by Arlene James
Miss Ann Mars hopped into the room like a bent, white-haired sparrow, wearing hat and gloves. “Hurry now,” she admonished gently, smiling at the Bible in Lily’s hands. “We’ll be late for church.”
“Oh! How did you know? Th-that I’d want to go, I mean.”
Miss Mars smiled and took the Bible from her hands. “An old lady learns to notice things, like how a certain someone always prays over her meals. Quickly now.”
Laughing, Lily ran to pull on her best dress, a soft navy blue floral print with a hem that frothed inches above her ankles. She tossed a long slender lavender scarf about her neck. As she stepped into flat shoes, Miss Mars called out that she’d meet Lily downstairs. Grabbing her keys and handbag from the bedside table, Lily softly sang the words that she had read earlier.
“‘O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth…’”
Even in Kansas.
* * *
The back driver’s-side door of the familiar blue sedan stood open. Lily reached inside and laid her Bible, with its soft dark red-leather binding, on the seat. Coraline Connolly twisted to look over her shoulder from the driver’s seat. Miss Mars had taken the front passenger side.
“Thank you so much for the ride,” Lily said, slipping into the car. “I’ve seen you stopping for Miss Mars before.”
Coraline chuckled. “I’ve been picking up Ann for services at the Bygones Community Church for the better part of a decade. It’s no trouble to pick up you, too.”
“Still, I appreciate it,” Lily told her. “I wouldn’t have gone on my own.”
“I assumed as much,” Coraline said. “The committee members agreed not to press the newcomers to join any group in town until you’d had a chance to settle in and establish yourselves, but I thought you might appreciate getting out.”
“Very much,” Lily told her.
The three women chatted about that and the flower arrangements that Lily had put together for the new businesses as they drove to the church. Coraline raised her eyebrows at the idea of using such things as old bread boxes, percolators and rusty pipes as vases, but Ann bragged about Lily’s artistic eye. Privately Lily basked in the praise.
They parked next to the front walk. Lily got out while Coraline gathered her Bible and handbag. The old white clapboard church looked like something from another era, with its diamond-shaped window above a tiny vestibule and a stately steeple towering over the sanctuary. A newer section of the building branched off at the back, giving the building a T shape. Lily could imagine those original Bronsons climbing the steps to the vestibule as the bell rang from the steeple, the ladies in long draped skirts, the gentlemen in their frock coats. Miss Ann got out on her side and started forward, but Lily felt rooted to the graveled parking lot until Coraline reached back and linked arms with her.
“Come along. And smile. No one’s going to bite you.”
Lily laughed, her shell of uncertainty cracking. Her feet barely touched the sidewalk before the townsfolk descended. Coraline stayed close, making brief introductions and forging ahead toward the steps. Lily nodded and replied softly to every greeting, smiling all the while and letting Coraline tow her toward the building. Just as they reached the steps up to the narrow double vestibule doors, Ginny Bronson rounded the corner of the building with her granddaughter. Isabella broke into a run, a sheaf of papers fluttering in her hands.
“Lily! Grandma, Lily’s here. Look what I got for you, Lily.”
Lily pulled free of Coraline and stooped to catch the child, going almost to one knee. “Hi! I didn’t know I’d see you here.”
“You’ve saved me a side trip,” Ginny said, shielding her eyes from the morning sun with an upraised hand.
The girl thrust the papers at Lily, exclaiming, “I did all the flowers for you. See!”
“She hasn’t let them out of her sight all morning,” Ginny explained.
Lily took the papers, straightened them as best she could and began sorting through them. “Why, Isabella, did you color all of these?”
“Uh-huh, and I stayed in all the lines.”
“You did. How pretty.”
Isabella pulled one free and held it up. “This one’s my favorite!” She had colored each petal of a sunflower a different shade, everything from yellow to magenta.
“A rainbow flower,” Lily said. “Very creative.” Isabella beamed.
