Alternate Opening Scene for Everything You Are

Fate comes calling on Ophelia McPhee in the twilight of a Thursday afternoon, disguised as a teenage boy come to buy a bouquet of flowers. It's February, and already growing dark although it's just past four o'clock. A cold wind follows the young man through the door and up to the counter, and from there blows right into the marrow of her bones.

Instinctively she barricades herself behind the counter, sensing what she can't quite see.

"I'm sorry, I was just closing."

"Door's open."

"I was about to lock it."

"Sign says open until five."

"I have deliveries to make."

"Five more minutes won't mean the end of anything, right?" He lays two slim fingered hands on the counter, so close to hers they are very nearly touching, and gifts her with a smile that is dark and dazzling all at once. Her heart accelerates in reply. He's a dramatically attractive boy, dark hair and soulful eyes, leather jacket and a motorcycle helmet and an aura of adventure.

Oh, aren't you the dangerous one, she thinks. Laying waste to hearts right and left, I'd wager. She's grateful for the safety margin of her own thirty-six years.

"Please," he says, in a voice designed to melt her frozen heart, "I need something special, and I've heard about your work. You're the only one who can help me."

Phee knows flattery when she hears it. Blarney, her mother would call it. The fact that her heart still flutters in response to the boy's smile and his tone and his attempt to be seductive is a definite strike against him. Out he goes. She doesn't have to serve him. Her delivery story is perfectly plausible.

But she hesitates, despite the warning in her gut, the prickle in her thumbs and the prescient dream last night of dark things fluttering at the corners of her vision.

"It's for a girl," he says. "Do it for her, not for me."

"You have about thirty seconds to tell me what it is you think I can do that no other florist in the city is capable of."

"I want a whole arrangement done in black."

The fluttering things from the night shift their location into her belly.

Phee leans forward across the counter and summons her best conspiratorial whisper. "I don't know if you know this, but flowers don't actually come in black."

"And this is why I need you."

"I don't see—"

"You've done it before. So I know you can. Paint them, dye them, do whatever."

Phee takes a centering breath. She has done it before, just once, for the opening of a photography show in a gallery. She'd created a beautifully structured arrangement in black and white. How this boy would know about that is a mystery, but he looks like the type that thinks himself artistic. Maybe he was there, or has connections to the photographer. None of which is relevant.

She shakes her head. "What did this girl do to you? Dump you for a friend? Tell you you're not quite as handsome as you fancy yourself to be?"

"It's for a funeral. Well, not the funeral, exactly. I'd like them delivered to the house after the funeral. Her mother and her brother were killed this week. I don't think that warrants something bright and cheerful, do you?"

In Phee's opinion, bright and cheerful is exactly what is warranted. She specializes in bright arrangements for sad occasions – vibrant colors, lots of yellow, a reminder that beauty and color are not snuffed out with the loss of a human life.

There's something a little hungry in his eyes when he talks about the funeral. She doesn't like the chill that is spreading through her bones, or the fluttering things in her belly, more like bats than butterflies.

"Look," he says. "You can do a brightly colored one too, if that makes you happy. I'll pay you extra."

Phee wants to say no. Means to say no. Instead she names him a price that should be well out of the range of a boy of his age. He doesn't even blink as he pulls a wallet out of his jacket pocket and counts off bills.

Still against her better judgment, Phee reaches for her order pad and pen.

"Address? Phone number? Date of delivery?"

She jots down the details while he writes intently in a card which he seals into an envelope.

"Put this with the black arrangement, please."

She doesn't like his handwriting on the envelope, which is as smooth and insinuating as he is.

Allie.

Allie, whoever you are, you're in a world of trouble, Phee thinks. Still, she accepts the card, confirms the delivery details, and watches the boy out of the shop with a lingering sense of unease that takes her hours to shrug off.

It occurs to her to lose the card, misplace the address, but she knows she won't. Still, she'll be glad when the flowers are delivered and the contract sealed and done.