The Blue Iris, page 6
Coltsfoot / Tussilago Farfara
Stamina.
CHARLIE
Twenty-Six Winters Ago
The date was circled in red on her dorm calendar—December 19. The start of the holiday break.
Her boots squawked up the snow-covered sidewalk. Christmas at the shop was more whimsical than she’d pictured, a frosted maze of evergreen corridors and seeded eucalyptus that tickled her sinuses jolly. Inside, the shop was a jewelry box of red poinsettias, the radio jingling over the hum of the space heater.
Sam gave a cordial nod as he passed, nothing more. There were customers everywhere, his head a million places. Charlie got that. She wasn’t some needy crush. She’d resisted calling the shop all semester just to prove it.
She had it all planned. On Christmas Eve, after closing, she’d ask him to meet her in the beer garden, which would be strung full of colored lights by then. She hoped it would be snowing when she told him the news. There would be shock at first, she knew. But she and Sam were the best kind of team. Together, they’d figure it all out.
On the twenty-first, Simon, her boss, came by for the bank drop and caught Charlie emerging shakily from the washroom, choking on air freshener. He guessed the father right away and Charlie, confidently clueless as any eighteen-year-old in love with a very bad, very blue-eyed idea, took it as proof that she and Sam were soul mates. The whole world could see it!
That night, Simon showed up at the rental house beside Darryl’s, where Charlie was staying (now eighteen, an adult, about to be a mother, she was well past sneaking boys into her aunt’s guest room). He handed her a drugstore bag full of prenatal vitamins and cash in a fat envelope. “To get you started.” He promised her all the time off she needed, with pay. Offered to hire a reputable nanny so she could finish school.
Charlie was taken aback. Like his son, Rowan, Simon was generous to a fault with all the staff, but he’d only known her two summers. “Why are you helping me so much?”
His cheeks puffed as he let out a breath. “This place . . . since Iris died, it’s like a model airplane kit without the glue. You keep Sam focused, and Darryl in check. You’re kind to my boy. You’re the glue, Charlie. Besides, you’re carrying her grandchild, and that makes you family.”
Simon wasn’t technically family himself, but already Charlie understood the shop’s capacity to turn anyone who stuck around into blood.
She fell asleep that night thinking of baby names. Would Sam wish for a boy or a girl? Would he go out at midnight to fetch her pralines and cream? There was so much she couldn’t wait to talk with him about. Just a couple more days. When the holiday crunch was over, they’d have all the time in the world.
On December 23rd, Sam introduced her to Hannah.
Persimmon / Diospyros
“Surround me in nature’s beauty.”
TESSA
Tessa stood with her back to the traffic, head atilt, staring at the tired storefront. A spread in the supplier catalogue had sparked an idea for a display, and she couldn’t resist picturing it—even if Darryl wouldn’t let anyone so much as adjust the angle of the cash register.
Conjured, Darryl came tearing around the fence, scanning the aisles. He’d ignored Tessa since the price tag faceoff days earlier, a welcome reprieve, but as the big planting weekend drew closer, a charge was accumulating around him like an impending storm. Tessa feared that by standing up to him she’d made things harder for the rest of the crew, who, despite small inroads, remained standoffish overall.
“Where’s Flash?” he howled, searching for the part-timer who worked after school.
Tessa didn’t turn around. “I thought he was with you.”
“Where’s Rowan, then?”
She continued squinting into the air. “How should I know?”
“Fuck me, does anybody goddamn work around here?”
She sighed, the sketch in her mind collapsing to dust. “What is it, Darryl?”
“There’s a pickup in half an hour, and we never pulled the order. I need Tony for a drop in Forest Hill, Luke’s swamped . . . WHERE IS FLASH?”
“Relax. I’ll pull it.”
Darryl snorted. The storage yard, gated off at the base of the alley, swallowed her coworkers constantly, but his patrolling sniper gaze made it clear that Tessa was to venture no further than the soil skids. He gestured to the now-infamous trowels on display around Charlie’s window. “Rowan can put whoever he wants up here, but Suzy Homemaker’s not running loose in my yard.”
