Elly In Bloom

  For my parents, Ronald and Tricia McCulley, who always encouraged their children to bloom

  In whatever strange direction they desired..

  Copyright © 2012 Colleen Oakes

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 1477514120

  ISBN 13: 9781477514122

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-62111-966-1

  “The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose. It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing.”

  ISAIAH 35:1-2

  Contents

  Prologue

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  Georgia, two years ago, daybreak.

  Early morning nauseated Elly.

  That was normal, at least.

  Her steering wheel smelled like spoiled milk and rotten freesia.

  Gross. That was not normal.

  Through the dirty windshield, she watched the creeping fingers of dawn overtaking the horizon. Bright rays approached her car slowly, blasted through the muddy glass, and turned her dark leather seats into blinding mirrors of light that hurt her swollen eyes.

  Elly hated the dawn; the insects chirping, the hazy mist. It turned her stomach. And for once, the thought of food was unappealing to her. She pressed her forehead against the pungent wheel and whimpered. It had only been one day, one crappy stinking day, since her whole life had melted down, and now she was in her car having a nervous breakdown. It was getting unbearably hot. The blazing Georgia sun peeked over the hackberry trees that held steady as a slight breeze tossed their leaves. Her eyes, stinging from the sun and from the hysterical tears she’d indulged in the night before, welcomed the moisture. She had cried for twelve hours straight, drunk an entire bottle of wine, trashed a painting, and now she was here. Sweating in her car.

  She was filled with something stronger than anger, something more pathetic than sadness. Elly exhaled, feeling the breath stutter out of her lungs, stretched thin after hours of grieving. She hated her sad little life, hated what she had become in this last day, hated the man who was her husband. Who WAS her husband. She gave a whimper. Hated she’d been forced to see everything she’d believed about her life was a lie.

  More than that, at the moment, she hated being hot. She was hot so often.

  With a sigh, she turned the key and the toy-sized engine of her Toyota Tercel roared to life. After a blast of scorching heat, crisp air puffed her face and dried the mixture of tears and sweat on her cheeks. With the heat retreating, she could think a little more clearly. She glanced at the bags in the backseat: one giant suitcase with orange and blue ribbons dangling from the handle, a couple of plastic bags stuffed with hair and make-up supplies, a cooler filled with apples and sandwiches – a stupid decision, now that she thought about it and her lace wedding dress that lay crumpled in the corner. Elly pursed her lips and whipped around. She couldn’t think about that. Not now. She would find a therapist later to tell about the dress.

  Elly glanced nervously at the clock. She knew what she should do. She should drive to her job. She should talk to her boss Jeff, who constantly picked at his shirt near his stomach. She should call her best friend, Cassie, and talk her into skipping work. They would cry – no, she would cry – and talk about that moment, that horrible moment again and again. The creak of stairs. A hand clutching white sheets. The moment when she’d found her husband staring enamored at another woman. They would eat ice cream until she was too exhausted from emotion and dairy to move.

  Cassie would pretend to be amazed that he would cheat. She would insist that Elly storm back into the house – she muffled a sob –and demand that he be the one who leave. Demand the house. Demand faithfulness. Demand love and bury what happened in a cemetery at the back of her mind, never speaking of it again.

  Yes, that sounded great…but that confrontation would require removing her head from the steering wheel, and her neck seemed unable to do so at the moment. She couldn’t move from this moment. Not now, not ever.

  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?”

  Elly nodded.

  “Yup. Same as yesterday…same as everyday.”

  Amnesia, thought Elly. Brita beamed at her.

  “Those flowers are sooo amazing. I just love looking at them. You must love your job.”

  Elly cringed inside.

  “Yeah, I do. But it’s not always just flowers and…”

  The front bell chimed and Brita jumped to the welcome.

  “Hi! Welcome to Ada’s Coffee!”

  Elly was still finishing her sentence and suddenly found herself talking to no one. She hated when she was caught trailing off alone. Awkward.

  She sighed and looked around the coffee shop, taking in dozens of couples enjoying their morning brew. It was here, two years ago, that she had met her best friend; it was here that she had decided to stay. She inhaled the rich aroma of burnt beans and was taken instantly back those two years, to the day that changed her life. The day she had met Kim.

  Elly had arrived in St. Louis exactly two days after her overly-dramatic departure from Georgia. Eyes puffy with tears and travel, hair a pony-tailed mess and her mind in tatters, she somehow steered her way into an upper-class neighborhood coffee shop, ordering a hot chocolate with extra whipped cream. She had looked around anxiously – all she truly wanted was to get back into her car and drive until she collapsed. An adorable blond girl behind the counter had looked at her, confusion written across her pretty face.

  “Extra whipped cream. Really? Do you know it already comes with whipped cream? That would add about 100 calories.”

