La Fleur de Blanc Read online

  “To me?”

  “They just wonder if you can pull it off. Here’s the note our director left: ‘Could come off as lacking or highly and intentionally exclusive. Proprietor’s attitude and experience will determine which.’ And then there’s instructions about what I should ask you, to figure out if buyers who come in and face you will say, ‘I want to pay a lot for no options because this is a fancy place’ or if they’ll say, ‘this girl doesn’t know what she’s doing; she only has one color.’ It’s all perception, do you see?”

  The answer was sort of. Lily nodded, not trusting herself to speak. Evelyn was about to see right through her, like the desk girl at Bella by the Sea. She’d thought this was a matter of having the money to pay for the spot, but apparently it depended on her — and Lily’s nose wasn’t good at staying high in the air.

  “Lily, right?” said Evelyn.

  “Yes.”

  “And your shop name … La Floor de Blank.”

  That was close enough. Lily didn’t speak French (yet) but still knew to put more heart into pronouncing La Fleur de Blanc than Evelyn had. But the agent had passed an opportunity to make Lily feel uncultured, so Lily decided to return the favor. She nodded.

  “So that means, what, ‘The Blank Flower’?”

  “‘The White Flower.’”

  Evelyn made a note. “Okay, that’s better than blank, I think. And I do like that it’s French. Feels highbrow.”

  “It’s actually French because it’s named after a shop in Paris. From a story my mom used to tell me about a place she and my dad visited on their honeymoon.”

  “Oh, that’s sweet. Do they own a flower shop?”

  “No, ma’am, they owned a farm. They’re both passed.”

  Evelyn looked up. “I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you.”

  “How old are you?”

  Lily swallowed, knowing this might well be a deal-breaker. “Twenty-two.”

  “That’s pretty young.”

  “But I’m willing to put down two months’ deposit. So you’re covered.”

  “Well, that’s good, but it’s actually required by the lease terms.”

  “Oh.”

  “Like I said, we’re not just interested in securing the space. We need your shop to succeed, and that depends on you. You personally.”

  “Oh. Sure.”

  “Do you have experience running a flower shop?”

  “I worked in my aunt’s shop in the summer during high school. Just me and her.”

  “Were you a clerk?”

  “Not just a clerk, ma’am.” Lily winced at her repeated use of the word. Evelyn was thirty at most, and probably not used to being addressed like a matron. “Just the two of us ran the whole shop. I actually did a lot of it myself toward the end. I ran to the market; I placed the orders; I was in charge of sales. I was good at it, too.”

  Evelyn blinked, then sighed. She seemed on the verge of saying something — possibly about how a pretty, young girl successfully selling flowers wasn’t exactly difficult — but then looked down and made another note instead. Then she set the leather binder down, her arms finally uncrossing on her chest.

  “Look … Lily. You seem like a nice, bright girl. But it’s going to be hard for me to recommend that the center give you this space.”

  Lily felt her hip slump into the side of a large cart that had been left in the center of the shop’s floor. She had already been creating beautiful arrangements atop it in her mind for two days, ever since she’d returned for dinner and found the enchanting little shop gone. She’d always been an equal blend of dreamer and realist, but something about the plaza by the ocean and the quaint — and now vacant — flower shop had tipped her internal balance. Her dreaming side had spent forty-eight hours convincing the realist that gambling what was left of her inheritance on a princess’s fantasy was a better option than dying a little each day working retail. It was better to dream big and fail than never to dream, and all that. But now Evelyn was telling her that the choice wasn’t hers. Decide to dream or not; the Palm Couture leasing office had crushing plans of its own.

  “Why not?”

  “You’re young. Not very experienced.”

  “I ran the shop for two months while she was away!” Lily protested.

  “Not in Cielo del Mar.”

  Lily felt her arms cross. She wanted to stomp her foot, pout like a child.

  “The shoppers here … ” Evelyn paused, but Lily could read the end of the sentence on her face: will eat your cornpone ass alive. “They’re a different breed. They expect the best. They all want to feel unique, like they can afford things that others can’t.”

