The Blue Iris, page 1
Praise for
THE BLUE IRIS
“A story of found family, impossible romances, and the ghosts of the past, The Blue Iris is a riveting page-turner as stunning as the blooms that fill the shop at the heart of the book. Haunted and haunting, it keeps you guessing even as you cheer for Tessa and the broken but irresistible makeshift family she builds for herself. A story of growing up and deciding who you really are, it’s an unforgettable tale of roots in more ways than one.”
—Grace O’Connell, Author of Be Ready for the Lightning
“Riveting, soul-searching, and full of heart . . . A spectacularly told story. . . . Told in multiple characters’ voices, the narrative is riveting, with shocking surprises xs unraveling at a steady pace. The plot’s top-grade tension grows taut as Tessa works herself up to take the hard decision. Readers won’t want to put this down.”
—The Prairies Book Review
“A gorgeous novel—Stone brilliantly captures the power of optimism, the allure of memory. Readers will fall in love with the Blue Iris Flower Market and the vibrant cast of characters they meet there.”
—Stacy Bierlein, Author of A Vacation on the Island of Ex-Boyfriends
“This is a special book. Rachel Stone has crafted a narrative that touches both the mind and the heart, carried along by some of the most memorable characters I have encountered—complex, relatable, and very, very human. She writes honestly and clearly, with a delicate lyricism that lingers well after the final page is closed, and in so doing, she shines a light on our common challenge of finding the place where we truly belong. The Blue Iris merits a place in the company of books to be read, reread, and cherished.”
—Greg Fields, Author of Through the Waters and the Wild, Winner of the 2022 Independent Press Award for Literary Fiction
“The lives of five employees of the Blue Iris flower market in Toronto are so tightly intertwined that when one moves, another is impacted, and their story moves forward as well--especially when the handful of outside characters’ motivations also come into play. It’s truly brilliant plotting and character development.”
—Kathleen Basi, Author of A Song For The Road
“A fascinating novel that follows a young woman’s story as she faces her past and discovers a new future. . . . Rachel Stone has penned an incredible work with complex, unique characters and an absorbing love story. Readers will love its engrossing storyline and unexpected ending.”
—Readers’ Favorite, 5 Star Review
“In The Blue Iris, Rachel Stone shines as a gifted wordsmith. Her narrative is like walking through a lush garden; our senses explode with the beauty in her vivid descriptions. With each chapter, her rich cast of characters take root, grow, and evolve, Tessa most of all. Hers is a difficult journey—to ground herself in truth, she must peel away the facade that has sustained her. Tessa learns a lesson important to each of us: when we let go of dying things, it frees us to hold fast to that which nurtures us. The Blue Iris is an engaging, unique novel of love and chosen family—the best kind.”
—Carla Damron, Author of The Orchid Tattoo
“Stone debuts a gorgeous literary novel with a nostalgic aesthetic and themes of complex friendships, family trauma, and healing through self-discovery. . . . Stone’s writing is rich and evocative, digging right to the difficult emotions under the surface of the often antagonistic interactions between the characters. She deftly utilizes a multiple-narrator format, offering a deeply intimate look into each character’s trauma and how it shapes their interactions . . . (and) real emotional depth for characters of both genders . . . the novel’s emotional current, showing broken people whose lives become better when they care for and forgive one another, carries through powerfully.
—BookLife, Editor’s Pick
“In Stone’s novel, a modest Canadian flower shop becomes an arena for romance, heartache, and betrayal . . . it’s a pleasure to watch the little community fight for what matters to them—human connection, how to run a flower business and, when the Blue Iris is in danger of being converted into condos, the shop’s very existence. A captivating read that’s full of humor and heart.
—Kirkus Reviews
“Rachel Stone’s charming novel, The Blue Iris, captures a group of engaging employees working at a Toronto flower market as they come to terms with their individual pasts and as they contemplate their futures. These compelling characters work together steadily, with humour and occasional friction, surrounded by the beauty of the flowers, and they each confront and slowly resolve their own complicated lives. The Blue Iris is a joy to read.”
—Michelle Berry, Author of The Prisoner and the Chaplain
“Stone imbues her characters with such depth and personality that by the time readers turn the last page, they feel like they really know all of them. Heightened emotions, palpable romance, and just the right amount of tension keep the pages flying. Stone delivers an intricate exploration of love and friendship with grace, resulting in a story that’s as heartfelt as it is poignant. Stone is a writer to watch.”
—BookView Review, Gold Recommend Review
The Blue Iris
by Rachel Stone
© Copyright 2023 Rachel Stone
ISBN 979-8-88824-094-6
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means— electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other— except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior written permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The names, incidents, dialogue, and opinions expressed are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
Published by
3705 Shore Drive
Virginia Beach, VA 23455
800-435-4811
For Leah,
All things are possible.
Iris, Blue / Iris Versicolor
(NORTHERN BLUE FLAG, DAGGER FLOWER)
Symbolic Meanings and Uses:
Valour. Purification. Spirit messages. Believed to increase business when kept by the register.
