Hearts in Bloom by Kelly McCrady

 
    Hearts in Bloom
     
    “I need to send the rattiest-looking bouquet you have.” The woman nipped a card off the rack and began filling it in with sharp strokes. Her manicured fingernails flashed in the morning sunlight coming through the flower shop’s south-facing window. High-end business attire left little doubt she could both afford good flowers and did not—this was a woman who demanded flowers get sent to her.
    Ivy McVey glimpsed the language spilling from the poison pen and smiled, her snark-meter appreciating the woman’s gesture. The flowers were for someone who went back on a deal. “You’re free to look in the case but we make sure only the freshest—”
    “Come on. Day olds, rejects—just scoop up something from the trash, stick it in a cheap plastic vase, and send it to this address.” She slapped a business card on the counter.
    “I’ll see what I can do.” Ivy ducked around the wall to the back. The rejects box brimmed with imperfect or broken flowers, but the best ones would express displeasure as well as looking abused. Quickly she assembled a handful of damaged orange lilies, yellow carnations, purple carnations, wilted cyclamen, a browning hydrangea, and dead leaves. She selected a yellow plastic vase and then arranged the odd bouquet, filling in gaps in texture and height with broken dried straw and a teasel, leftover from last year’s crop of the spiky roadside weed. Satisfied, she carried the bouquet to the counter.
    Sculpted coral lips peeled in a cat-smile. “Perfect.”
    This CJ person must’ve really pissed her off . “If you like, I can add a ribbon to—”
    “Tell him he’ll have to deal with it. I won’t be back in for another twenty minutes.” Her unfocused eyes clued Ivy in to stop talking. That and the fingers she whipped up to touch the Bluetooth in her ear. She continued the conversation for a minute. “How much?”
    Ivy waited, tapping the “no sale” on the register.
    “How. Much?” The woman pointed to the ugly bouquet, eyebrows raised.
    Oh . “No charge for the flowers. Four ninety-five delivery.”
    The woman slid a $5 bill onto the counter then stuffed the gold-clasped leather wallet back into her embossed python Coach handbag. She whirled then strode for the door, yapping into her phone again, four-inch heels—the kind with the fat toes—clicking over the threshold.
    “Style, she haz it,” Ivy quipped, nesting the card within the arrangement. She put the bouquet in the refrigerator, in line for her brother to deliver that afternoon.
    No one else came into the shop. Mornings after commute hour were often dull on the Thurston end of Main Street. Ivy indulged in a new book on her e-reader.  At 11:30, the minivan’s buzzing motor told her Jake had returned from morning deliveries. A moment later, he crashed through the back door, boots thumping across the linoleum. The bathroom door closed, fan flipped on. Yep, her brother, right on time.
    Ivy wished she could work in the greenhouses but someone needed to mind the shop. The regular girl had gotten married; how dare she honeymoon and leave the shop for a week? Seriously, she wished Beth all the best, but Ivy and Jake had to pick up the slack, making for long hours of nothing to do.
    The Coach bag woman was the perfect example for why Ivy preferred the greenhouse to the counter position. No people. Just row after row of green growing things to water, fertilize, and prune. Plus she wanted to check on her experiment. She had given up grad school and a research position at Oregon State to come back to the family business. John had treated her like a buggy potato, but that didn’t mean she needed to abandon her science altogether. “People are guessing we’re involved. We have to be more careful, especially because my divorce isn’t final, and I don't think I should be your advisor anymore,” he said, that last morning in bed. Ivy sucked a full breath through her nose—pressing back remembered