Page 4 of Save the Date
There was an extended silence on the other end of the phone. And then a dial tone. Even when he wasn’t speaking to her, the Colonel always managed to get in the last word. Or nonword.
Cara flung the phone onto the counter. The shop was quiet, except for the slow drip of the faucet in the sink. Bert tiptoed over, stood behind her, and placed his long, strong fingertips on her shoulders. Wordlessly, he began methodically kneading the knotted-up muscles. Poppy crept over, from her hiding place under the worktable, and tentatively placed her front paws on Cara’s knees.
At least, she thought wryly, she now knew what was off. Everything. Everything was off. “I’m screwed,” she whispered.
2
Cara bit her lip and did her best to blink back the tears of frustration that inevitably followed a conversation with her father. She looked over at the sad pile of flowers on the worktable. Without thinking, she reached for one of the few surviving roses. She clipped the stem end, then stripped off the remaining leaves, then added it to the hydrangeas rehydrating in the bucket.
She glanced around the shop. It was only three hundred square feet, but it was hers now. What was it the Colonel had called it? Her “little enterprise”? Not that he’d ever seen the shop. Her father had visited only once in the five years she’d been living in Savannah, and that had been shortly after she and Leo moved down from Ohio.
This was before she’d taken a job three years ago, answering the phone at Flowers by Norma. Her boss, a feisty octogenarian named Norma Poole, had been in business for thirty years. Norma’s specialty was funeral and hospital flowers. Her arrangements were as tightly structured as her trademark bright orange bouffant hairdo. A cantankerous chain-smoker, Norma had nonetheless taken a shine to her young protégé, and before she knew it, Cara was not only delivering bouquets, she was actually creating them.
Not two and a half years ago, Norma had walked into the shop and plunked a set of keys onto the same worktable Cara was now using.
“Today’s the day, Cara Mia,” Norma said in that raspy voice of hers.
“What day is that, Norma?”
“My last day. Your first.”
“Huh?” Cara gave the older woman a searching look.
“It’s all yours,” Norma said, gesturing expansively. “All three hundred square feet of it.” She tapped her chest. “Just came from the doctor’s office. He has some X-rays of my lungs that don’t look so good.”
“Oh, Norma!” Cara clutched the old lady’s arm. “Is it…?”
“Yup.” Norma shrugged. “He wants me to do chemo, but I’m eighty-two, for cryin’ out loud. I told him, ‘No way, José.’ My baby sister has a nice two-bedroom condo down in Sarasota.” She smiled. “Always wanted to be able to say I was spending my last days wintering in Florida.”
Cara swallowed hard. “Surely not your last days?”
“Close enough,” Norma said cheerfully.
“I’m so, so sorry,” Cara started. “What can I do? Help pack up the shop?”
“Why would you do that?” Norma asked. “I’m giving it to you, hon. Well, not the building. Bernice and Sylvia Bradley own that. But my lease has another year to run on it. It’s October now, and the rent’s paid up till January. All the equipment, and the inventory, such as it is, is paid for. And you’re welcome to it, if you want the headache.”
“Seriously?” Cara couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She knew Norma liked her well enough—but to just give her this business?
Norma coughed for a moment, and sat down to catch her breath. “I don’t have the energy to pack the place up. And it’d be a pain in the ass to try to hang around and sell everything. Not that it’s worth all that much. The delivery van? The odometer quit at two hundred thousand miles, and it’s a piece of crap, if you want the truth. But it’s a paid-for piece of crap. If you want it, I’ll get my lawyer to handle everything, get you the deed to the car, and we’ll do a bill of sale for everything else.”
“Uh, Norma?” She hated to broach the subject of money, but the fact was, she didn’t have much money of her own. Leo handled all their finances, and he considered her job at Flowers by Norma as more of a hobby than a career.
Norma must have read her mind. “I was thinking a dollar. Would that work for you?”
“A dollar? Are you kidding? Norma, this business is worth thousands and thousands of dollars.”
“And what would I do with that kind of money?” Norma’s pale blue eyes peered over the rim of her sparkly-framed glasses. “The doctor says I’ll be gone in a few months. My kid sister is the only family I’ve got left. She’s fixed fine, got more dough than I ever thought about having.”
“You could leave it to a charity.”
“Charity!” Norma made a face and coughed again. “Charity begins at home,” she said, when she’d caught her breath. “I don’t have much, but I don’t feel like giving what I do have to strangers.” She tapped Cara’s shoulder. “So. Looks like you’re an instant heiress. Kind of.”
***
Cara took a deep breath, and then another. Bert was hovering nearby, an anxious expression on his face.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
