The Marriage Flower

Iris set the white rose down between Cal and me and said, "I can't name you." The dining room at the Bellwether Cove Hotel went quiet. I heard a fork touch a plate, then a chair scrape back. Beyond the tall windows, rain silvered the harbor and blurred the lights along the old pier. Cal's hand remained over mine. His thumb moved once against my knuckle, a small, practiced reassurance. "Can't, or won't?" he asked. My sister's mismatched eyes stayed on the rose. "There's a difference?" It was supposed to be a simple announcement. The hotel's reopening gala had drawn the town's donors, the local paper, and the board members who controlled the grant money Cal needed to finish the restoration. He had invited everyone to celebrate the project and our engagement. The blessing was meant to be the warm, personal part of the evening: Iris would place a flower between us and say what the rest of Bellwether already expected her to say. She had never refused a couple before. I pulled my hand free of Cal's. The movement was small, but the room noticed. My cheeks burned. "Iris," I said. "We can talk later." "We can," she answered. She still didn't look at me. Cal gave the guests a smooth smile. "My fiancée's sister has always enjoyed keeping us in suspense." A few people laughed because he had offered them permission. I didn't. Iris had been right about every couple she had named. My parents were one of them. She'd been thirteen when she told our mother and stepfather that the two of them would build a good life, though they had met only six weeks earlier. They stayed married until my mother died, twenty-six years later. Iris had named couples who'd met in college, couples who'd met after divorce, a pair who'd been feuding neighbors for a decade. None had split. Some had difficult marriages. Some had lost children, houses, or jobs. They'd still chosen each other, year after year. The town called Iris's gift the matchmaker's eye. Iris called it a reason to mind her own business. We had grown up above Vale & Vine, the flower shop our mother left to us. Iris worked behind the counter and knew more about people than she let on. I handled the books, the deliveries, and the weddings. The shop's flowers decorated the hotel gala tonight, and the white rose on our table had come from our greenhouse. Iris finally looked at me. "I'm sorry." "Are you?" Cal asked, still smiling. "I'm sorry you asked me to say something untrue." The room went still again. My sister's bluntness had never been a secret, but I'd never heard her use it to wound someone in public. Cal rose. "Let's not turn this into a spectacle." He said it gently, as if he were offering me a way out. I stood anyway. My chair bumped the table. A glass tipped, and I caught it before it spilled. "I'll take Iris home," I said. Cal's jaw tightened, then smoothed. "You should stay. We have guests." "I'm going." I walked past the nearest table, aware of every face following me. Iris came behind me. In the hallway, she reached for my sleeve, but I shook her off. "You could have told me privately." "I tried." "You said you were tired of the wedding details." "I was." "You could have said this." "I did. Before you got engaged." "You said you didn't know Cal well enough." "I said I didn't see you together." "That is not the same thing as saying you think my marriage is a mistake." Iris closed her hand around the white rose she'd carried out of the dining room. "I don't tell people what to do. I name a match when I see one. That's all." "Then don't name anything." "I didn't." I took the rose from her and dropped it into the wastebasket beside the coat check. Outside, the rain was cold against my face. Iris walked to her car without speaking. I stayed beneath the hotel awning and watched through the glass as Cal accepted a hand from one of the board members. He leaned in to hear the man, nodding with the same warm attention he used when he asked me about my day. I wanted to believe the gala had gone wrong because Iris had made it go wrong. It would have been easier than thinking she had recognized something I hadn't. When Cal came out, he didn't reach for me. "I'll call you tomorrow," he said. "I'm driving Iris home." "I know. I meant after." He kissed my forehead. His lips were cool from the rain. "You don't have to defend her." "I'm not." He gave me a tired look. "You're defending her by acting like I'm the one who caused a scene." "You asked her to bless us in front of everyone." "I asked her to do what she's done for half this town." "She didn't." For a moment, the pleasant expression left his face. Then he glanced past me, toward the hotel ballroom. "We'll talk when you're not angry." Iris's car idled at the curb. I got in without answering. She drove us back to the shop, where the greenhouse lights shone pale through the rain. At the door, she stopped me. "I don't want to lose you over this." I looked at the rosewater stain on her hand. "Then you shouldn't have made me choose between you and the man I'm marrying." "I didn't." "Good night, Iris." I went upstairs to my apartment. Cal texted before I'd taken off my coat. Cal: I'm sorry it felt like I put you on the spot. We'll fix this together. I read the message twice. Then I set my phone facedown and listened to the rain hit the greenhouse roof, trying to decide which of the people I loved had just made a choice I couldn't undo.