“I drawed one,” she reported, “but Daddy says it looks more like a fireworks than a flower. What do you think?”
“A lot of the fireworks the other night looked like flowers,” Lily noted, going through the papers to find one that had been hand-drawn.
Lily caught a look passing between Coraline and Ginny. She assumed that the latter had just confirmed that Lily had spent the Fourth of July with the Bronson family. Lily wished that she could tell them not to read too much into that. Instead she concentrated on Isabella.
“Oh, this is definitely a flower,” Lily declared. Isabella’s little chest puffed up. Lily neatened the papers and held them carefully against her heart. “Thank you. What a perfect present.”
Isabella literally preened. “You’re welcome.”
Ginny Bronson shared another look with Coraline then pressed a hand to her granddaughter’s back. “We’d best get inside now. Don’t want to be late.”
They went off to climb the steps and disappear through the double doors into the tiny vestibule of the church. Lily looked down thoughtfully at the stack of papers in her hands then abruptly smiled as an idea came to her.
“Did you ever pray then suddenly get an answer?”
“Oh, yes,” Coraline told her. “I might be looking at a living, breathing answer to prayer at this very moment.”
Lily took a deep breath. “You’re talking about the town, of course.”
Coraline smiled gently. “Yes. That and other things.”
Before Lily could ask her to explain that, Coraline joined Ann, and the two women climbed the steps to enter the vestibule. Lily carefully tucked Isabella’s crayon-colored pictures into her Bible and followed.
* * *
A percolator. Tate shook his head in wonder. She’d used a rusty old percolator, turned it on its side and had it spilling flowers, along with coffee grounds, so artistically that people stood around gaping at it. Josh Smith had joked that people were too busy staring at Lily’s flower arrangement to buy coffee, but judging by the line at the counter, that wasn’t strictly true. Still, it had drawn a crowd.
Tate had forced himself to stop in the Cozy Cup Cafe first on that Grand Opening Monday, reasoning that his impulse to go charging over to the floral shop could not bode well for anyone, especially after Isabella had harangued him about checking on Lily all weekend. After seeing Lily’s creation on display at the coffee shop, however, he hadn’t been able to make himself go inside the bakery, which was the logical next stop. Though gratified by the line trailing out the front door, he had paused only long enough to look through the window.
When the crowd had parted, he’d caught a glimpse of the bread box Lily had shown him the other day. Painted white and trimmed in pink, it disgorged a froth of pastel blossoms sparkling with some sort of glitter. The arrangement looked good enough to eat, and people kept touching the flowers to see if they were real.
Amazed at the inventiveness of the town’s young florist, Tate avoided two women on the sidewalk—one carrying long-stemmed carnations and another a small arrangement in a ceramic baby shoe—on his way to Love in Bloom. No line snaked out the front door of the flower shop, but the place was jammed, as Tate discovered the instant that he opened the door.
Lily looked up with a ready smile from rearranging the glass display shelves, but the blue eyes behind her glasses showed signs of strain. Before Tate could greet her, a woman holding a squat burgundy vase asked Lily a question. The pair then turned and walked toward the humidifier to pick out flowers. Tate took the opportunity to look around the shop. She had achieved a charming mix of in
nocence and sophistication with her decor. At first he couldn’t imagine how she had done it, but then he looked closer.
Astonished, he stepped up to the shelves she had been rearranging and studied them in detail. Isabella’s colored sheets peeked out at him from amidst figurines and vases filled with flowers both real and silk. Lily had trimmed the images, encased them in glass and framed them with ribbon color-coded to the picture and the display. Isabella would be thrilled. He was thrilled and not a little proud of both Lily and his daughter.
As he looked around the shop, the bell above the door continually rang, with people coming and going. The cash register rang quite often, too, Tate noticed. He also noticed that Lily seemed frazzled already. Deciding he’d been patient enough, Tate made his way to her and shoved his as yet untouched iced coffee into her hands.