Tessa shrugged. “Your problem, then.”
At the curb, Tony tapped the horn and flashed the universal What the fuck? hand signal. Darryl tore the list from his notepad and shoved it at her before shuffling off. “Don’t touch anything else.”
“You’re welcome,” Tessa called, studying his scribbles. A flicker of triumph; she recognized every plant on the list. But the quantities were too large; they didn’t keep that much stock up front. Indeed, she would have to pull them from the storage yard.
With Darryl gone, Flash’s beanpole shadow appeared. “Sorry,” he said. “I’ll go pull that now.”
“No. I’ve got this one. Cover the counter?”
Flash happily trotted over, scrolling through his phone.
In the alley behind the shop, the storage yard gate was propped open by a crumbling cinder block, green shoots sprouting from the holes. Tessa hesitated, half-expecting Darryl to reappear and yell at her for walking through it wrong. An empty cart clattered from the opening, Luke pushing the other end. Ridiculously, Tessa waved Darryl’s list like it was some sort of security clearance. “Just pulling an order.”
His charcoal eyebrows lifted. “What happened to Flash?”
“He was hiding again.”
Luke shook his head. “Whatever. I have three more to pull myself.”
“I wonder how he ended up with that name.”
Luke looked amused. “They’re all Flash. High school kids rarely last a month, Darryl never bothers learning their names.”
“Well, somehow, I got stuck with Princess, which couldn’t be further from the truth, not that he cares. I meant to ask his real name right away, but now it’s been too long and—”
“I’m pretty sure it’s just Darryl. Sam called him Brick sometimes, but—”
“Not him.” She laughed, eyes bugging in stress of the obvious. “Flash!”
Luke twisted his mouth, straining to recall. He stroked the stubble on his chin, thinking. Finally, he shrugged. “Nope. Just Flash.”
At this, Tessa let out an affronted sound, and Luke smiled. It was a completely different version than the one he wore for customers, or the manicured women passing through on their way to the boutiques. “I can be a jackass, too,” he said. He sent the cart rolling to a stop among a litter of others. “You want me to look at that order?”
Tessa was still eyeing the space beyond the gate.
“You’ve seriously never been back there?” Luke asked.
She crossed her arms, tone pointed. “I’m barely welcome up front. Half the time you guys act like I’m about to burn the place down.”
Luke winced. “Sorry. It’s not you. Really. It’s…who you’re meant to help replace.”
Tessa frowned. She’d assumed the crew felt contempt towards Sam, the irresponsible jerk who left them high-and-dry in peak season. But here, Luke seemed to really miss him.
He ran a hand over his face. “Allow me to give you the royal tour, Princess.”
“Don’t call me that.” Inside the gate, Tessa’s breath snagged at the sweeping meadow before her. The city’s white noise evaporated into row upon row of color-blocked blooms and hanging baskets hovering overhead like candied cloud cover. She scanned left to right, jaw slack, sunshine filtering through a playful banner of fuschia. “How is this possible?”
“Rowan’s dad, Simon. He bought in with Iris and Henry, and expanded the retail storefront. But all the rich neighborhoods are within a fifteen-minute radius, and they all have professional landscapers. He wanted that business, too, so he bought up the houses along the back of the block, left three standing, and paved the rest so he could bring in a ton more inventory and sell it wholesale. We call that side of the business Trucks, because it sells by the truckload. Pulls in ten times more than the rest combined.”
“And I thought all you guys did back here was smoke cigarettes.” In the distance, she spotted three faded rooftops. “Does anyone still live in them?”
“Darryl’s in the middle, he and Sam grew up there. Charlie’s is on the right.”
Charlie said she lived nearby, not on the property!
“The one on the left, that’s the Lodge,” Luke continued. “Sam lived there off and on, but anyone on the crew could crash. Tony moved in five years ago. I’ve been there almost two.”
Tessa envisioned a bachelor’s lair befitting of Tony’s hookup stories. Stripper pole in the living room, swings in the bedroom. “No wonder everyone’s so tight. It’s practically a commune!”
