“Red, white, and blue carnations. . .That’s what you ordered, right?”

“That’s what I ordered,” I assured my customer, a thirty-four-year-old, bubblegum-chewing, Barbie doll look-alike by the name of Trudee DeWitt. We were standing on the dew-coated front lawn of her sprawling house early on the Fourth of July, so early, in fact, that I was not fully awake--otherwise I would have caught the note of concern in her voice.

“Well, then,” she said with a nervous giggle, “oops.”

Oops? I blinked hard as my sleepy brain scrambled into alert. “They’re not red, white, and blue carnations?”

“Not exactly.”  Trudee motioned for me to follow, then started across the yard, wobbling unsteadily in her sequined red heels. In honor of the holiday she had donned  a pair of extremely red, extremely short shorts and a tight, spangled T-shirt that looked like an explosion of fireworks across her bosom. Her shiny, silvery blonde hair, pulled back in a loose, sexy braid tied with red, white, and blue ribbons, moved like a wiper blade across her back.

The DeWitts had hired me to provide floral decorations for their Fourth of July barbeque bash, culminating in a giant U.S. flag spread over the grass behind their house.  It was one of two jobs I’d agreed to take on for the holiday; Bloomers was normally closed on Independence Day. The other job was an opulent, evening wedding and reception for my cousin Jillian-the-drama-queen, which was stressful enough all by itself without adding an oops to it.

Trailing Trudee across the lawn were my helpers for the day, seventeen-year-old quadruplets, Jimmy, Joey, Johnny and Karl Dombowski, wearing unlaced Nikes, baggy jeans and extra large, button-down shirts. The quads belonged to my assistant, Lottie, who’d happily volunteered their services for the day to keep them out of trouble. I brought up the rear of our little parade, still trying to decipher what Trudee had meant by, “not exactly.” Not exactly carnations? 

When Trudee came to a halt in front of an insulated trailer and opened the tailgate, the boys quickly formed a semi-circle around her, unable to take their eyes off the spangles bouncing in front of their noses. I broke through the ranks and stepped up to the gate. In the cool, fragrant  interior I saw three enormous bins, each filled with a different color of carnation: patriotic blue, paper white, and--petal pink?

“See what I mean?” Trudee asked, wrinkling her nose as if the pink flowers gave off an offensive odor.

“Not exactly red,” I concurred.

“You can exchange them, can’t you?”

On a holiday? Hours before her party? Was this her first visit to Earth?

I grabbed the arm of one of the quads--I wasn’t sure which--slapped money in his palm, and said in his ear, “Go to the hardware store and buy every can of fire-engine red spray paint you can find. Hurry!” Then I turned back to Trudee with a smile. “Don’t worry. Everything will be fine.”

It had to be fine. I needed that big fat fee Trudee had promised.

My cell phone rang. I pulled it out of my jeans pocket and read the message on the top. “Jillian calling,” it said, which could only have been worse if it had been Satan on the line.

“Excuse me a moment. I have to take this call,” I told Trudee, opening the phone.

“That’s okay. I need coffee. I’ll be inside.”

As she undulated toward her house I forced a note of cheer in my voice. “Happy wedding day, Jillian.”

“It’s off, Abby. The wedding is off. I can’t go through with it.”

“Jillian,” I said through gritted teeth, “it’s early. You don’t get up until noon. Go back to bed for a few more hours and you’ll feel like a new woman.”

“I’m serious, Abby. I’m going to call Claymore right now and tell him.”

I could tell by the determination in her voice that she meant it. “Hold on,” I told her, then said to the boys, “Go mark off the flag in the backyard. The string and stakes are in my car.”

As they shuffled off, grumpy now that Trudee and her spangles had gone, I put the phone to my ear once more. “Jillian, one crisis per morning is all I allow myself, and I’ve already had it, so pay attention. You cannot call off this wedding. Do you know how many flowers I’ve ordered . . . Jillian, are you listening?”

She wasn’t. “Claymore is such a jerk. What did I ever see in him? Tell me!”

What I wanted to tell her was, “I told you so.” Claymore Osborne was the younger brother of Pryce, the rat who’d dropped me because his parents couldn’t live with the shame of my flunking out of law school. For the Osbornes it was all about appearances, and I had warned Jillian of that when she first showed me her three carat diamond engagement ring. But when had she ever listened? Not when she’d gotten engaged to the Italian restaurant owner, the moody French artist, the English consulate, or the Greek plastic surgeon. In fact, not since she’d discovered boys.

