can have the toughest roots.

—Shannon Mullen

On Sunday nights, Claire Murphy often thought of that old adage about knowing whether you’d chosen the right career by how you felt as you faced the coming week. For her, there was nothing more exciting than the prospect of walking into the flower shop on Monday morning, breathing in that beautiful clean air, putting on her apron, and getting to work with her beloved clippers. Flowers were more than a career choice for Claire—they were her passion.

And that was the very reason she didn’t understand why her employer at Same Day Delivery had insisted that she attend a conference on customer service training. On her twenty-fifth birthday, of all days! MaryBeth did apologize to her for the unfortunate timing. “Sweet pea,” she’d said, “you’ll have plenty of other birthdays.”

True, hopefully true. But Claire’s twenty-fifth birthday was a day she’d looked forward to all her life. It was a target, a bull’s-eye for her big life plans to land on.

Instead of celebrating the way Claire had planned, the way sheshould have, the way most twenty-five-year-olds would have, she would be indoors in a lame hotel at that mind-numbingly boring conference. And all because MaryBeth thought she didn’t have what she called “the magic touch.”

Claire didn’t even know what that meant. She was direct. She was straightforward. She was candid. She looked for every opportunity to share her love and knowledge of flowers. And she was always willing to go that extra mile to help a customer. Take last Saturday as an example.

Claire had been in the workshop, putting the finishing touches on a pavé bouquet. She leaned back to look at it. Perfect. How could it not be? She’d made hundreds of these little bouquets—a crowded, contrived arrangement of stick-straight stem flowers, all in a uniform color, devoid of any personality. As dull as packed fruit. How many times had she begged MaryBeth to let her experiment with different shapes and sizes, unusual florals and faunas, to give customers a wide choice of options? Too many to count. Innovation was not part of Same Day Delivery.

Anyhoo, as she put the bouquet into the cooler, Mr. Wilson came in and asked Claire to make something really special. All that remained in the cooler were the day’s remainder flowers, but he said he didn’t mind at all. Then he told Claire that it was his fiftieth wedding anniversary and he wanted to bring flowers home to his wife.

“Did you know,” Claire said as she pulled buckets from the cooler, “that only six percent of married couples make it to their fiftieth anniversary?”

Mr. Wilson looked at his watch. “How long is this going to take?”

That should’ve tipped Claire off, added to the fact that he had come to the shop five minutes before closing time. Alas, at that moment her mind was completely focused on the flowers, and the occasion. “During the Victorian age,” she said, as she opened the cooler doors to find the right flowers, “when people beganto marry for love rather than other reasons, a tradition grew of recognizing anniversaries with specific flowers. Year one was carnations, year ten was daffodils, asters for year twenty, and so on and so on. The fiftieth anniversary was so rare that it was given the special status of two flowers—violets and yellow roses.” In the back of the cooler, she found buckets of both flowers and pulled them out to show Mr. Wilson. He seemed unimpressed.

While he waited, Claire created a bouquet of lavish beauty. She staggered the bloom height for a loose, lush look. She used an ingredient from this morning’s foraging on her way to work—long stems of scented geraniums. The finished arrangement had an airy, natural appearance, as if it seemed to be growing right out of the vase. Stunning. She set it in a floral box and presented it to him, expecting a thank-you for creating an on-the-spot, after-hours gorgeous bouquet.

So did Mr. Wilson thank Claire? Nope. He had the gall to ask for a discount! He said the flowers were like day-old bread and should be sold half price. Vexed, she charged him double. Plus, she told him to go home and thank his wife for putting up with him for fifty years.

Unfortunately, MaryBeth had come into the store through the back entrance and must have overheard Claire’s parting remark. She walked toward the front retail area with her hands tucked into her apron pockets. “Sweet pea, have you noticed you’ve been acting a little squirrelly lately?”

“Squirrelly?”

“Restless. Short-fused. Unpredictable.” MaryBeth said it in her gentle Southern lady way, but still it found its way to push Claire’s button.

Well, of course she’d been acting squirrelly! By now she’d thought she’d be the owner of the Same Day Delivery business. Maybe have started a chain, sold a few franchises. Several years back, Arthur and MaryBeth Cooper had said that she could buy the company from them when they retired. Claire recalled it asa solid-gold promise. Their memory over that conversation had grown fuzzy.

A few months ago, Claire had boldly asked about retirement plans. When, exactly, were they going to retire?

“Lately,” MaryBeth had said, “we’ve been rethinking a few things.” She didn’t elaborate.

So Claire went to Arthur. “What exactly did MaryBeth mean by rethinking a few things?” And he hedged. Changed the topic.

What in the world was taking those two so long to hang up their clippers? They complained constantly about feeling exhausted from the shop’s daily demands. Flower work required long hours, mostly weekends. They wanted more free time. MaryBeth’s heart was at church. Arthur’s was on the golf course. They needed the Same Day Delivery business to pay the bills, but they didn’t have a passion for flowers anymore.

Claire worried about them. She adored Arthur and MaryBeth. They were a combination of grandparents and employers. She had a soft spot for older people, which came from spending her high school years living with grandparents while her dad was stationed overseas with the army. She liked being the one who could help, liked having them depend on her. If she were being honest, she liked belonging to them. Belonging wasn’t merely a desire for Claire, it was essential. A necessity.

Arthur and MaryBeth didn’t dote on Claire quite like her grandparents had done, but she did feel beholden to them. Seven years ago, they’d taken a chance on Claire, only eighteen years old, brand new to Savannah, with limited floral experience. They’d given her a job and helped her find a place to live.

Over the years, they had encouraged Claire to learn all aspects of the business and sent her to community college to take some business classes in accounting. To her utter surprise, when it mattered, she could actually figure out math. She had created systems to keep Same Day Delivery in fine working order. She’d added value with some steady-income-producing ideas, like heridea of creating light, decorative headpieces for the church lady hats.Brilliant.

MaryBeth, a true church lady, wore a different hat to church nearly every week. Claire had been helping MaryBeth make carnation boutonnieres for an upcoming wedding. Not Claire’s choice for a boutonniere. While it was true that carnations got a bad rap—they were, after all, sturdy and reliable flowers—they were soooo trite. She had begged MaryBeth to show the bride something unusual, like pairing lavender and olive leaves. So perfect for a summer wedding. But no, MaryBeth stayed in her groove of what she called “tried and true.”

Anyhoo, out of those remainder flowers from that wedding, Claire had made MaryBeth a little fascinator of carnations to pin onto her church hat. That Sunday morning, her friends oohed and aahed, and suddenly Saturday afternoons were the busiest times in the shop. All orders for the church ladies. Genius.

And then came Covid. Disastrous for small businesses like Same Day Delivery.

Until Claire came up with a magnificent idea. Even MaryBeth had admitted that Claire had kept Same Day Delivery alive during the global pandemic.

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