“You look like you could use this. They’re giving them away over at the Cozy Cup, but I prefer my coffee hot and black, even in the middle of July.”
Lily took the light brown cup into her finely boned hand and sipped at the contents. She looked very pretty in a long soft yellow top with elbow-length sleeves and matching pants. The slashed neck of the top had been embroidered with purple flowers and green ivy. She had caught her long hair in a loose ponytail below her left ear. Tate tried to remember if he had seen those small gold hoop earrings carved with ivy leaves before, but he kept getting distracted by the delicacy of her earlobes.
“You look great,” he heard himself say. Glancing away, he tried to bury that compliment with another. “The shop looks wonderful. Isabella will be so proud.”
“She gave me exactly what I needed,” Lily told him.
As if summoned by the mention of her name, his daughter pushed through the door just then, the bell jangling over her little head. Her grandmother followed, along with Gracie Wilson. Isabella had hung on Gracie for a while, until she’d realized that Gracie had no more interest in Tate than he had in her. Now that Gracie was engaged to marry Trent Morgan, they could greet each other as easy friends again.
“Hey, Tate.”
“Gracie, good to see you. Isabella, look.” Tate pointed to one of her crayon creations. Lily took it off the shelf and showed it to her then put it back.
“Makes a pretty display, don’t you think?”
Isabella let out a shriek and threw herself at Lily, somehow dodging an elderly couple picking through a display of ivies in miniature pots. Lily quickly passed the coffee back to Tate and scooped up his daughter. Carrying her around the room, she pointed out each coloring. His mom, meanwhile, took Gracie around. Presently Gracie and his mother approached Lily and Isabella, who seemed to be trying to squeeze Lily’s head from her body with one of her “power hugs.”
Ginny plucked her granddaughter from Lily’s arms, declaring, “Lily and Gracie need to discuss business now.”
Gracie bluntly exclaimed, “I want you to do the flowers for my wedding at the end of August.”
Lily beamed. “Lovely.” She waved a hand at a small glass-topped table and a pair of delicate chairs tucked into a corner. “Let me show you my design catalog.”
“I want to keep it simple,” Gracie said, hurrying over to seat herself.
Lily followed. Remaining on her feet, she pulled a thick binder forward and flipped it open. “Let me know when you see something you like.”
Tate thought grumpily that she might at least have looked in his direction before letting herself get caught up with Gracie’s wedding plans. Frowning, he took a long drink of the cold coffee, only to hear his mother ask, “Isn’t that Lily’s?”
“What?” he asked. Ginny looked pointedly at the cup in his hand. “Oh. No, it’s mine, actually.”
Ginny lifted her eyebrows but said only, “I promised Isabella a treat, so we’re going to get in line at the bakery next door. Care to join us?”
“Uh, I think I’ll mosey on down the street.” He wanted to see the arrangements that Lily had done for the other businesses.
“Will you be home for lunch?” Ginny asked.
Tate made a doubtful face. “I expect I’d better stay in town. The ladies on the committee have put together some sort of covered dish thing for lunch, I think. Don’t count on seeing me again until after the reception this evening.” It occurred to him that he ought to be at Lily’s side during the reception. He was, after all, her official committee contact and host.
“In that case Isabella can stay at our house tonight,” Ginny offered, but he automatically shook his head.
“I’ll just pick her up later.”
Ginny sighed. “All right, son. Whatever you say.”
“Thanks, Mom.” He kissed her cheek then Isabella’s. “Behave yourself, sprite.”
“Yes, Daddy.”
Ginny carried her out of the shop, Isabella babbling about her pictures and wanting to see the book and pet shops. Tate wanted to see those shops, too, but probably not for the same reasons as his daughter. He dithered a moment longer, watching Lily as she guided Gracie through the photo album and kept an eye on the other customers in the store. Lily needed help. Hopefully she would soon need someone permanent. He had a list, drawn up by the committee, of local people with related skills, but now was not the time to bring up that subject. He would save that for later.
