Page 1 of April Flowers

Chapter One

Valentine’s Day at the flower shop was not for the faint of heart. Neither was being a small business owner on the most lucrative day of the year. From four thirty in the morning till seven o’clock at night, Margot was on her feet, greeting delivery drivers, double- and triple-checking orders, and writing “I love you” notes till her hand cramped. Through the speakers, her employee, Gabby, pumped her favorite love songs—“Let’s Stay Together,” and “At Last!” and “Love Will Keep Us Together.” Songs that made visitors blush or cry out, “I love this one.” Everyone was in high spirits. Everyone was either in love or wanted to be. Everyone except, of course, for Margot—but she preferred it that way.

She was in love with her flower shop. She was in love with her lonely life.

It had been fifteen years since Margot opened Margot’s Blooms, a boutique flower shop in a trendy and beautiful area of Boston called Beacon Hill. On opening day, she’d been only twenty-three years old, a bright-eyed entrepreneur who struggled her way through her first few years only to be named “one of the best business owners in Boston” by the time she hit twenty-seven. At thirty-eight, Margot's Blooms ran smoothly,providing customers with premium flowers and thoughtful notes for all holidays.

“Do you think we’ll survive?” Gabby, her one and only beloved employee, gasped around noon, whisking past Margot on her way to the back.

“We’ll survive, all right,” Margot said, laughing.

Gabby tied her hair into a loose bun and pulled a bouquet of roses from the top shelf. From where Margot stood, it looked as though they still had hundreds of rose-filled bouquets to give out. The smell was overpowering.

During odd times of the year, the scent of rose perfume on women would trigger Valentine’s Day flashbacks for Margot.

“What about your Valentine’s plans?” Margot asked Gabby now, licking an envelope and sealing it with expert precision. In it, she’d written a love note from a husband to a wife: To another fifty years!

Gabby blushed. “Matt is taking me to that new Italian restaurant around the corner. I told him I didn’t want to go far into the city after the day here. Dinner, wine, and then sleep!”

“He’s a keeper,” Margot said of Matt, whom Gabby had met here in the flower shop.

“What about you?” Gabby asked. “Are you going out with Pete?”

Margot’s heart stopped for a moment. Her hands were clammy.

“Uh-oh,” Gabby said, throwing Margot an eye roll. “What happened?”

“Nothing,” Margot said, flaring her nostrils. Gabby was a full ten years younger than Margot, but when it came to relationships, she often spoke to Margot as though Margot was a great deal younger and sillier than she was. Maybe, from most people’s perspectives, this was true. Margot hadn’t had manylong-term relationships. But it wasn’t that Margot got dumped all the time. Margot almost always did the dumping.

Nobody was good enough for Margot. Nobody fit well into her life. And she was fine with that.

“But are you going out with him tonight?” Gabby asked.

“I told him I would be exhausted,” Margot said, remembering a strained conversation over the phone. “So he insisted on cooking for me later.”

“That’s so romantic!” Gabby cried.

Margot shot Gabby a look that meantI don’t want to talk about it right now.

But at that moment, there was a distraction. Andy Brennen, one of her longtime regulars and a man in his late sixties, came into the shop wearing a frantic expression. Margot recognized it immediately because she’d already seen it fifty times that day. He’d forgotten Valentine’s. He’d forgotten to get anything for his wife.

“I don’t know what to do, Margot,” Andy muttered, bowing his head, ashamed of himself. “Stacy does everything for me, and I can’t even get my mind around a couple of flowers? A few chocolates? Am I a failure of a partner?”

Margot shook her head, teasing him. “Oh, Andy. What are we going to do with you?” But in a flash, she disappeared and returned with a bouquet she’d already set aside for Andy and Stacy. Just yesterday, it occurred to her that Andy had forgotten to order flowers. And because she loved Andy and Stacy, loved their love, and was well-practiced in writing handwritten notes from Andy to Stacy, she’d taken the opportunity to scribe something simple for him: I love you to the moon and back, my dear. Here’s to another beautiful year around the sun together. Yours, A.

Andy read the little notecard and blushed. “You’ve done more for my marriage than I can say.”

Margot waved her hand. “It’s my pleasure.”

She wasn’t lying. She genuinely loved love—as long as that love belonged to other people.

Was that why she’d gotten into the florist business in the first place? No, she guessed not. She guessed it had to do more with the garden she’d previously kept at her parents’ place. It had been her happy place, a place that, with enough sun and water and TLC, she could control.

From a young age, it had troubled Margot to realize that she could control so little in life. Things just happened to everyone, both bad things and good things, and it all seemed so random. But there was no randomness when it came to owning a flower shop. The same holidays came around at the same time every day. Roses were red, yellow, white, and pink. Lilies were always white.

In the same way, the years of Margot’s life had gone by predictably and safely.

At seven o’clock that evening, Gabby swung the Open sign to Closed and locked the door. Exaggerating her exhaustion, she fell against the counter and loosened her hair from its updo. Margot turned off the love song, and her ears rang in the silence that followed.

---