  “Have you ever heard of an all-white flower shop?”

  “No, but … ”

  “I’ll charge a premium if that makes the shoppers feel better. But it’ll be worth it, because I know how to get the best. My mom loved flowers, kinda secretly, but my aunt knew them. So I know them. Do you know the shelf life of an Ecuadorian rose? Do you know why it’s bad to freeze stems? Or,” she added in a sudden burst of inspiration, “which all-white flowers Beyoncé had in her wedding?”

  This sparked something in Evelyn, enough to raise her eyebrows.

  “I might not be as old as some of your other tenants,” Lily said, realizing that she was now arguing for something she thought she hadn’t reconciled inside herself, “but I’ll bet I’ve worked harder than almost all of them. You might laugh, but I was milking cows at age three. I’ve baled twenty acres of hay three times every summer for almost as long as I can remember, and for fifteen years I’ve been on the wagon, stacking it by hand because my dad never wanted to buy a kicker and a wagon to match. Despite being the youngest of five, I’ve got the best endurance of all of my brothers and sisters and might be the strongest. I haven’t ‘worked’ a ton in the way most people mean, but I’ve worked a ton, just the same. I came to the center for a retail job, even though I still have forty thousand dollars in the bank. Because where I come from, you don’t sit on your hands even when you can. You stand up, and you work, and you don’t stop workin’ till the sun has said goodbye to the day.”

  Lily paused, having plenty more to say but smarting from the way her accent had traitorously left the g off the end of “working.” She’d just railed at Evelyn about hay and cows. She was miles from ashamed, but her history wasn’t at home in Cielo del Mar. And while the idea of running a shop by herself felt daunting, she’d be damned if anyone said it was beyond her ability.

  Evelyn shuffled her papers after a long moment of silence and pulled a new slip to the top.

  “There’s also the matter of the rent. You understand it would be due biweekly, not monthly?”

  “Fine,” Lily said.

  “And the store’s footprint. Did you read in the lease where, at the office’s discretion, you might be moved to a less visible location?”

  Lily bored holes into Evelyn’s eyes. She hadn’t read that at all. The idea of the Palms management deciding to uproot her store and move it into a dingy corner was repugnant, but she’d be damned if she’d contend that now. Lily was reasonably certain that any signed contract could be reneged on within a few days. Her father had taught her that. She could sign now if they’d let her, then decide if she liked the ramifications at home.

  “Of course.”

  “Because you’re in a prime location. I don’t know if you understand that.”

  “Of course I do.” That, she had considered. The idea of a snooty all-white, French-themed shop would have flopped hard in Kansas and would likely flop hard even elsewhere in Cielo del Mar. But across a grand fountain from a similarly snooty interior design store and a restaurant that held only three couples and started at $1,000 for dinner, Lily’s outrageous idea might seem novel.

  “Well then,” said Evelyn, turning the paper so it was right side up to Lily, old-fashioned triplicate pages of red and pink visible beneath the white top sheet.

  Lily looked up. Evelyn w
as still watching her, still composed, still eminently professional, a hand with a pen extended toward Lily. The tiniest of smiles cracked the corner of her mouth.

  “Go on, farm girl.”

  Lily took Evelyn’s pen and signed, feeling dazed. Her hand was shaking, making the scrawled date beside Lily Whistler almost illegible. Evelyn briskly took the pen, the lease, the other papers, and the binder, her tiny smile a memory that might never have been there.

  “You understand it’s still subject to approval. It may be countersigned, or it may be shredded. They’ll call you if you get the space.”

  “And if someone else gets it?”

  “As the expression goes, ‘Don’t call us; we’ll call you.’ All I can do is to offer my recommendation. After that, it’s someone else’s decision.”

  Lily blinked. “You’re giving me your recommendation?”

  “I liked the old shop that was here,” she said, nodding. “A place like the Palms needs some authentic beauty.” Then she walked through the door, waited for Lily to follow, and locked it.

  “Miss Pierce,” said Lily.

  “Evelyn.”

  “What happened to the shop that used to be here? It looked like it was thriving when I came in just a few days ago.”

