Chapter 6

The Bluebell had been closed for four years, but Eula-May had never sold it and had never cleaned it out. The lock took two tries in the wet. Inside, it smelled like dust and old paper and, underneath that, faint and impossible, like roses.

I knew the way to the back counter without turning on a light.

The safe was under the shelf where the ribbon spools used to be. Brass, squared, older than me. Birdie's key turned like it had been oiled last week.

Inside, three things.

A long manila envelope, sealed, stamped, and on the front, in a lawyer's typeface: LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF EULA-MAY PRUITT, EXECUTED MARCH 2016, ORIGINAL.

A stack of envelopes, banded, all of them opened.

And a ledger book with a green cover and a column of dates down the left side.

I opened the ledger first, because I knew what it was.

The Bluebell kept two books. One for the shop, one for accounts that didn't get a name. Every line under W.P. was a month. First entry, March 1998, in Eula-May's hand: Account opened, W. Pruitt, Pruitt Farm & Feed, standing monthly, no card, no name.

Twenty-six years of lines. One white rose. One envelope.

And then, in 2001, a change.

Third of September, 2001, a line in different ink, darker, written harder into the page: Reimbursed by E. Pruitt. Account closed to W.P. Continue under shop expense.

I read it three times.

Eula-May found out in 2001 that Wade had been paying, and she started paying him back, month for month, and never told him. Two people in this town writing checks for the same invisible girl for eighteen years without either one saying a word to the other about it.

Birdie put her hand on the counter. "What does it mean?"

"It means he didn't do it out of kindness," I said. "You don't reimburse kindness. You reimburse a debt."

I opened the banded stack next.

Christmas cards. Eighteen of them, addressed in Eula-May's handwriting to Ruthie Vance, 44 Camden Street, Bristol, Tennessee. Every one of them opened, and every one of them stuffed back into its envelope and sealed and sent back.

Across the front of each one, in my mother's slanting hand, in ballpoint, the same two words.

REFUSED. RETURN.

I had to sit down on the floor of my grandmother's flower shop.

My mother got eighteen Christmas cards from her mother and refused every one, and I never knew, and she never told me, and now she's dead and I can't ask her why. All those years I thought Eula-May Pruitt was a woman who owned a flower shop. My mother let me think that. My mother chose that.

I was still on the floor when Birdie said, "Honey. There's one more page in that ledger."

She was right. It was folded over at the back, tucked under the inside cover.

A delivery order. Written in Eula-May's hand, in blue ink, on a Bluebell order slip, dated March of 1998.

Broken ring, white roses, fifty. Rosemary, one sprig, laid across the gap.

Deliver to: The Pruitt family home.

Deliver on: Sunday.

And at the bottom, in the same blue ink, in the same handwriting as the card on Eula-May's casket spray:

NEVER DELIVERED.