Six Freesias and a Full Name

Esther used to think that flowers were flowers. Twenty years in the back room of the florist's on Rye Lane had taught her otherwise. She could read a relationship off an order — the size of it, the words on the card, the hour it came in.

The first order of the fourteenth had arrived at eleven forty the night before: two dozen red roses, next-day delivery, and a card message chosen from the website's list of romantic phrases. Happy Valentine's Day, it said, which is what a card says when a man has not been anybody's boyfriend long enough to have anything else to say. Three weeks, Esther decided. Four at the most. A man who has known a woman a year doesn't order at midnight, and he doesn't let a website write the card for him.

The second was small — six freesias, ordered on the Tuesday, by a customer who would order the same six every February — and the message was in her own words: Same as last year. No red ones. Seven years, Esther thought. Possibly eight, and no trouble anywhere. She'd have put money on it.

The third was enormous, expensive, going to an office, and signed with a full name. Esther used to think that office deliveries were showing off. She knows better now. When a man signs both his names, he is apologizing.

The fourth came in at four in the afternoon, in person, in cash, and broke every rule she had. He was eighty-something, in a good coat. He wanted the small yellow tulips, and he asked her twice whether yellow was too much. Then he asked her to write the card for him, because his hand shook, and he gave her a message so stiff it could have gone to the council: With my best wishes. From Flat 4.

Fifty years of marriage, Esther thought, and said something warm about how long the two of them must have been together.

“Oh, we're not married,” he said. “I've known her since Christmas. It's the first one of these I've written since 1969.”

She charged him for six tulips and put ten in the paper. Her rule had held after all; she had simply never thought to point it at a man of eighty-four. Late, and with somebody else writing the card — falling in love orders flowers exactly the same way at any age.