  Elly snarled and heard a muffled laugh behind her. Ready for an argument, she would no doubt win in her crazy state of mind, she spun around and came face to face with the one of the most stunning women she had ever seen. She let out a low gasp. Long brown hair with golden highlights flowed over tan freckled shoulders, and big sea glass eyes with thick mahogany lashes peered out from a flawless, make-up free face. She was as tall and lean as Elly was short and, well, somewhat rotund. Instantly intimidated by such beauty, she whirled back on the counter girl.

  “Do you have a problem with that? Do you have a problem with people who order extra whipped cream?”

  The girl looked taken aback.

  “No, no ma’am, it’s fine.”

  She looked at Elly with the kind of pity reserved only for the chubby and dirty. Elly was about to attack when she felt a cool hand on her shoulder.

  The beautiful woman whispered in her ear, “Don’t worry, it’s not you - I come here every day and Einstein behind the counter here gets my order confused every. Single. Time.”

  Elly’s anger melted. For the first time in forty-eight hours, she smiled.

  Elly got her hot chocolate – with extra whipped cream piled haphazardly across the top - and sat down at a small table by the window. She was startled when the radiant woman sat down across from her like they were old friends.

  “Hi – I’m Kim,” she said as she stuck out her hand. Elly shook it. “I can’t stand this place, but I’m hooked. If I don’t have my latte every day, I’m a miserable beast.”

  Elly watched her as she silently stirred her drink, totally unaware of the oddness of this interaction. She suddenly smiled.

  “Where are you from? You look like you’ve come a long way,” as if Elly needed reminding how she looked – and felt. Here she was, dirty, probably smelly, and wearing grey track pants and a black camisole that had a pumpkin on it. Her mascara had run away from her eyes a long time ago and her hair was full of grease. Elly’s exodus in the car had hit her like a brick in the face.

  “Um…” she paused and willed herself not to let hot tears run down her face. This was the moment she knew would come. Would she lie about her past? Would she start fresh? Pretend it never happened? She opened her mouth to lie, but the truth rushed out in its place.

  “I’ve been driving for days. Honestly, I don’t really even know what day it is. My husband... he…” The tears had started flowing. Crap. “He is...” She waved her hand around, agitated, unable to say it. “I’m not ready to talk about it. I don’t even know what I’m doing here. I just left Georgia. My house, my job, my friends…and now I’m here. I don’t know if I’m driving to California or Washington or maybe over a cliff, I don’t know.” She let out a strangled sob. “I can’t even think about what I left. I thought that if I went away that I could pretend it didn’t happen, but now I’m just thinking that this was the dumbest decision ever and that I will never be able to repair what he broke. Which it turns out, was me.” Elly put her palms over her eyes and shook her head.

  “I’m sorry. I must seem like an insane person.”

  Elly heard a smile in Kim’s voice as she replied, “A little, but please, keep going.”

  Afraid to look up, Elly kept her face down.

  “I’m – no, was - a secretary for a large shipping company. I was good at my job - the executive secretary to the president. I’m pretty sure he couldn’t live without me. It was good pay, vacations even. I was saving up to buy a nice house in this suburb that was just…perfect. I thought I had everything I ever wanted. Then I met Aaron.” It was the first time in days that she had said his name. It caught in her throat like a lemon drop. “
I met Aaron and he was totally different.”

  He was like a light that I didn’t know was out in me, she thought to herself. Kim nodded, as if she had known a million men like this.

  “I fell in love so fast, so hard. I couldn’t even breathe, and I thought – if I don’t marry this man, I’ll die – and so I did. He made me love art, and food, but more than that, I loved him. It was like a great love story you see in the movies. He made me things. He encouraged me to buy my house and we were so… happy. I was always overjoyed at my life and found it incredible. My friends, I think, saw something else. He was very caught up in his art and his successes and trials made him very...emotional. I feel so stupid now, but...”

  Kim’s face softened. She offered, “You thought it was sexy.”

  Elly felt her heart wilt. “Yes! But more than that, I loved being a part of him expressing his creativity. I was part of his… passion. My job was so boring, and I was grateful that he was an escape from all that. We got married. He loved my mother, but didn’t handle it well when she passed away.” She felt her anger pouring over the table, out onto the street. “He had no roots in anything but his art. I knew he loved me. Then why did he, I mean how could he?” Elly stopped. “I’m sorry. I’m done for today. This is the first time I’ve talked about this to anyone. I feel terrible – you are a very nice stranger, assuming that you will get the nice ‘I’m new in town’ speech, and I unload all this baggage on you. You can go if you want. I would understand.”

  Kim narrowed her eyes. “Are you kidding me? This is the most exciting thing I’ve heard in a long time. You picked up and just drove away from your life. You’ve done what a lot of us have thought about doing, many times.” She put her hand over Elly’s. “Not that it’s a good thing. It’s just…a brave thing. The people around here,” she said, waving her arm around, “are pretty boring. They are stuck in their upper class lives, get their coffee every morning, talk about politics – about which they all agree on anyway – spend too much money on their children’s schools, and get plastic surgery. You’re the most honest thing to come my way in awhile.” Elly surrendered a small smile.