Luke’s thoughtful expression returned. “There isn’t much room for secrets.” He pointed to a roped-off section. “Leave your order there until pickup. You sure you’re okay to pull it yourself?”
Tessa rolled her eyes. “He was going to let a high school kid do it! I have three—”
“University degrees. You’ve mentioned. You going to go postal again?”
She narrowed her eyes. “No, jackass. But how hard is it to pull a simple order?”
Luke waved a hand over the aisles, inviting her to have at it, then carried on his way.
Frank, the man who had placed the order, followed Tessa into the yard to collect it, steel-toe boots clunking. He looked around the roped-off section. “This is six carts,” he said.
Tessa frowned, confused.
Darryl burst into the yard like a heat-seeking missile, then stopped short. “This is six carts.”
Bewildered, Tessa rechecked the list. Victoria blue salvia, pink oleander, trailing geraniums in lavender that glowed at dusk. The wide-leafed Montgomery ivy that always sold immediately. “It’s all here. Hundred and forty New Guineas, seventy-five white alyssum . . .”
“Bloody hell,” Darryl said, saliva beads leaping to their demise. “She pulled a hundred and forty goddamn pots.”
Frank pulled a hand through his curls. Tony and Luke found reasons to draw closer.
Tessa thrust the list at Darryl. “I know how to count to a hundred and forty, asshole.”
“That’s a hundred and forty flats, smartass. At fifteen pots PER FLAT, that’s a shit-ton more than you’ve got here. You think Frank’s towing a twenty-foot box trailer for the gas mileage?”
Tessa’s stomach dropped. She looked at Frank. Had he really ordered that many plants?
“It’s for a client on Post Road,” Frank explained in a South American accent. “Six-hundred-foot driveway, beds on each side. A roundabout bordered by eighteen planters.”
Shit. Tessa registered the logo on his shirt: Frank’s Custom Landscaping and More. He was a professional landscaper. A Trucks customer, not a retail one. This explained why Luke had been skeptical about her pulling the order. She read it out now, praying he and Tony would help her quickly pull the rest.
Tony cringed. “We ran out of salvia this morning.”
“I doubt we have enough geraniums,” Luke added. “Lavender’s hot this year.”
Darryl’s neck pulsated. He threw his arms in the air. “Un-fucking-believable!”
Tessa was silent.
Frank’s tone was kind. “I never imagined a driveway could hold so many plants either.” A small chuckle. “And in a country where they only last five months.” He turned to Darryl, waving his hand. “I’ll shuffle some jobs, start my crew on this and get the rest tomorrow.”
Tessa helped him load, then returned to the yard. Darryl was tearing through the aisles, muttering. “You have any idea how much Frank buys from us?” he said when he saw her. “That was one front yard. He has three crews on Post Road alone! Starting tomorrow, that man won’t have time to take a shit for six weeks, and neither will the other forty-seven landscapers lined up down the block. This isn’t housewives shopping for gardening club back here. We don’t come through for our Trucks clients, their kids don’t eat.”
“I didn’t know Trucks existed until an hour ago! How was I supposed to know it wasn’t a regular retail order? You could’ve mentioned there was a wholesale operation back here.”
“Why, so you can stick your nose in that, too?”
“You get that I took this job thinking it was inside with the cuts, right? I’m doing my best.”
Darryl grunted. “By tanking our biggest client’s first order of the year.”
Tessa stepped forward, studying him. “You wanted me to, didn’t you? You knew there wasn’t enough product, so you let me take the hit.”
Darryl’s silence affirmed it.
“Whatever, Darryl. I’m in this now, so just tell me how we fix it.”
“We don’t. You walk your ass back up to the counter, stay there, and I’ll handle it tomorrow.”
“How?”
“By burning through every one of my brother’s favors down at the terminal.”
Tessa swallowed. “I’m coming with you.”
The look between Tony and Luke made her instantly regret those words.
Darryl snorted. “You want to go to the terminal.”
“I don’t want to go anywhere with you. But seeing as you set me up in the first place, I don’t exactly trust you to make it right on my behalf.”
Darryl hissed through his nostrils. “Cube leaves at four-thirty sharp—that’s a.m., Princess. Don’t be late.”