  Evelyn sighed. “There’s more to surviving at the Palms than success.”

  “Like what?”

  “I’m glad you’re strong, Lily. And the fact that you stood up to me in there? Well, that was probably good practice.”

  “Practice for what?”

  But Evelyn was already walking across the courtyard, skirting the charming food kiosk where a handsome man with sandy-brown hair and a thin beard was leaning out the window, watching. Lily stayed where she was. The man in the cart gave her a pursed-lip smile and a short wave. She wasn’t sure whether she was being welcomed or told that her business here was done.

  “Evelyn!” Lily called.

  The agent turned, her black suit revealing itself to be a very dark blue in the warm Southern California sun.

  “How long was the shop that used to be here in business?”

  “Four months,” Evelyn said. “But don’t worry. Of the four flower shops that have occupied that space before you, the longest-lived lasted three times that long.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  SURE AS SUGAR

  Lily unlocked the front door of La Fleur de Blanc at 8 a.m. sharp six days later, knowing for better or worse that it was her door she was unlocking for opening day. Technically the space still belonged to the Palms, but the center had agreed to loan it for a while — to give Lily a chance to succeed or fail — and that alone should be a comfort. The leasing agent’s objections had all been about Lily’s business rather than Lily herself, and she’d made such a big deal about how Lily would only be given the lease if the center thought her shop would prosper. Given her call the next day (not to mention the countersigned, scanned lease from FedEx), they must have decided she was a fair risk. Either that, or Evelyn felt sorry for her enough to somehow tip the scales in Lily’s favor.

  But that was crazy talk. Evelyn was an emissary. Someone higher at the Palms had to believe in her, so it was Lily’s duty — to home, to Mom up in Heaven with her memory of the Parisian flower shop, and mostly to herself — to act the part.

  Still, her heart fluttered as Lily turned the small chrome deadbolt to open the door — same as it had that first day when Evelyn gave her the tour. Same as it had been fluttering through the previous week, as she’d taken broom then sponge to the Spanish tile floor, as she’d dusted the corners neglected by the former occupant, as she’d hung Lily Whistler adornments that she hoped the shoppers wouldn’t take for quaint.

  It wasn’t until after getting the rather dispassionate call from the leasing office that Lily realized she hadn’t so much as found the local flower market. In Glen, when she’d worked for Aunt Bev, there had been a number of suppliers, some cheaper than others and some with better quality and the higher prices to go with it. Following a few moments of euphoria after hanging up with the Palms, the reality of Lily’s ignorance had descended like a hammer. There would be suppliers around; that wasn’t a problem. But which was best? Which was cheapest? Was there any chance those two could ever be found in the same place?

  She’d sprung into action, embarking on a mad search. There were small suppliers everywhere, but they didn’t appear large enough to meet her needs, given her store’s limited palette. There was a Los Angeles flower market — three huge warehouses, according to the website. But what would the quality be like, once she got down there and touched the blooms? Would purchasing her initial stock (which, she’d failed to internalize, would cost a good deal more than subsequent runs) cripple her? And what if she overbought — what if nobody came into her shop the first week and it all wilted or died before it could be sold? Lily couldn’t afford to simply trash thousands upon thousands of stems. She could already imagine herself a few weeks from opening, stripping dried petals to make the world’s largest batch of potpourri while well-dressed shoppers walked past the front door, uncaring.

  But in the end, the LA market had turned out to be perfect. She’d walked the vast, endless aisles lined with clutches of white hydrangeas, roses, and lilies, sighing at the snowy Dutch ranunculus stuffed into buckets, making notes and feeling her flower shop dream becoming as suddenly real as Christmas morning. Then, once she’d paid (gut checking at the price despite having to settle for Colombian roses rather than the ones she wanted from Ecuador), Lily realized she didn’t have enough room in her car to take them home. They’d held the order for her while she’d made several trips back and forth, getting mixed looks from the other Palms tenants as they watched the blonde in the secondhand Camry unload armfuls of flowers paler than her wavy hair. She’d met nouveau house’s owner that day — a tall, black-haired woman probably in her late 40s named Kerry Barrett Kirby, whose three names seemed almost as pretentious as her store’s all-lowercase designation. Kerry had spent as much time looking at the Camry as Lily during the few seconds they stood near each other, gazing at the car the way she’d stare at a smudge on a fine white sofa.

