much damage the fire had caused, and I’d never driven down the road past the entrance to the flower farm. I hadn’t wanted to know.
I couldn’t go. I couldn’t bear to see it, not even to apologize to Elizabeth.
But once sparked, I couldn’t let go of the idea. If I could apologize, then maybe, finally, I could forget. Maybe my dreams would cease and I could settle into a quiet, if lonely, life, knowing Elizabeth understood my remorse. Huddled in the blue room, I thought about how to accomplish the task. It would be simple enough to write a letter. Once I’d learned the address, I’d never forgotten it. But I couldn’t write my return address on the envelope without fear of Elizabeth showing up at my door, and without a return address, Elizabeth couldn’t answer my letter. Though I didn’t think I could live looking constantly out the window, half expecting her old gray truck to pull up to the curb, I wanted desperately to know her response. Written, I could handle her anger, her disappointment. It might even bring some relief from the years of guilt.
When the sun rose I knew what I had to do: I would write Elizabeth a letter and use Bloom as the return address. Renata would bring me a letter if one arrived. Inching open the door of the blue room, I listened for sounds of Marlena. The apartment was quiet. Walking downstairs, I sat at the table as I would during a flower consultation, reaching for a sheet of rice paper and a blue felt-tip pen. My hand shook as the pen hovered above the paper.
I wrote the date first in the upper-right-hand corner, as Elizabeth had taught me to do. Still trembling, I scrawled her name. I couldn’t remember if a colon or a comma should follow; after a pause, I put both. I looked down at what I had written. My script was sloppy from nerves, a far cry from the perfection Elizabeth had always demanded. I crumpled the paper and threw it to the floor, starting again.
An hour later I reached for my last piece of paper. Balled attempts littered the room all around me. This one, no matter what, would have to do. The pressure of the final sheet made my hand shake even more, and my handwriting looked like that of a young child, unsure of the shape of each letter. Elizabeth would be disappointed. Still, I continued, slowly, purposefully. Finally, I succeeded in inking out a single line:
I signed my name. The letter was short, and I worried Elizabeth would think it rude or insincere, but there was nothing else to say. I folded the paper into an envelope, and sealed, addressed, and stamped it. The stamps I had purchased the previous spring held a drawing of a daffodil—
Walking quickly to the end of the block, I pulled the heavy metal handle of the mailbox, dropping the letter through the slot before I had time to change my mind.
On an afternoon in September I sat in the cavernous office space, checking the alphabetization of my cards out of habit and waiting for a couple to arrive. The couple would not marry until the following April but had insisted on meeting with me now. The bride wanted to coordinate everything—from the color of the place settings to the words in the song of their first dance—to her flower choices. Over the summer I had worked with countless brides, but coordinating music and flowers was new even to me. I was not looking forward to the meeting.
I checked my watch. Four forty-five. Fifteen minutes until my clients were set to arrive. It was time to make tea. I drank only a strong chrysanthemum tea I bought in Chinatown, the blossoms uncurling and suspending in the dark liquid. It was a nice touch for my sessions, and something my clients had come to expect.
In the kitchen, I brewed a pot and drank a cup before descending the stairs. The bride had arrived, sitting on the stoop in front of the glass doors. She sat alone, looking up and down the street. In the straight line of her back I could see her impatience. Her fiance was late or absent. It was a bad sign for a marriage, and brides knew it. The long-term success of my business, I had decided months before, was dependent on the fact of arranging flowers only for couples whose marriages would last; I’d refused more than one couple for tardiness or spiteful conversations over the cards.
I set down the tray and walked to the door. Pressing my palms against the glass, I stopped suddenly. Outside, brakes squealed. Then, in front of my door, an old gray pickup truck lurched past, Elizabeth behind the wheel. At the stop sign on the steep corner, the truck rolled back before peeling into the intersection and disappearing up the hill. Turning, I raced up the stairs and into Natalya’s old bedroom, where I crouched down below the window to wait for the truck to return.
In less than five minutes, it did. Elizabeth drove more easily down the hill than she had up, and in a moment she’d turned the corner and was out of sight. I took the stairs two at a time and walked outside. The bride on the curb stood up when she saw me.
“I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “He’ll be here any minute.”
He wouldn’t, though. There was something rehearsed about her apology, as if she’d used the same words to excuse her fiance for months or years.
“No,” I said, “he won’t.” Maybe it was the chrysanthemum tea, but I suddenly wanted this woman to know the truth. She opened her mouth as if to protest, but the expression on my face stopped her.
“You won’t do our flowers, will you?” She turned away from me, knowing the answer to her question. She would try Renata next; they always did. Renata had the only other flower dictionary identical to mine. I’d asked Marlena to make her a copy a few months before, when we began to have more business than we could handle. Daily, we directed clients to Bloom.
I started up the hill, and from the top I saw Renata descending. We met in the middle, as Grant and I had once done, the afternoon he brought the jonquil. In her hand was a pale pink envelope. My fingers trembled as I took it. I sat down on the curb and placed the envelope in my lap. Renata sat down next to me.
“Who is she?” Renata asked.
The envelope felt hot, and I moved it onto the sidewalk between us. I studied the lines of my empty palms as if looking for the answer to her question.
“Elizabeth,” I said quietly.
We were silent. Renata did not ask more, but when I glanced up, her face was still pinched in question, as if I had not responded at all. I looked back down at my hands. “She wanted to be my mother once, when I was ten years old.”
Renata made a clicking sound with her tongue. With a short fingernail, she picked at a glint of metal trapped in the concrete, but it did not come loose. “So?” she asked. “What did you do?”
It was a question Meredith would have asked, but coming from Renata, it sounded less accusatory than interested.
“I lit a fire.”
It was the first time I had said the words aloud, and a lump rose in my throat at the image they produced. I squeezed my eyes shut.
“My little fire starter,” Renata said. She placed a gentle arm around my shoulders, pulling me to her. “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”
I turned to study her. She did not smile, but her eyes were warm. “So?” I asked. “Why doesn’t it?”
Renata pushed a clump of hair away from my eyes, her fingertips brushing my forehead. Her skin was soft. I leaned into her, my ear pressed against her shoulder so that her words, when she spoke, were muffled. “Do you remember the morning we met?” she asked. “When you stood on my stoop, looking for work, and then came back hours later with proof of what you could do? You handed me those flowers like an apology, even though you hadn’t done anything wrong, even though your bouquet was as close to perfection as I’d ever seen. I knew right then that you felt unworthy, that you believed yourself to be unforgivably flawed.”
I remembered the morning well. Remembered worrying that she’d know the truth about my homelessness, the truth about my history. “Then why did you hire me?” I asked.
Renata ran her hand along the line of my cheekbone. When she reached my chin, she tilted my face up. I looked into her eyes.
“Do you really think you’re the only human being alive who is unforgivably flawed? Who’s been hurt almost to
