Page 3 of Wish You Faith

Evan laughed. “At this point, I should ask you for your autograph.”

“I’m the non-famous brother of a well-known preacher whose church is on a riverboat. Yes, that’s me.” Lorenzo laughed.

Evan wanted to say that he felt like he was sometimes unnoticed in his older brother’s shadow, but he decided it wasn’t relevant in the present conversation. Besides, it would sound like he’d be complaining about Connor, his only brother whom he looked up to.

“Your one hundred wreaths and two hundred poinsettias are ready.” He made a circle in the air with his stylus. “You might need to whip around and back up to the entrance of the greenhouse so it’ll be easier to load the racks. We have five racks of twenty wreaths each.”

Evan nearly clipped the hedges along the driveway, but made it to the green house door without bumping the truck into it. In spite of having a CDL, he hadn’t driven a delivery truck in years. Most of the time, he drove a two-seater Ferrari SF90.

He cut the engine and got out of the vehicle to the sound of a woman laughing in the greenhouse. It wasn’t a crazy laugh but it was a hearty laugh, like someone had just heard a funny joke and didn’t hold back.

He smiled when he heard the laughter. It warmed his heart to hear something so uninhibited. He wanted to find out who it was.

How could he be drawn to the laughter?

But first, he had to unlock the back door of the delivery truck. Just then he saw Lorenzo jogging to the greenhouse door. Unable to hold back his curiosity, Evan followed him.

Just inside the door, between rows of potted poinsettias, was a stack of boxes on a trolley. Lorenzo walked toward it, and so did Evan.

There, between the wreaths and the poinsettias, a woman was lying down on the floor, laughing. One elbow covered her face. The other arm was splayed on the side, near a cracked phone. She wore a green Christmastown apron over a knitted sweater that had too many colors in it. Stonewashed jeans and multi-colored socks completed her outfit. One clog was off her feet.

“Are you okay, Rosie?” Lorenzo rushed to her side. “Did you collapse from exhaustion?”

“I tripped and fell. That’s all.” Her eyes were closed. “I’m a little bit embarrassed, but I don’t feel like getting up.”

“Okay. You want me to get you a pillow?” Lorenzo didn’t even bat an eyelid.

“No need. Just let me lie down for a minute.” One arm still over her face, she pointed to the trolley with her other hand. “Those are the last of them. The rest are by the door.”

“Got it. No worries.” Lorenzo pushed the trolley toward Evan. He gave Evan some instructions, then added, “All the fresh wreaths are in the boxes. When the decorators are done with the resort project, please bring them back here to be reused. We try not to waste.”

They made quick work of loading the wreaths, which were not heavy at all.

“What’s going on?” Evan asked, wondering why the woman would be so exhausted that she was lying on the greenhouse floor in the middle of the day.

“Sorry I forgot to introduce you. Rosie Hamilton—on the floor back there—is our tree farm manager and resident plant biologist,” Lorenzo explained. “Someone messed up in the order department and didn’t place the order for these hundred wreaths and two hundred poinsettias. We only found out two days ago.”

“Yikes.”

“I know, right? We can’t turn away our biggest clients, especially when the mistake was ours. So Rosie and I stayed up two nights in a row to make these wreaths and repot the poinsettias in these pretty containers.”

“You mean you and Rosie hadn’t slept for two days and you worked through Thanksgiving?” That would be something he’d have to report to Cyrus as a part of his undercover observations.

“Yeah. Everyone else had two days off, so it was just us. My wife, Tabitha, brought us Thanksgiving dinner. She even drove Rosie’s mom here so she didn’t spend Thanksgiving alone with Rosie at work.”

So Rosie lived with her mom.

Lorenzo lowered his voice. “Rosie’s mom is a Stage 4 cancer survivor. She’s still a bit weak, but she insisted on baking an apple pie from scratch. We had a lovely Thanksgiving in the break room.”

Stage 4 cancer?

Evan felt sorry for Rosie. She probably had to go through a lot as her mother’s daughter.

If he were in charge, Evan would’ve made sure nobody worked on Thanksgiving day. Evan wondered if Cyrus and Amy knew about what happened at the tree farm.

“Rosie’s mom is a great cook and baker, even though it was hard work for her with her arthritic fingers. Anyway, they both wanted to volunteer to help with the wreaths, but there was a certain way we do our signature wreaths at Christmastown, so I told Tabitha to just feed us and we’d be fine. Rosie did not want her mother to do anything either, so my wife drove Sonya home after our Thanksgiving dinner.”

Lorenzo sounded like a data bank.