SAM
New Year’s Day
The truth?
He was tired.
Tired of Kinkade cottages fluttering to parquet,
wood spindles lodged in peeling honeysuckle.
Another year of his mother’s blue breath
burrowing like a dental drill,
his father’s cop-car stare like iron chains.
Just tired.
Tired of sputtering, flailing goodbyes in tides
black as a missing heartbeat.
Hog-tied to a perpetual departure,
to being the one they kept saving instead,
when all he ever wanted was to let go.
Common Spider Orchid / Dendrobium Tetragonum
Intuition. Secrets.
TESSA
Tessa held her breath as Will turned the corner and steered the Porsche south, towards the luncheon she didn’t want to attend, on the street she’d avoided for fifteen years.
Her mouth fell open as her gaze stumbled over the boutiques glittering in the late April sun, the cafés with wrought-iron patios. Gone were the fish-and-chips place with the picnic tables, the ice cream store that never changed flavors. Even the old apartment was a two-story Organic Planet.
When she was little, a crisp spring Saturday like this would have seen her skipping beside her mother along this very stretch. Stopping for bagels where that liquor store now stood, the round owner winking as he slipped Tessa a strawberry tart in a box tied with string. They might even have ducked into Toy Town (now a steel-and-stucco Toronto Dominion bank), if only to look.
All this time, Tessa feared returning would be too painful. The Morrow Avenue of memory was a quaint two-kilometer strand between downtown and the suburbs, and home to her earliest, sweetest moments. A place where all was still good and right in the world. In her absence, every inch had been replaced. Every treasure buried with her mother, bulldozed to dust, paved over.
She should have come back years ago.
“Are you sure you’re okay with this?” Will asked.
Tessa looked at her hands, her fingernails etching red moons into her palms. Sighing, she nodded. She was twenty-six years old; she couldn’t keep skirting the street forever. Besides, Hunter was Will’s best friend; missing his engagement luncheon was out of the question.
She’d been dreading this party for days, even before she knew it was being held at the swanky Brunello’s up ahead. Airy chitchat waited like an interview scoresheet, Will’s friends practically reciting their corporate bios straight off their firms’ websites, a growing brood of sleek pumps and pearls moaning about work-wedding balance. Every expression drawing empty as it drifted towards her. How about you, Tessa? What’s next?
Tessa pulled her dress over her knees. It wasn’t like she had no options. Her gleaming transcripts, hard-won internships, and as of a week ago three summa cum laude degrees, qualified her for plenty of Big Time Careers; even if she still had no clue what these looked like, or which among them she wanted. Even if she still wasn’t entirely sure she wanted any of them at all.
What Tessa wanted, more than ever now that she’d finished graduate school, was her mother, Beth’s, charmed poise in gliding through any crowd or conversation. Her endearing non-answers for every prying question. When Will turned t
Beautiful, brilliant-eyed Beth. Killed by a drunk driver on a spotless Tuesday afternoon.
Tessa, eleven and alone. Waiting outside Roseborough Elementary.
Will’s hand closed over hers, warm and sure, her ring finger beneath it pointedly bare. Tessa couldn’t help smiling as she looked at him, their own news still a private champagne bubble in his eyes. The heat of it fluttering up. Tessa remained uncertain about many things, but Will Westlake had never been one of them.
They turned onto a side street, where the old wartime bungalows had been squashed flat by stone-encrusted mansions sprawling upward and against narrow property lines. They found parking and walked back to Morrow Avenue, where Tessa skidded to a stop, Will’s hand dropping from hers as she gaped at the storefront on the corner. The Blue Iris Flower Market. Memories came flooding in a full-color swoosh.
She’d shopped here before. With her mother.
The place was exactly the same; time had weathered it heavily and ignored it completely. Tessa peered through the doorway, age five again, her gaze dancing along the floor: pockmarked cement, green flecks smattered like confetti, water snaking towards a miniature sewer in the middle. A surface so clearly belonging outside but so brazenly indoors.
“Can I help you?” the woman behind the counter called, smiling.
Tessa shook her head, then, on impulse, drew closer. The scent of the place made her gasp—punchy florals, murky soil and standing water, a swirl of traffic exhaust. Her dreams smelled just like this.
Steps inside that very doorway, young Tessa had tugged her mother’s hand, eager to resume their walk. With Beth, simple errands often morphed into lengthy meet-and-greets. On this occasion, Beth had smiled reassuringly, indigo eyes aflicker, as they waded deeper into the crowded space, Tessa claustrophobic and her mother glad-handing like a dignitary in Keds.
They must have gone in to buy flowers. What kind? Tessa was suddenly desperate to know. For whom?
“What is it?” Will asked, glancing at his watch.
They were late for the party. Sadly, there was nothing more to remember. Tessa pulled her eyes from the flowering tufts, the woman. “Nothing,” she said, shuffling on.