Jillian was tall, gorgeous, and twenty-five. She’d graduated from Harvard, grown up in a big house, vacationed in exotic locales, and had a father who was a stockbroker and a mother who golfed. Because of all that, Jillian fit in with the Osbornes. I never had.

Besides not being able to cut it at law school, I was petite (the Osbornes liked statuesque women), I freckled rather than tanned, and I hated the country club scene. I’d gone to school on money from my grandfather’s trust supplemented by summer jobs; I had a father who was a retired cop, and a mother who taught kindergarten and made weird clay sculptures.

The only reason the Osbornes hadn’t objected to me at first was because my two older brothers, Jonathan and Jordan, were doctors. That, combined with their marrying fashionable wives and joining the country club, made them acceptable. Lucky them.

“Claymore adores you, Jillian,” I assured my weeping cousin. “He would do anything for you. Why wouldn’t you want to marry him?”

“Because he’s an idiot. He has no taste. He hates the ascot I chose for him.”

“Wait a minute. You’re calling off the wedding because of a tie?”

She sighed dramatically. “It’s an ascot, Abby.”

“That is not reason enough to call off your wedding. But this isn’t really about the ascot, is it? It’s never about the ascot. You’ve got cold feet again.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m marrying into one of the wealthiest families in New Chapel. Why would I have cold feet?”

“Because you like being pampered and courted, and you’re afraid once you get married it will end. In other words, you don’t want to grow up.”

“You,” she said, highly irritated, “are a snot.” And hung up.

She’d go through with it now just to prove me wrong.

With a quick glance at my watch, I dashed to the backyard and found that the boys had outlined the flag. As we marked off the stripes, the paint showed up, so we spread the pink carnations in the designated area and sprayed them red. I checked my watch. Half an hour lost.

“Won’t that kill the grass?” Johnny asked me, as we stepped back to study our handiwork.

“It’ll grow back.”

             #

I left the quads filling in the blue and white parts of the flag and headed for the flower shop to pick up Trudee’s indoor decorations. Because of all the street closings for the Fourth of July parade, I had to park blocks away from the town square, then weave through people who had already staked out their spots to watch the ten o’clock parade. Normally I wouldn’t have minded the hike but today I didn’t have time to spare.

I unlocked Bloomer’s bright yellow door and walked in to the sound of my assistant, Grace, humming as she ground coffee beans in the parlor, and my other assistant, Lottie, listening to the chatter of her radio from the workshop in back. I inhaled the sweet fragrances of coffee, roses, lavender, and eucalyptus and, for a brief moment, all was right with my world.

Then I thought of Jillian’s wedding and got a headache.

Who held their nuptials on a Monday? Could she have chosen a Friday evening or Saturday afternoon like a normal person? Oh, no. Not Jillian. She had to have a Fourth of July spectacle. Her garden ceremony had been arranged to end just as the country club’s big, splashy fireworks display was beginning, so the sky would explode as if the heavens themselves were giving her a standing ovation. My cousin was not a normal person.

If I were merely her florist I could have shrugged off Jillian’s eccentricities. Unfortunately, I was also one of her bridesmaids, and that meant suffering the company of my weasel of an ex-fiancé, the Best Man, (as if!) who had dumped me two months before our own nuptials. Then there was my escort, deputy prosecutor Greg Morgan -- New Chapel, Indiana’s answer to Brad Pitt--who was so self-absorbed he couldn’t remember my being in the same high school with him.

I didn’t even want to think about the bridesmaid’s dress. Jillian had picked out a print that looked like a watercolor painting of white lilies swaying against an aquamarine sky--at least that’s what it looked like on the bodies of the three willowy women who comprised the rest of the team. On my height-challenged form it looked like a clown suit.

As a final offense, there was the picky bride herself, Jillian Ophelia Knight, first cousin on my father’s side, who had jilted four men already.  If she made it through the wedding today, it would be a first. If I made it through the wedding without choking her, it would be a miracle.

Sadly, I had no one to blame for this situation but myself. Being the new owner of a floral shop I had jumped at the chance to do the arrangements for Jillian’s wedding. I needed the exposure, not to mention the business. I had agreed to be a bridesmaid because that was what one did for one’s family. I hadn’t counted on having to deal with an ugly dress, a hateful ex-fiancé, a Fourth of July party, and a cousin who attracted trouble like a magnet...