Save the Date (2 page)

Cara kicked at the trash can with the toe of her sandal, wincing in pain as soon as she’d done it. “That’s twelve thousand dollars’ worth of flowers, gone. Even if we save some of them, there’s no way we can even put together a boutonniere out of this mess, let alone enough flowers for Torie, eight bridesmaids, and all the flowers for the church and the reception. And it’s too late to get more flowers shipped from California in time for tomorrow.”

Bert looked around the room, as though a new shipment of flowers might magically appear from thin air.

“What about the wholesale house? Can’t you call them? Or we could run over there and see what they’ve got.”

“Breitmueller’s? On a Friday morning in May? With all the weddings and proms going on around town? They’ll be picked clean by now. Anyway, they don’t carry the kinds of flowers we promised Torie. Lilies of the valley? Ranunculus? Casablanca lilies? Peonies?”

“What about Lamar?” Bert asked. “I know we usually see him on Thursdays, but maybe, if you called and told him what happened…”

Cara blinked back tears. “Lamar’s clear up in Atlanta, Bert. He’s not gonna come all the way down here just to save my bacon.…”

Bert pointed at the phone. “C’mon, Cara. That old man loves you. He might make a special trip, if you explained what was at stake.”

Cara shrugged and reached for her Rolodex. But before she could flip to Lamar’s card, the shop phone rang.

She picked up the phone and looked at the caller ID, and her hand froze. The area code was one she knew by heart: 614 for Columbus, Ohio. And, of course, the caller was one she knew all too well, too.

She should let the call roll over to voicemail. Ignore it. He’d only call back, and keep calling until she picked up. Her day couldn’t get much worse now. So why put off the inevitable?

Cara swallowed hard and tapped the receive button.

“Hi, Dad.”

*   *   *

“Cara? Are you all right?” Her father’s voice boomed so loudly she had to hold the phone several inches from her ear. Lieutenant Colonel Paul Kryzik’s idea of a whisper was more like a shout to most people.

“Fine, Dad. How are you?”

Cara felt a knot forming in the pit of her stomach. She knew exactly why the Colonel was calling; had, in fact, been expecting this call for weeks now.

“Look, Dad, I know I’m kinda late with my payment…”

“I haven’t had a phone call, much less a check from you, in three months now,” he said. “What’s going on down there?”

She swallowed hard. “We’re just coming into my busiest season. Remember, I told you that? I’ve got a spring and summer full of weddings booked. But I’ve had all kinds of expenses. Buying the van, getting my website designed, finishing out the shop and buying equipment…”

“Our agreement was that you’d start making payments on the loan in February. You should have had plenty of money from Valentine’s Day business, right?”

She felt a stabbing pain between her eyes. “We actually had a pretty good Valentine’s Day. But all the profits went back into the shop. My computer died, and I had to buy a new one…”

“Not my problem,” her father shot back. “If you’d prepared a detailed business plan, as I’d suggested, you could have anticipated that a five-year-old computer would need to be replaced. It’s called a contingency plan. These things are a cost of doing business, Cara.”

“I know, but…”

“If you’ve got business coming into the shop, I’d think you’d be in a position to start repaying at least the interest on your loan,” he went on.

“Dad, if you’d just let me explain,” Cara started.

But the Colonel wasn’t interested in explanations. Not from her.

“I should have known something like this would happen. It’s never a good idea to loan money to family, especially since you didn’t even have a sound business plan for this shop of yours.”

“That’s not true,” Cara said sharply. “I drew up a business plan. I did cost projections, market studies, I researched rent and utilities, I did everything I could. But how could I anticipate something like having to replace a computer? Or a deadbeat innkeeper who refuses to pay me for three months’ worth of arrangements? Just this morning, I came downstairs, and my flower cooler had died. Along with twelve thousand dollars’ worth of inventory I need for a wedding tomorrow. Some things are just out of my control, Dad. You of all people know that.”

“Water under the bridge,” he said, interrupting. “The fact is, if you can’t even begin repaying the interest on a loan, after six months, your business has no hope of success. Even you can see that, right?”