She fumbled her way through the small talk at the luncheon. Afterwards, Will headed downtown to the firm and Tessa caught an Uber back to her apartment, tucked at the edge of her grandparents’ property outside the city. Intent on polishing her CV, she scrolled around on her laptop, typing words but then immediately deleting them. She opened her calendar, staring into the unnerving blank space. No course deadlines, no exams schedule—no job interviews, either.
Tessa couldn’t find urgency in any of it. Since walking by that flower market, she couldn’t turn her mind to any part of her future without being pulled back to that sunny day lost to the past. She and her mother would have passed by the Blue Iris countless times before moving from the neighborhood to this apartment. How could she have such vivid memories of every other shop, every inch of that street, and only a lone fragmented snippet of the market? It didn’t make sense.
That night, winter exhaled as daylight stretched deeper into evening. Tessa lay awake for hours, veins humming. Images of that colorful market swirling. Not since before Beth’s death had Tessa felt her mother so alive, so nearly within reach. So insistent.
The next morning, she went back.
Charlie, the woman behind the counter, seemed to remember Tessa from the day before. Her sage eyes suggested she remembered, well, everything. “Looking for anything in particular?” she asked.
Tessa stammered. Why hadn’t she anticipated such a question? “I guess so. In a way. But I’m not sure it’s any specific flower.”
Charlie’s expression grew distant. “Hardly ever is, is it?” Sunday morning streamed through the window beside her. “Take your time, girlie.”
And Tessa did. Under Charlie’s guidance, she sniffed every bloom from alstroemeria to zinnia. Still, she couldn’t remember more. Couldn’t recognize what her mother had carried on the way home.
Over the week that followed, she found reasons to return—Ainsley’s cat passing away, neighbor Mrs. Buckley’s eighty-second birthday, the mail carrier’s husband filing for divorce. And then, the rest sort of just . . . happened.
Tessa traced the bedsheet seam with her thumb as she told Will. Beside her, the patter of his fingers against the laptop fell silent.
He stared through the screen. “You’re working there? At the flower market?”
Tessa shrugged then switched off the lamp. “Only for the summer. The overtime is no joke. I could pay down my student loans by September and—”
It was only then she realized she’d never actually said yes when Charlie introduced her to Rowan, the owner of the Blue Iris, who was looking to hire on short notice. Then again, her new boss never asked the question. It simply hadn’t occurred to any of them that she might turn the job down.
Will’s voice cut through the dark. “It’s not about money, Tess.”
He sometimes forgot that for most people it was, always at least a bit, about money.
Tessa tugged gently at his jaw until he looked at her. She held his gaze, her voice soft. “There’s more to remember, and my mother wants me to. I just know it.” Will gave a disquieted smile. Tessa kissed him, relieved. He pushed his laptop aside and pulled himself closer, her snap decision to work at the market fading from concern.
This morning, in the open refrigerator’s chilly glare, it hit her why Will was so thrown by her plans. How could she have forgotten her promise to stick by his side when the time came to take over the firm? If Tessa was headed anyplace this summer, it should be downtown to the spare glass-walled office across the hallway from his, with the high ceilings and hushed carpeting and spotless white furniture. To help the man she adored find footing in his father’s big, expensive shoes, like she’d vowed seven years ago to do.
It’s incredible, what the human mind is capable of un-remembering.
Tessa glanced at the stove clock. Tick-tock. Her shift started in thirty minutes. Groaning, she swung the fridge door shut, predictably unable to stomach the idea of food. First days were always like this; growing up, not even her grandmother’s cooking could lure her from the soda crackers and raspberry Jell-O as a new school year approached.
This was a summer job, she reminded herself. Casual, completely temporary. Yet, as Tessa merged onto the pink highway towards the city, her knuckles white at the wheel, she understood in a way that was all feeling and zero fact that her mother’s visit to the Blue Iris that day was about much more than flowers. With one summer left between now and what’s next, the old neighborhood taking off faster than a twin-turbo engine, all she could hope for was enough time to figure out why.
Yerba Santa / Eriodictyon Californicum
“My grief is unresolved.”
CHARLIE
You start out thinking it’s just one. Then, sure, what’s one more summer? Suddenly, you’re forty-goddamn-three, still sweeping the same crack in the cement. Still waiting to be asked to the stupid dance. But the dance was long over, and the only place Charlie belonged now was in bed, alone, killing a pint of pralines and cream.
The scissors hissed as Charlie freed a clump of flesh-colored cymbidium orchids from their plastic. Did Rowan expect her to sell them crammed ten-to-a-bunch like a shoebox full of doll parts? Outside her window by the register, shelves were being stocked for another season, every plant off the truck ironically stealing more of her oxygen.
She thought she could handle it. The start of planting season, her twenty-eighth, without the man under whose command the buds and shoots themselves had always seemed to unfurl.
No, she never truly believed she’d have to. No matter how hard Sam tried to self-destruct over the winters, he always made it back, intact and on time, for spring at the Blue Iris.