“Tell me everything there is to know about the terminal.”
Charlie looked puzzled. “It’s the distribution hub, down by the port lands. It’s where they settle up with the growers, line up deliveries, fill any special orders.”
“What’s so awful about it?”
“Besides getting there before dawn?” Charlie shrugged. “I’ve never been.”
Tessa’s jaw dropped in horror.
“There’s only two seats in the truck,” Charlie explained, counting off on her fingers. “Henry and Iris, Henry and Sam, Sam and Darryl. First time stepping outside the bloodline, and Darryl picked Rowan.” Her lips curled around her coffee cup in contempt. “Tells you how much he really does hate me.”
Tessa moaned. “He’ll never let up if I back out.”
“I won’t lie, girlie. I hear it makes this place look like high tea at the King Eddie. But keep your head up, you’ll be fine.” Charlie looked at her. “Go. Then, come back here and tell me all about it.”
SAM
The problem?
She was a fresh shoot of morning glory back then,
craning after him like he was the sun.
Did he know better?
She was seventeen, for Christ’s sake.
But go find a man on this frost-blighted earth
who swears he doesn’t care to be the sun,
and he’ll show you the filthiest snake of all.
The sleazebucket truth?
She would have choices by the campus-load.
Bilingual fingernails, soul patches angled with promise,
Byron quotes and pompous North Face backpacks.
It would all be different when she got back.
If she came back.
When the only way he knew to make her stay
wasn’t enough,
he had to watch her leave
knowing he got there first.
Foxglove / Digitalis Purpurea
“Ambitious only for you.”
WILL
A witness awaited deposition in the boardroom, the arbitrator on the call was taking her sweet time denying the adjournment request, and his inbox was ablaze with messages from the campaign manager. Will pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to focus. Tessa’s smile across the glass hall would have made it all so much more bearable. That smile was the whole reason he ended up here in the first place.
Instead, she was diving headlong into that job, taking on problems that weren’t hers to solve. By now, they’d have noticed her impossible radiance and started scrambling after it like candy out of a pinata. Hoarding it, taking advantage. But beyond Tessa’s familiar summer employment pattern, Will had no idea what was happening. Crowds, chaos and too little sleep were the things she adamantly retreated from. Her battery drained quicker than most, took longer to recharge. Will worried the long hours, the heat, the physical strain would drive her into the ground. All for a partial memory of running errands with her mother? It didn’t make sense.
Beneath the concern, a shallow wound had formed. If Tessa wanted a summer stopgap to keep busy while she decided on a career path, why not here at the firm, with him? She’d have comfortable hours, good pay, as much challenge as she wanted with no stress. They could have spent every day together.
Austin, the associate on the Hewson file, appeared outside Will’s fishbowl and sliced the air across his throat. Will nodded. As feared, they’d made a catastrophic oversight during discoveries, and now, the other side knew it. Will would have to settle the case to avoid a trial.
Will’s fists clenched. He needed a fat, public win on Hewson. It would have proven beyond all doubt he had what it took to hold down his father’s fort. Having to fold this quickly proved he didn’t just miss Tessa, he needed her help. Much more than he was comfortable admitting.
In the beginning, whenever Will tried prepping for mocks in law school, Tessa couldn’t keep her hands off him. She’d skim his notes, pleading with him to let her play juror, or witness; didn’t matter. She always ended up dragging him off to bed. Eventually, recognizing Will did actually have work to do, she forged a strategy conducive to all the needs.
Will shifted in his leather chair now, recalling how she would slowly slide her legs apart on their makeshift stand, a signal that his opening statement was working. How her bra peeled away when he nailed the line of questioning. But if he fumbled, lost composure for even a second, it was over. Tessa kept going only so long as he stayed perfectly on point, training him like Pavlov’s dog to be unshakeable. By the time Will hit a real courtroom, nothing could throw off his game. His reputation flourished with impossible speed; bets were placed that he’d prove even better than his father. Legal circles all over Ontario were whispering about the new Winning Westlake, but no one knew the half of how he got there.
