Chapter 4

By six, everyone had gone, and the flower room sounded larger than it was. The cooler motor started, settled into its low hum, and kept me company.

I washed the knives first. Sap had dried along one blade in a green crescent, so I worked it loose with my thumbnail before drying the steel. Royce usually did the buckets while I cleaned the tools. He had done them badly for twenty-nine years, leaving one thin line of water around every bottom.

Tonight, the buckets waited in two rows beneath the sink.

I emptied each one, scrubbed the cloudy rims, and turned it upside down. Water ran to my elbows and darkened my sleeves. Nobody came through the back door to ask why I was still working.

The Saturday flowers filled half the cooler. I checked every red thread, then counted the lilies twice. Their white heads were still tight, exactly where they should be three days before a wedding.

I had learned to read them before brides learned to read their own faces. A Halloran wedding needed them held one day longer. A Marsh funeral had needed every bloom open before noon. I remembered the heat, the rooms, and which mothers had touched the petals when they thought nobody watched.

The telephone rang while I trimmed the last stem.

"Are you still there?" Royce asked.

"Yes. Thank you for checking."

He paused. I could hear a van door close behind him.

"You don't need to finish everything tonight."

"I always finish the buckets."

"I can come back."

I wiped the stem knife and placed it in its slot. The empty space beside it belonged to the shears Delphine had taken by mistake, along with the order sheet.

"That won't be necessary."

"Nell."

My fingers closed around the receiver cord. "Please make sure she keeps Saturday's flowers separate."

"She knows what she's doing."

"Then she will appreciate the reminder."

The cooler motor stopped. In the sudden quiet, his breathing traveled the length of the line, familiar as the breath beside me after every wedding night we had survived awake.

"You're making this harder," he said.

"Thank you for telling me. Good night, Royce."

I put the receiver down before he could offer to help again. Then I cut the red thread from the spool, tied the final bride's knot, and pulled until it locked against itself. It would have to be cut to come free.

The worktables were bare by the time I swept the last leaf from beneath them. I carried the clean buckets into the cooler and set Saturday together, one wedding still mine because I had promised it.

On the high shelf stood the last sealed jar. My hand found it without the light, behind the spare tape and above the row of empty glass I had kept from other summers.

I took the last jar down off the shelf and held it long enough for the cold of it to leave my hands, and then I put it back unopened and turned off the light.