Page 107 of Smoke and Roses

It’s Dolly. He reaches over without a word and nudges the volume up one notch, and Danielle laughs so hard into my shoulder that she wakes up her daughter.

Chapter Thirty-Six

“Thin slices, Travis. Not those lumberjack slabs Martin cuts.”

“I heard that,” Martin says from across the shop.

“You were meant to,” Nolene says.

I’ve been inside Eden Flower Shop less than three minutes, and Nolene Strong has already tied an apron on me and handed me a carving knife. The ham in front of me is the size of a fire hydrant.

Last night, Lindsey taped a sign to the front door that said CLOSED SUNDAY FOR FAMILY. It’s a little after one now, and the bell over that door hasn’t stopped ringing since noon. In Eden, closed for family apparently means come on in.

Gary Morgan brought a folding table from the hardware store. Marlene brought three pans of funeral potatoes and a sheet cake. Bonnie Sorensen brought her famous green Jell-O with shredded carrots in it, which nobody eats but everybody admires. Heidi Stokes brought her mother, who taught Danielle in the fourth grade and just found out Danielle’s husband, Ben, teaches fourth grade too. She hasn’t let go of his arm since.

I carve thin slices.

Rob slides up next to me and steals one off the platter. “Look at you, Sarge. Apron and everything.”

“Touch the ham again and you lose a finger.”

“Worth it.” He takes another one. “Novak’s got twenty bucks says Bonnie gets a spoonful of that Jell-O into you before two.”

“And Cassia took the other side,” Novak says from behind him, with his mouth full. He’s been out of the hospital for five days, and he’s eaten everything that isn’t nailed down.

Over by the register, Hank Simmons is sitting in a folding chair with his hat on his knee, right under the old prom picture. Danielle stands beside him with her toddler on her hip. She reaches past him into the bucket on the counter and pulls out one yellow rose.

She tucks it behind his suspender strap, over his heart.

“It’s Sunday,” Hank says. “I only get one on Fridays.”

“That one’s from me,” Danielle says. “For June. I never got to thank her.”

Hank looks down at the rose. Then he puts his big hand over hers and holds it there, and the toddler reaches over and pats both of them.

“Damn,” Rob mutters. He wipes his eye with his thumb like he hopes nobody’s watching. “Allergies.”

“It’s a flower shop,” Novak says. “Everybody’s allergic.”

That’s when Bonnie Sorensen appears at my elbow with a spoon.

I look for a way out. There isn’t one. Rob is blocking the only path to the workroom, and he’s grinning. So I open my mouth, and Bonnie feeds me like I’m four years old.

It tastes like lime and carrots, which is exactly as bad as it sounds.

“That’s real good, Mrs. Sorensen.”

“Oh, I knew you’d like it.” She pats my cheek. “I’ll send the rest home with you.”

She sails off. Rob is laughing so hard he has to hold on to the cooler door. Cassia slaps a twenty into Novak’s hand.

Something tugs on my apron. Little Lindsey is standing there in a sunflower dress, with her gap teeth and her mother’s eyes.

“Aunt Lindsey says I can help with the sunflowers,” she says. “But I can’t reach. And you’re really big.”

I swing her up onto my shoulders. She shrieks and grabs two fistfuls of my hair, and I carry her through the crowd while she waves at everybody like she’s in a parade.

At the counter, Lindsey looks up from a bucket of sunflowers. She’s got pollen on her nose and her hair is falling out of its clip, and when she sees us, she smiles at me like I’m the best thing that walked in all day.