She heard a slam and jerked her head up. Her next-door neighbor Jen was taking her son to school. Jen, looking confused as to why Elly was sitting in her car, unmoving, waved enthusiastically. Elly rolled her eyes back in her head and lifted her hand weakly. Filled with self-pity, she loathed Jen, who was actually a nice person. Yes, act like nothing is wrong. Act like you didn’t hear me screaming and wailing like a banshee until the sun came up. Act like this is totally normal, sitting in my car at six in the morning, with a cooler full of roast beef and suicidal thoughts. Jen’s tow-headed little boy climbed into the backseat, and she lovingly buckled him in.
The tears Elly didn’t think she had left inside her snuck up so suddenly that she didn’t even have time to prepare. A wail, an unwomanly, unattractive wail escaped from her lips and she wept with liberal abandon. Grief spread before her. Her perfect future, her imaginary child, a little boy who climbed happily into his car seat was not here. That future was not in this house, the one she had built for that purpose. It was not with the man she had trusted to see her dreams through. It was not in the office where she’d worked for years, where she’d happily gossiped with friends about the love of her life. It wasn’t in the park where she’d envisioned pushing a baby stroller, her artistic husband at her side. Her life as she’d dreamed it would be had imploded yesterday. The shards had gone flying inward, into her body, the moment she had seen them together. That life had fallen out of her fingers before she understood what was happening to her.
How was it that a love story so beautifully constructed, so perfectly executed, could be so flawed, so breakable? How, with a single act, could two years of marriage burn to the ground, leaving only flecks of ash behind?
Her future as she’d imagined it was gone forever. It could not be fixed.
He had not chosen her.
She would later exaggerate, telling people it was inner strength, or her great faith that propelled her forward into the unknown. She no such strength, no such faith. What she had was the desperation of having nothing ahead of her and the total decimation of a dream behind her. Elly closed her eyes and banged her skull against the headrest. She saw them again, his face elated with joy, his green eyes flashing up at the woman on top of him, a bead of sweat running down her naked spine. The mane of red hair.
Tears threatened to fall again.
Push it down.
With that thought, she made the decision, turned the key, her heart still shattering into sharp, jagged pieces. Elly shifted the now-trembling car into first gear and turned around on her cul-de-sac. She propelled the car onto the road that led out of her perfect neighborhood, turned northwest, and headed for the freeway. She cranked up the radio, found her favorite station. And then she drove, and drove, and drove. With the sounds of NPR mingling with her wrenching sobs, Elly drove until the sun set in front of her.
She refused to look back.
CHAPTER
ONE
Clayton, Missouri– present day, well past daybreak, this time at a civilized hour in the morning.
Posies, a high-end florist in the wealthy suburb of Clayton on the corner of Wydown Street, was owned and operated by one Elly Jordan. These days, when she awoke at seven to the sounds of an obnoxious radio deejay and lifted her head weakly from the pillow, her first thought was of work.
It always was, these days. She lived and breathed for Posies, and at times it seemed everything she thought about or did revolved around her shop. Honestly, it was pretty pathetic. Of course, most mornings she went back to bed for another hour or so after the alarm went off, but eventually she would descend from her tidy apartment to the store below, her bright blue eyes glazed over with sleep, her flip flops smacking the stairs as she flipped on the lights, a toasted breakfast tart hanging out of her mouth.
It never failed to make her heart swell as she looked around Posies and knew that all this was hers. For just a minute she enjoyed the warm breeze fluttering through the windows, and tried to enter into a peaceful Zen-like state. It never worked, so Elly gave an amused shrug and started her morning routine anyway. She began with a quick cleaning: the windows, the design table and the front door all got wiped down and things were put into their correct places. She pulled open and swaged the curtains, and picked up any leftover stems or dropped leaves off the carpet. This morning, after she made sure that the cooler temperature had stayed steady as she had snored the night away, Elly grabbed a small arrangement of orange ranunculus and plodded out the front door, finally ready to face the world outside Posies, which was so warm and safe.
She walked up the block and entered Ada’s Coffee. Brita, the ridiculous barista, greeted her with more sunshine than Elly was prepared to handle.
“Good morning Elly!” she chirped.
Elly nodded tiredly in return and suppressed an eye roll. She was not her optimal self before 10am. Mornings were rough. She set the flowers on the bar - almost knocking over a steaming latte-and took the old vase filled with decaying Veronicas and Bachelor Buttons and stuck it under her arm. There was a spot of coffee on her blouse. The Barista looked over at her.
“Elly! You are so funny!! Every day when you come in here you either spill something or have a stain on your shirt! It’s like you’re a toddler. I think it’s adorable.”
Elly sighed.
“Good morning to you, Brita.”
The barista smiled brightly.
“Hot chocolate today?”