Finding a strange kind of comfort in that thought, he went out to see what other works of art his florist from Boston had wrought. Well, not his. Lily was Bygones’ florist. If he was feeling a tad possessive, it was only because he was her SOS contact. And a complete fool.
Chapter Six
Exhausted but pleased, Lily locked the door of the shop and crossed the street beneath the Grand Opening banner. Miss Mars waited for her on the sidewalk in front of the insurance agency, which seemed to have given away a sizable number of small calendars and ink pens that day. Miss Mars had told her that the agency, a long-established business, was owned by a group in Manhattan, Kansas, and managed by a local couple.
“The day is a success!” Miss Mars announced, waving one of the hankies she had given away by the dozens. They walked at Miss Mars’s speed toward the Community Room.
“Where did they all come from?” Lily asked, happily relieved.
At one point that afternoon, Main Street had actually enjoyed such a traffic jam that the chief of police himself had come out to direct parking into the school lot behind the Cozy Cup Cafe.
Miss Mars divulged that the committee had purchased advertisements in local newspapers throughout the county and as far away as Junction City and Manhattan. “People kept asking where they could get lunch. We should have chosen a restaurant as one of the new businesses,” she opined, “but we were afraid the town wouldn’t be able to support a full-service restaurant again long-term.”
“The Everything must have done good business today,” Lily said. “I told half a dozen people how to find it.”
“The Dills will be thrilled, I expect.”
They reached the Community Room, and Lily pushed open the door, holding it for Miss Mars then following her inside. They stepped into a hum of ongoing conversations. A table of refreshments had been set up, and several rows of folding chairs ringed the plain white room, but as many people stood as sat. Tate lifted an arm, gesturing them toward two chairs that he had saved. As they made their way through the throng, Lily picked up snippets.
“Yeah, sure, lots of folks came in, but it was just one day. How you going to get ‘em back?”
“Pets. How many pets can you buy in a month, now, I ask you?”
“You just get one birthday a year. In our house that’s four birthday cakes for the whole year. And most folks hereabouts just bake their own, don’t you think?”
“Flowers grow right out in the front yard,” Lily heard one man say, “and my wife pays ten bucks for carnations. I’ll be putting a stop to that, let me tell you.”
The good feeling that Lily had enjoyed earlier began to fade, then Tate pointed to a table against the wall.
“What do you think?”
Someone had brought in all of the arrangements she’d done for the other shops and lined them up on the table for display. “Oh, look. That’s sweet.”
“That’s nuts is what that is,” said an angry voice behind her.
Tate frowned, and Lily spun to face her detractor.
“That’s uncalled for, Brian.”
“Uncalled for?” the man demanded. “I’ll tell you what’s uncalled for. Girly cakes and fancy flowers, that’s what’s uncalled for! Why do people need that stuff? What good is it when their cars break down?”
“Brian, I know you’re disappointed that the committee didn’t choose to bring in a mechanic’s shop, but the investment required to do that was just too high.”
“So you go for frills? Come on, Tate. It’s a dumb waste of funds.”
“Dumb?” Tate echoed. “Have you even looked at what Lily’s done? It’s nothing short of genius! And you, Brian Montclair, are a sore loser. You pushed for what you wanted, you didn’t get it and now you’re behaving like a sullen child. The committee didn’t make its decisions lightly. We have good reasons for what we’ve done, and I think we chose well when it comes to our new business owners.”
“We’ll see, won’t we?” Brian Montclair returned darkly before turning to disappear into the crowd.
Lily sighed. “And I thought the day had gone so well.”
“It has gone well,” Tate insisted. “I’ll admit, it’s just one day, and no one knows what the future holds, but today, at least, has exceeded my personal expectations.”
“Hear, hear,” Miss Mars agreed. “A good start, I say.”
“Let’s pray that it continues,” Lily murmured. “Now, the two of you save our seats while I get us some refreshments.”
“I can do that,” Tate volunteered, but Lily shook her head.