“No! I can’t see it. My business is building every week. We’ve got new clients, a few new commercial accounts. I just need a little more time to get things up and running. This wedding tomorrow, Dad? It’s a ten-thousand-dollar deal.” Cara hated the pleading note she heard creeping into her voice.

“For which you just admitted you don’t have any flowers,” the Colonel shot back. “Look, Cara. This just proves my point. You’re a smart girl, and a hard worker, I’ll give you that. But somebody like you has no business running a business. Take that innkeeper. You think I would have given three months of credit to a new account? Not on your life!”

Cara felt her left eye twitching, and her headache was taking on a new life of its own. She opened the drawer of her desk, found the bottle of aspirin, popped three into her mouth, and choked them down with a swallow of now-cold coffee.

She had to end this call before her head exploded.

“Dad? I’m sorry, but I really need to go now. We’ve got to replace those flowers I lost, and I’ve got another bride coming in for an appointment. I’ll send you a check by the end of next week. Swear to God. And after that, I’ll catch up. Monthly payments, just like we agreed. Okay?”

“No. Not okay,” he said. “I know this is painful for you, Cara, but admit it, this florist thing of yours hasn’t worked out. Just like your marriage. And frankly, I’m out of patience with pretending everything is okay. I’m not some ATM machine, you know. Two years from now, I’m retiring from the community college. I have to start thinking about my own welfare. Twenty thousand dollars is a lot of money at my age. I’m sorry, but I’m pulling the plug on this little enterprise of yours.”

Cara’s eyes widened, and her jaw dropped. “Pull the plug? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just what it sounds like. It’s over, Cara. No more stalling, no more excuses. I’m calling your loan. It’s still the first week of May. Close up the shop. Call your landlord, let her know you’re breaking your lease. Maybe if you give her plenty of advance notice, she’ll prorate your rent.”

“Break the lease?” Cara’s mouth went dry. Her hands clutched the phone so hard her fingertips turned white. “Close the shop?”

From across the room, Bert, who’d given up any pretense of not listening in, looked as shocked as she felt.

“There’s no reason for you to stay down there in Savannah any longer,” her father continued, as though everything were settled, just like that, because he said so. “You’ve no ties, there, really. Leo’s not taking you back, and anyway…”

“Leo?” Cara screeched. “Dad, I left Leo, not the other way around.”

“A technicality,” the Colonel said calmly. “Let’s not split hairs. I think it would be better if you got a little place of your own. I could probably talk to somebody here at the school about a job, but if you think you still want to fool around with flowers, you can probably find something around town.…”

“Dad!” Cara shouted into the phone. “Stop. Just stop!”

“There’s no need to scream, young lady,” the Colonel said sternly. “I’m not deaf.”

You might as well be,
Cara thought.
You never hear a word I say. You never have. I’m thirty-six years old, as you dearly love to point out, and you’ve never really listened to me. Not in my whole life.

“I can’t discuss this right now,” she managed.

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.

“Ask me later.” She picked up the telephone and made the call she’d been about to make—right before the Colonel decided to ruin her week.

*   *   *

Lamar Boudreau was Cara’s secret weapon. She’d met him at an industry trade show in Atlanta, not long after she’d transformed Norma’s into Bloom. Every week Lamar drove his refrigerated van to a wholesale warehouse adjacent to the Atlanta airport, and filled his “bucket truck” with choice imported flowers in unusual colors and varieties not stocked by her Savannah wholesaler—tulips, lilies, gerbera daisies, freesias, and snapdragons from Holland; roses, delphiniums, and asters from Ecuador; and spray chrysanthemums and alstroemeria from Colombia. From there, he made deliveries to fewer than a dozen florists around the state.

Under normal circumstances, Lamar and his bucket truck arrived in Savannah on Wednesdays. As far as Cara knew, she was his only local customer, and she intended to keep it that way. These days most of her brides didn’t want to settle for their mother’s same-old carnations and sweetheart roses. They wanted the trendy flowers spotted in their favorite high-end glossy wedding magazines and, increasingly, on Pinterest. And that’s where Lamar Boudreau came in.