Love Is Gone, So Am I novel · Chapter 8 of 24
Chapter 8: Nine Days
Gus picked the bell up off the floor and hung it back on its hook.
I sat the bride down on my one chair and gave her the box of tissues I kept for customers with love letters.
She was twenty-six.
She taught second grade in Burlington.
She was marrying a dairy farmer's son in his family's orchard on the lake road, under the apple trees.
"I booked Merriam House flowers a year ago," she said. "I saw their arches online and cried. I paid a deposit. Then tonight I got an email."
She held out her phone.
Due to a priority client commitment, Merriam House Floral is unable to fulfill your order.
Your deposit will be refunded within ninety business days.
"Ninety business days," Gus said. "That's half a year."
"What's the priority client?" I said.
"It doesn't say." She wiped her nose. "But there's a picture on their page tonight of a blonde woman picking out flowers for a Merriam House press party. On my date. My actual Saturday."
Vanessa.
"Show me what you wanted," I said.
She scrolled to her saved pictures.
The first one was an arch of white peonies and climbing roses over a lakeside aisle at dawn.
I knew it.
I'd built it three summers ago, at four in the morning, with a sprained wrist.
The next was a bridal bouquet of garden roses and trailing jasmine. Mine.
The one after that was a table of tall candelabras dripping with lilac. Mine.
Every single picture was mine.
"I can do this," I said.
She looked up. "You can?"
"I did it. All of it. I just didn't get my name on it."
She stared at me. Then she stared at Gus.
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