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Turning, Addy stepped toward her aunt and took the laundry basket from her. She grabbed her aunt’s hands and forced her to look at her. “You’re not weak. You’re the same person you’ve always been. I shouldn’t have said anything. Doesn’t hurt if you wash your sheets again. In fact, I wish you’d wash mine, too. I haven’t had time.”
“Please,” Aunt Flora muttered.
“Don’t overthink this, okay?”
Aunt Flora’s eyes reflected agony. “Why is this happening to me? All these years I’ve waited to turn the shop over to you, waited until I could do all those things on my bucket list—skydiving, driving out West to see the Grand Canyon, taking painting classes. I’d put all those things off until I retired, and now look at me. My mind is being eaten away, and I can’t even remember when I washed my damn sheets last. Or where they moved the dry cleaners I use. Or what the Harrington’s named that ugly dog of theirs.”
“Freddy Bear.”
“Huh?”
“Their pug’s name is Freddy Bear. Ridiculous, huh?”
“Yes. Very ridiculous.”
Addy squeezed her aunt’s hands. “Look. It sucks. No way around it. But you are still you. You’re not weaker or any less of a person. So suck it up, buttercup.”
Her aunt smiled at the adage she’d often muttered to Addy over the years. “I’ve never considered myself a buttercup kind of a gal.”
“No?”
“I’m a Bird of Paradise.”
“I can see that,” Addy said, giving her a quick hug before turning back toward the office and ledger awaiting her. “And wash my sheets while you’re at it… or come help me with balancing the books.”
“I don’t remember how to do the books. You’re on your own, kiddo,” Aunt Flora cracked, obviously finding the sense of humor she’d misplaced during her moment of frustration.
“Yeah, yeah,” Addy said, trudging down the hall. She wished she hadn’t said anything to her aunt about the stupid laundry. Should have let her pass without calling out and reminding her of the disease that plagued her.
Aunt Flora had always been Addy’s soul mate. Growing up in a large family in a too small house in New Orleans East, Addy found Aunt Flora’s rambling, quiet Uptown house a refuge. Any time her mother came into the city to run errands, Addy begged to go to Aunt Flora’s. Her mother’s oldest sister had never married, electing to stay in the family house on Benjamin Street, and run the floral shop she’d bought from the gentleman she’d trained under for many years, and who her aunt had been in secretly in love with.
Addy had craved puttering in the garden with her aunt, learning the names of flowers, watching with interest as seeds sprouted, buds opened, and pretty stems mixed with other pretty stems becoming fabulous arrangements for which people paid money. Paired with butter cookies and sweet tea, gardening with Aunt Flora became Addy’s sanctuary. Seemed only natural she follow in her mentor’s footsteps.
After Addy had been attacked, she hadn’t wanted to move to Dallas for the job she’d procured in a marketing firm. She turned the offer down and took a job working in her aunt’s shop, much to her parents’ dismay and, to a degree, their relief. For weeks after the attack, Addy wouldn’t even leave the house. After years of therapy and obtaining her floral license, Addy had moved into the city with Aunt Flora. Up until a year ago when Aunt Flora had officially retired and sold Fleur De Lis to Addy, their arrangement had been ideal.
Not that it still wasn’t good.
But Addy worried about the ensuing years. Her mother refused to accept her older sister was slipping and that Alzheimer’s increasingly progressed despite the prescriptive medicines, therapies, and herbal supplements they researched. So Addy had no help in determining the future for the aunt she loved so.
As she stepped back into her office, a flash of color outside caught her eye. Pulling back the curtain, she saw Michael and Chris rolling around near her newly restored greenhouse beating the hell out of each other. Lucas was nowhere to be seen, and Michael decidedly had the upper hand… and he wasn’t going easy on his younger brother.
“Oh, my Lord,” Addy muttered before looking around for her gardening clogs. She found them beneath the desk, quickly slid them on, and took off for the back door.
Seconds later she shouted at the boys, “Hey, cut it out!”
But either they didn’t hear or didn’t care they’d been discovered. They didn’t stop grunting, punching, and rolling around before popping up and tackling each other again.
Chris’ lip bled and Michael’s shirt was torn at the collar.
“Stop it,” she yelled again, reaching toward the nearest boy and catching only air. “Chris. Michael. Stop now!”
She heard the heavy pounding of feet coming her way and knew it was Lucas.
The large man grabbed each kid by the upper arm, ripping them apart before giving them a shake. “What in the hell are you two doing?”
“I’m kicking his ass,” Michael shouted, jabbing a finger toward his younger brother, who was crying.
“No, you’re not,” Lucas said, letting each of the boys go but keeping himself firmly between them.
