“My girlfriend is going to love this.” A short twentysomething Kiwi man with a collared shirt buttoned to the top handed Eva his credit card while admiring the simple bouquet of calla lilies she’d arranged for him.
“I’m glad.” Eva ran the credit card through Joanne’s register, tapping her finger along the metal edge while it processed. She’d offered to watch the flower shop for an hour or two so Joanne could run out for a quick lunch with Graeme, who was feeling much better after his asthma attack over a week ago.
The register whirred as it spit out a receipt. Eva ripped it from the spool and handed it to the man along with his credit card. “Thank you for your business. And good luck with the proposal.”
With a thank-you and a wave, the man left. The shop was quiet once more, only the hum of the hanging glass lights buzzing in the air. She tucked her hair behind her ear as she straightened a carnation spray here and a ribbon there. Eva hadn’t been back to the shop since she’d created some of the most beautiful wedding bouquets of her career. Hadn’t chatted with Marc since then either.
Because there was a profound awareness in her gut, and she wasn’t ready to deal with it. If he saw her face or heard her voice, he might realize it too. So anything she’d needed to say to him, she’d texted.
At least some good had come from the strife. She and Angela had been on surprisingly close terms. Her sister-in-law had even gone out of her way to check on Eva last night after she’d spent most of the day curled up in bed.
The bell over the florist shop’s door dinged, and Joanne walked in, followed closely by her husband. They held hands and she laughed at something he’d whispered in her ear.
When Joanne saw Eva, she beamed. “Thanks so much for letting us step out for a bit, love.”
“You weren’t even gone that long.” Eva ducked into the back room to check her phone messages, giving Joanne and Graeme a moment of privacy. She only had one text from Angela confirming their plans for an early-evening hike.
Eva sent Angela the thumbs-up emoji and locked her phone, sticking it back into her purse and returning to the shop floor.
Joanne was now alone, humming and smiling from her perch on a ladder as she dusted a high shelf in the corner.
“You and your hubby are so cute together.” With no customers to assist, Eva decided she’d get started on an order that had come in while Joanne was out.
She headed to the vase of purple larkspurs, which some said represented first love—appropriate for the small bouquet a man had ordered for a first date tonight. Twenty to thirty dainty blooms shaped like stars clustered around each stalk, creating an ivy-like trail of flowers along the stem, each increasing the beauty of the plant as a whole. Without this one or that, odd gaps would exist, and the flower would look incomplete.
Marc had been like one of those flowers in her life. A friend when she’d needed someone who understood her loss. A balm to her spirit. A partner who had made her quest doable.
And maybe . . . more.
If she could only get over her fear of the unknown.
The sigh that leaked through Eva’s lips was far from voluntary.
Pausing, Joanne quirked an eyebrow and climbed from the ladder. “Something on your mind?”
Should she confide in Joanne? Eva hadn’t even told Kim about her last real conversation with Marc, mostly because her best friend would probably just urge her to keep moving forward by “getting back out there.” But Joanne was far more impartial. She’d met Marc a handful of times when he was in town, but never for more than a few minutes. And Joanne had experience in this department.
No way could Eva focus on an arrangement right now. She dropped the larkspur back into its water with a tiny plop. “I’ve never asked. What led you and Graeme to finally realize you were interested in being more than friends?”
The shop owner replaced the rag and furniture polish behind the front desk. “Now that’s an interesting story.”
“You don’t have to tell me if you’d rather not.”
“I don’t mind, love. As I’ve mentioned, when I first moved to New Zealand, Graeme was my neighbor, and he was ten years older than me—so late thirties at the time. He’d never married, never had children, but we became quick friends and he offered to help me in the shop when he wasn’t working, or watch my boys for me when I was. When the kids were older, he took them to play football at the park and camping in the mountains. He became a father figure to boys whose own father had abandoned them for a new family.” Despite the words she spoke, Joanne’s tone held no malice. She’d obviously dealt with her ex-husband’s actions and moved on.
“Sounds like he was really there for you all.” Eva’s mind instantly flew to Marc. He was the same kind of man.
“He was.” Joanne’s hands played with the pearls at her throat. “After a few years, he confessed he had feelings for me that went deeper than friendship, but I was still so broken from my failed marriage. I know it’s not the same as losing a spouse—that it’s a different sort of grief—but it’s grief all the same.”
“Of course it is. So what happened?” This story was shaping up to be better than the Hallmark movies Kimberly had made Eva watch with her in the months after Brent died. She’d mindlessly sat through countless shows until one day she realized that seeing the love stories played out on the screen were too painful because she’d never have that again.
Now, though? Something like hope rested like a seed in her heart, waiting to push through the soil. Perhaps she only had to water it. And stories like Joanne’s made it feel more possible that someday Eva might be able to tip the watering can. That a beautiful lavender larkspur of her own could grow.
Joanne considered Eva. “I told him I didn’t plan to date anyone until my children were out of the house. And I didn’t. Even though it eventually became very clear to me that I couldn’t see my life without him. That I loved him.”
“So how did you go from that to married?”
“I returned home from moving in Neil at university and found Graeme waiting on my front porch. When I approached, he got down on one knee and said, ‘I’ve waited all these years, and dating at this point seems silly.’ He held out a ring and proposed. And of course, I said yes.”
Yep. Definitely better than a Hallmark movie. “What an amazing story.”
“It is. But I could have been happy sooner if I’d only opened my heart when he’d first declared his interest. I used my children as an excuse not to take a leap toward loving again. Instead of months, I could have already had years of marriage to the man I love.” Joanne batted away the single tear trailing down her cheek. “I try not to live with regret, but I struggle with it regarding this. Because my greatest sorrow isn’t in the things I lost that I had no control over.”
The shop owner peered into Eva’s eyes, as if she could see that little seed of something inside. As if urging it on. “No, my biggest sorrow is more about the things I lost to fear.”