  Lily opened her door to the warm southern California morning, knowing the odds of floral shoppers showing up early was remote. But Lily didn’t care. She was here; she hadn’t been able to sleep; she was the shop’s sole worker. She could stay cooped up inside and fret, cleaning and organizing things that she’d already tidied. Or, she could have the guts to open her door. Dad spoke in her mind: Everyone is afraid, Lil. Brave people do things anyway. That’s your job in life, same as it’s mine and everyone’s: to be brave.

  She propped the door using a small rubber wedge she’d found while cleaning, her breath in overly large cycles. She stood for a moment with the backs of her hands propped on her hips, fingers loose and hanging, looking out. Then she sat, realizing too late that she hadn’t so much as purchased an open sign. Lily wasn’t even sure what the signage protocol was. The center had contracted the sign that now read La Fleur de Blanc in flowing white script above the door, debiting her leasing account without so much as asking for input. But she couldn’t just hang a diner’s open/closed sign from a suction cup in the window, could she? And come to think of it, what was the proper way to announce La Fleur’s hours? Could she pick up a red-and-white plastic sign from Home Depot and stick it on the door? No, definitely not, but Lily hadn’t noticed hours-of-operations signs elsewhere in the plaza. Did Cielo del Mar shoppers simply know when their favorite stores were open without being told?

  She looked again at the open door. Despite her father’s comforting words and her usually feisty disposition, Lily felt strangely timid.

  The Palms leasing office intimidated her, as did the other shops. She’d browsed Fancy That!, looking for a new blouse, found the merchandise mostly lacking price tags, and asked an elegantly dressed clerk where she could find the checkout line only to be told with scorn that Fancy That! didn’t have checkout lines like Walma
rt. She’d run into that clerk later, behind the center, exiting a silver Mercedes. The clerk had stared at Lily’s Camry for a long moment, then sauntered off with her nose in the air.

  Kerry Barrett Kirby, whom Lily sometimes saw emerging from nouveau house beyond the fountain and heading off to places unknown like a vulture on the prowl, intimidated her. Twice now, following their brief discussion while Lily had been unloading her all-white stock, Lily had caught Kerry’s eye and smile wide. The woman had looked directly at her, then resumed walking with her nose in the air.

  And Bella by the Sea intimidated Lily by its mere presence. She’d frequently seen the older and younger man — father-and-son owners, according to Evelyn Pierce, often standing at the railing to their building’s right side, peeking between Bella and the large Abercrombie & Fitch building an alley’s breadth away. Beyond the railing sat a stretch of encroaching beach two dozen feet wide, and a hundred feet or so beyond was the courtyard’s sole ocean view. The owners, even though she’d never spoken to them, didn’t intimidate her. The older man had a kind face and a soft but authoritative voice, his every syllable dripping with a beautiful Italian accent she could hear on the breeze when he spoke with his son beside Bella’s railing, when the wind blew just right off the ocean. And the young man? He was too beautiful. Now and then he’d look Lily’s way as she fussed outside the shop, assessing more than smiling, his eyes a blue she swore she could see across all that distance. His hair was a mess of black; his jaw didn’t seem to have a single curved line, and was forever set as if contemplating something grave. Almost everyone around the Palms Couture looked like models, but Matt Vitale, as she’d heard him called, seemed to have been peeled directly from a magazine cover — dark and brooding, serious and yet somehow inviting.

  Lily sat on the tall stool that the former occupant (the latest of the four former flower shop occupants, a voice in her head added) had left behind the counter. She lasted five seconds before feeling uncomfortable, then stood. But standing behind the counter in an empty shop felt somehow worse than sitting, so she came out from around the counter, into the store’s center. Surrounded by the many shades of white, Lily realized she must look like a sentinel.