Page 16 of A Future in Blossom

Rose let that settle in for a long moment. “Running away bothered me, much more than the fire. The fire ... Jaime is right. That fire was an accident and we all had a role in it. Accidents happen. Buildings can be rebuilt. But not friendships. Not the kind of friendship that you girls had together. The three of you worked in harmony in a way I’ve never seen before, in all my years as a flower shop owner. There were times when I watched you all at work, and it felt like it had been choreographed. You brought out the best in each other. I knew I had something special here, and I tried to teach you everything about flowers that I could.”

“You did, Rose,” Jaime said, tears streaming down her face. “You taught us so well that we’ve all chosen to make careers in flowers. All three of us.”

“Separately,” Rose said. “Not together. That’s been the greatest disappointment to me. The first difficult moment you encountered together made you all run away, in different directions. God gaveyou a beautiful gift and you threw it away like it was worthless. You ran away and you stayed away.”

Claire cleared her throat. “Until you brought us back.”

A long pause followed, until Jaime crossed the room and crouched down in front of Rose, taking her hand. “I should’ve asked for your forgiveness a long, long time ago. I’m so sorry. I ran because ... I was scared.”

Claire dropped to her knees and scuttled over to take Rose’s other hand. “I ran because I was scared, but I was also mad.”

Tessa joined them, crouching down on the other side of Rose’s chair. “I think I was mad more than I was scared. Mad at the wrong person. And then I lost all the right people.”

“Running away is no answer. That was the reason it took me such a long time to try and find you girls. I had to wait until I could forgive you.” Rose held each girl’s gaze for a long, long moment. “And I have. I truly have. I needed to set things right, for my sake as well as yours. Time is so short.” Her face softened into a tired but sincere smile. “And now, there’s a rather important wedding to prepare for. Perhaps the most important one in Rose’s Flower Shop history. Chris, will you see the girls to the door? Time is short.”

Just then, Claire realized why Rose had been so absent these last few months, why she seemed so tired, so frail. As she walked to the door, she glanced at Jaime and Tessa. She could see that they were thinking the same thing. Rose wasn’t at all well.

ten

Flowers teach us that nothing is permanent: not their beauty, not even the fact that they will inevitably wilt, because they will still give new seeds. Remember this when you feel joy, pain, or sadness. Everything passes, grows old, dies, and is reborn.

—Paulo Coelho

TESSA

Tessa drove over to the field and went straight into the greenhouse to find Dawson. He was high up on a ladder, putting bulbs into a chandelier. He saw her coming and said, “If you’re looking for Liam, you just missed him. He’s on his way over to the shop to pick up fiddle-leaf fig trees.” He looked at her and climbed down the ladder, coming to her at once, his expression drawn with concern. “What’s happened?”

She didn’t say anything. She couldn’t. She just dove into him with a sob, and he wrapped his arms around her, holding her tight as she cried and cried and cried.

JAIME

Jaime was dusting off the leaves of some fiddle-leaf fig trees. Liam had just texted to ask how many trees the shop had because he wanted to use them in the reception. Fortunately, Rose had quite a few of them in supply because of a mistake in an order. There’d been a lot of similar mistakes Jaime had found since she’d arrived last summer. She had just assumed that Rose was overwhelmed and needed help because the store had more work than she could manage. Jaime hadn’t put all the pieces together until today. Rose’s frequent absence, her lack of interest in the shop’s day-to-day management, the way she handed off decisions to Jaime and Claire, Chris’s insistence not to trouble Rose with shop questions. And then there was the sight of Rose. Until this very morning, Jaime hadn’t realized how frail Rose was. How thin her once-strong hands had become, how cold they felt.

“That leaf is gettin’ its very life dusted out of it.”

Jaime stopped her frantic leaf polishing. She didn’t trust herself to look at Liam.

“Is somethin’ botherin’ y’, lass?”

One giant sob overtook her, and Liam put his hands on her shoulders, turned her around, and held her close against his chest.

CLAIRE

An hour later, as soon as Claire heard the roar of Chris’s Mustang come down Main Street, she rushed out of the shop to meet him. He had barely opened the car door when she said, “Why didn’t you tell me? How could you not have told me? I didn’t even see it coming. Not until she kept saying time is short. She said it over and over. Chris! How could you not have said anything?”

Slowly, he closed the door to the car and turned to her. “Because it wasn’t my place to tell.”

“She didn’t go to Mexico for a beach vacation, did she?”

He shook his head sadly. “Some kind of alternative last-chance cancer treatment ... that didn’t seem to deliver on its promise of a miracle.”

Last chance? “Chris ... is she ... is Rose dying?”

He’d been watching her, tenderness on his face. Claire’s knees started buckling. Chris didn’t say a word but reached out to embrace her, holding her tightly in his arms.

eleven

Flowers are the Romeos and Juliets of the nature.

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