Florence the Florist's Arc

Chapter 4 of 4

Florence slept four hours on the greenhouse cot. She woke before dawn and went straight to the order book to check her reworked list against her remaining stems. A blue notebook sat tucked between the pages. It wasn't hers. A yellow sticky note poked from its side. She lifted it with two fingers, as if it might bite. The note was three lines in tight handwriting. It named a grower she had never heard of and gave directions to a place at the south end of the field, past the wildflower path. No name was signed. Beneath the notebook lay a small cloth pouch, tied with twine, heavy with seeds. Florence loosened the string. The seeds inside were sized and shaped like none she could name. She thought of the man with the van, the unlabeled stems, the door she had locked at midnight. Someone had been inside. Someone knew what she was missing. She could throw it all in the bin. She could call the police. Instead she put the pouch in her coat pocket, locked the greenhouse, and walked. The wildflower path was wet from overnight rain. At the south end she found a low fence and, behind it, a row of potted flowers set out on a plank table. Orchids she didn't recognize. A pink bell-shaped bloom on a thin stem. A white cluster like packed snow. No sign. No price. No person. She stood at the fence and counted twelve pots. Each one was healthy. Each one was a flower she could not have named yesterday. Florence waited an hour. No one came. She left two twenty-dollar bills under a rock on the table and carried four pots back in her arms, then returned for the rest in two more trips. By the time the sun was full up, the plank table was empty and her greenhouse shelf was not. She set the seed pouch beside the order book and opened to the reworked list. Half her cancelled orders could come back now, if these bloomed true. She didn't know who had left the note, or why, or what they would want from her later. She knew she had stock again. She picked up the phone and started calling the names she had crossed out the night before.