Page 2 of Drop Dead Gorgeous

They're romantics.

CHAPTER 1

LAVINIA

The dead are always chattiest at dawn.

Not ghosts, exactly. More like echoes. Last thoughts that refuse to settle, unfinished apologies, little fragments of lives too stubborn to disappear all at once. Most people wake to birdsong or the smell of fresh coffee. I wake to the soft hum of the barely departed, lingering at the edges of my mind like a radio station that's never quite tuned in.

I've learned to live with it.

Belladonna Blooms opens at six every morning, and by six-thirty I've usually swept yesterday's leaves from the front walk, picked a twig or two from my hair, and mentally sorted through whatever emotional debris drifted in overnight. Some people get weather migraines. I get whispers.

This morning, the whispers are relentless.

Fog has rolled in thick from the bay, swallowing the harbor and softening the edges of every building along Main Street. Rain hangs in the air, waiting for permission to fall, while the town slowly yawns itself awake. Across the street, Clover is unlocking the doors to Hex & Honey, and the scent of fresh cinnamon rolls drifts across the sidewalk before the bakery is even open. Somewhere farther down the block, a delivery truckbackfires, a gull complains loudly overhead, and through it all one phrase repeats itself over and over again.

Poor Mrs. Fenwick.

I pause with a bundle of eucalyptus in my hands.

Mrs. Fenwick?

The echoes aren't conversations. They never have been. They're impressions, memories, emotions—fragments that drift together until I can usually piece together the story.

By eight o'clock, I have it.

Isadora Fenwick—retired first-grade teacher, enthusiastic but terrible baker, and owner of the moss-covered Victorian on Lantern Street—passed away quietly sometime before sunrise. She had no children, no siblings, and only a distant cousin in Thistlebrook who remembered birthdays with postcards and little else.

The funeral is scheduled for noon.

I sigh softly and glance toward the order board.

Today's schedule suddenly feels much less important.

My first customer, a flustered bride with mascara already threatening to run, apologizes three separate times for requesting a bouquet at the last minute. I smile, reassure her that peonies are remarkably forgiving flowers, and send her on her way with something soft, romantic, and far prettier than her budget probably deserved.

Weddings celebrate beginnings.

Funerals deserve no less care for the ending.

Once the bride leaves, I wash the rose stems from my hands and walk into the cooler.

The familiar scent of damp soil, greenery, and fresh blossoms wraps around me like an old quilt. This has always been my favorite place in the shop. Every flower waits patiently for someone to need it, whether for a birthday, an anniversary, or one final goodbye.

No one should be buried believing they were forgotten.

I pull a bucket of white spider mums onto the worktable, followed by blue hyacinths and fresh rosemary. Mrs. Fenwick always paused outside my shop in the spring to admire the hyacinths before continuing home. She never came inside unless she absolutely had to, but she always looked at them.

That seems reason enough.

My hands move without conscious thought, weaving stems into foam while my mind drifts through the echoes still humming around town.

She always had exact change.

Best cinnamon coffee cake . . . well, she tried.

She never missed a town meeting.