Chapter 8: The Wreath

Monday at seven, Winnie called me from Lincoln Square.

"Padlock."

I took Alistair's car and was there in twenty minutes.

My shop had a steel chain through the door handles and a laminated sign on the glass.

NOTICE OF TERMINATION. OWNER: HALLAM PROPERTIES LLC.

Through the window I could see the buckets and the cooler humming.

There were three hundred stems I'd cut on Friday for a funeral and two baby showers.

All of it was going to die behind that glass by Wednesday.

Winnie stood on the sidewalk in her overalls, holding a rusty crowbar from the van.

"I have two choices," she said. "I can cry, or I can commit a misdemeanor."

"I'm Mrs. Crowe now," I said. "I think we're allowed to call it a property dispute."

"Is that how it works?"

"No idea."

She cracked the chain in four swings.

The lock sprang off the door, and a woman walking a stroller applauded.

We carried out everything.

Neighbors came, the man from the bakery, the girl from the dry cleaner, a retired mailman who just liked flowers.

In ten minutes there was a human chain handing buckets onto the sidewalk.

Nobody asked why.

I stood in my empty shop with my hand on the cool, wet counter and felt something harden in me, small and bright.

"Win," I said. "Do we still have the funeral wreath? The one from the order that got cancelled?"

She looked at me, and a slow grin spread across her face.

"The big one? Standing easel, white lilies, a banner?"

"Get the ribbon pen."

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