The Flower Arrangement Read Free Page A

man was staring out the window. “I thought I was ready to go out there.” Lara had a feeling he wasn’t talking about the weather. “My girlfriend left me after Christmas,” he said glumly. “Everyone says I should make an effort to meet someone else, but I haven’t been on adate since 1998. I’m not even sure what you’re supposed to talk about.” He frowned at the vase of free flowers Lara had left on the counter. “Isn’t that bad for business? Giving flowers away?”
    â€œIt’s better than throwing them away,” Lara said. “Help yourself.”
    â€œNo, I don’t want to look like I’m trying too hard.”
    â€œHow about a buttonhole?” she said. “It’d be something to talk about.”
    â€œOh, go on then!” he sighed. “Maybe it’ll distract her from the fact that I’m not George Clooney.”
    Lara picked out a white rosebud. She snipped it below the head, then picked out a stem of
Alchemilla mollis
that was the same color as his jacket. She twisted it deftly around the bud, secured it with an inch of wire, slipped in a pin and handed it to him. He fixed it onto his lapel.
    â€œWhat do you think?” she asked him.
    He looked down at the flower and then up at her with the beginning of a smile. “I think I’ve been very rude and that you’ve been very kind.” He pointed at the flower. “What do
you
think?”
    â€œI think you should forget it’s a date,” Lara said, “and just enjoy a nice lunch.”
    *   *   *
    As she swept the floor for what must have been the tenth time that morning, Lara wondered if she’d see him again. Customers were like flowers: they had their seasons too. Some only appeared once, but there were regulars who came in every other week. Alfredo from Havana, who bought his wife, Dominga, exotic plants that reminded her of home—succulents and orchids and kumquat trees. Dermot, a perpetually love-struck pensioner who hobbled over from Donnybrook on his Zimmer frame for a single red rose every time a new female guest arrived at his retirement home. Ciaran, who was waving at her through the window right now. He had been coming in to Blossom & Grow with his daughter pretty much every Saturday since the shop had opened.
    Lara had met Zoe when she was only five days old—a tiny bundlestrapped to her dad’s chest in a sling, her face tightly furled, like a rosebud. Zoe had loved flowers when she was still too young to see more than blurs of color. She would drum her tiny heels in her stroller until her dad took her out and held her up—a flying baby above the buckets of roses and irises and lilies. Once she was old enough to know not to eat it, Lara had given her her own flower to take home every week. A purple iris or a yellow parrot tulip or a bird-of-paradise cut short and wrapped in cellophane and tissue and tied with a ribbon.
    Lara had watched Zoe grow up, week by week, year by year. Seen her take some of her first tottering steps. Now Zoe was the same age as Blossom & Grow. A skinny, long-legged five-year-old in stripy red and black tights and a navy duffle coat. She still had something of a rosebud about her. A saffron-tipped, creamy-centered Leonidas, Lara thought, with her milky skin and her coppery corkscrew curls escaping from under her bunny-ears hat. Seeing her warmed Lara’s heart the way the sunshine had warmed the back of her head first thing that morning.
    â€œWell, look who it is!” she said, leaning on her sweeping brush. “I told the flowers you’d be dropping in this morning.”
    â€œWe’re late”—Zoe hopped from foot to foot in her scuffed black patent shoes—“because we had to take a long time feeding the ducks. We have to do everything extra slowly this morning because Mummy needs a long lion.”
    â€œMummy needs a whole pride of lie-ins.”