“The Bouquet”

Part I

Shawna Coleman rode home from her own wedding with the bouquet in her lap like contraband.

The car’s interior still smelled faintly of hair spray and champagne. A few stray grains of rice clung to the fabric of her dress. Drew drove one-handed, his tie loosened, the corner of his mouth curved in a tired, contented half-smile as the last of the daylight thinned beyond the highway.

The roses were the deepest red she had ever seen, bordering on black where the petals folded over themselves. White baby’s breath and fern fronds softened the arrangement, but the roses were the thing. They drew the eye the way open flame did.

She stroked one of the outer petals with the back of her finger. Smooth and cool, almost damp.

“They’re unreal,” she said.

Drew glanced at her, then at the flowers. “They holding up okay? I still don’t get how they look that fresh after an entire day.”

“Calvin said they last,” she murmured.

She hadn’t meant to think of the florist by his first name, but the man had insisted on it. He’d stood with her in the cold, shadowed space behind his shop, next to rows of raised beds that ran up to the fence bordering the old cemetery next door. The earth in those beds had been dark as spilled coffee. The roses growing there had looked just like these.

He’d told her they were heritage stock. Roses his family had cultivated for generations. “They keep,” he’d said, with a slow, almost fond nod. “Weddings. Funerals. They remember.”

At the time, it had sounded charming in the way small-town business owners always tried to sound. Like part of the sales pitch.

Now, with the day behind her and the bouquet resting against her wrists, the phrase dug its way back up.

They remember.

A faint wave of dizziness passed through her, light enough that she didn’t at first recognize it as anything more than fatigue. The road swam a little at the edges of her vision, guardrails and treeline gaining a wobble they hadn’t had a moment before.

“You okay?” Drew asked. “You got quiet.”

“Just tired.” She swallowed, surprised by how dry her mouth felt. “I didn’t sit down once at the reception, I swear.”

“You also didn’t eat once.”

“I had cake.”

“Cake doesn’t count.” He grinned. “That was structural frosting with sugar decorations. It could’ve been used to patch a roof.”

She smiled, but her attention had slid down to her forearm. Where the bouquet rested against her skin, she felt something.

Not pressure. Not the prick of thorns. Something finer than that, and mobile. The way a spider might explore along the inside of a sleeve.

She shifted the bouquet, expecting to see a stray leaf or insect. Nothing there. Just the stems wrapped in satin ribbon, pinned in place, snug and ordinary.

The crawling sensation traveled from the heel of her hand toward the bend of her elbow, a thin, invisible line. She rubbed at it with her thumb. The feeling persisted for another second, then faded.

“Hey,” Drew said, “seriously. We can pull over if you’re not feeling right.”

“I’m okay.” She didn’t want to spoil the day with a minor complaint. “It’s probably low blood sugar.”

“That’s not really better.”

“I’ll eat when we get home. There are leftovers, remember? Your mom packed us half the buffet.”

He chuckled. “She’s convinced we’ll starve if she isn’t around to monitor things.”

Shawna turned her face toward the window, letting the blur of darkening fields and farmhouse lights distract her from her arm. The bouquet’s scent rose up around her again: heavy rose, wet soil, and beneath it, something else. Something that reminded her of the afternoons she’d spent, as a kid, helping her own mother in the backyard garden. Turning the first spadeful of earth in spring. The way it had smelled damp and cold and full.

The smell pressed against old memories with surprising force. Her throat tightened.

Her mother should have been there that day. There should have been a corsage pinned to a dress, a hug at the church doors, a voice whispering something gentle and awkward and proud at the reception. Instead, her mother lay on the far side of town in a cemetery that, if she had her bearings right, wasn’t all that far from where Calvin Destry grew his roses.

She looked down at the bouquet again. For an instant she had the strange impression that the blooms were fuller than they’d been an hour ago. The outer petals seemed to have unfurled another fraction of an inch, lush and open, as if they were breathing.

She blinked, and the illusion was gone. Just flowers, dark and beautiful, cradled in her hands.

By the time they pulled into their driveway, the dizziness had eased. The crawling sensation had not returned, and she was ready to chalk it up to exhaustion and a day spent in heels.

Inside, the house felt too quiet after the noise of the reception hall. Shawna walked carefully, one hand hitching her dress, the other clutching the bouquet.

“Where do you want those?” Drew asked, nodding toward the flowers.

“Kitchen for now,” she said. “I’ll find a vase later.”

She set them on the table and forced herself to eat. Drew reheated a plate of food and practically supervised each bite. They talked in tired circles about the ceremony, who had cried, who had danced, which uncle had gotten drunk first. The normal post-wedding debrief.

Through it all, the bouquet sat in the center of the table, its scent drifting in and out. Sometimes she caught nothing more than a faint floral trace. Other moments it seemed to fill the room, thick and sweet enough to sit on the back of her tongue.

Once, when she looked up mid-sentence, she thought she saw one of the stems flex, the head of a bloom making a small, slow nod in her direction.

She stared at it. The flower did not move again.

“Shawna?” Drew said.

She dragged her gaze away. “Sorry. Zoned out.”

“Bed?” he asked. “We’ve earned it.”

She laughed softly. “Yeah. I’m running on fumes.”

Before heading upstairs, she took the bouquet into the living room. An empty ceramic pitcher sat on the mantel. She filled it at the sink, set the stems in, and arranged them until they looked like something out of the shop window again. She left them there, level with the family photos, then followed Drew up the steps.

Sleep came in fits. The images of the day—her dress, the church, the slow march down the aisle—flashed behind her eyelids, cut with stranger fragments. Rows of rose bushes under a gray sky. Wooden markers and leaning stones behind them. A man’s hands, soil under the fingernails, pressing something pale and slender down into the earth among the roots.

She woke once with her heart racing, hand clamped over her wrist as though she had caught someone holding it. The room was dim and still. Drew snored softly beside her. Nothing moved.

She lay awake for a long while, listening to the house settle. Eventually the exhaustion of the last few weeks dragged her back under.

Morning light seeped in around the curtains when she surfaced again. Drew was already up; she could hear the low clatter of dishes downstairs.

She rolled over, squinting against the brightness. Something dark rested on the white of her pillow a few inches from her face.

At first she thought it was a smear of mascara or a scrap of ribbon from her hair. When she focused, she saw the delicate curve, the faint veining, the curled edge.

A single rose petal lay there, deep red, fresh and soft.

Shawna touched it with the tip of her finger. It was cool. Supple.

She sat up, turning toward the bedroom door, mind catching up to what she was seeing. The bouquet was in the pitcher downstairs, where she had left it the night before.

The petal on her pillow looked as if it had just fallen.

Part II

Shawna kept the petal between her fingers as she walked downstairs. It felt wrong to throw it away, the same way it would have felt wrong to toss out a keepsake from her mother’s things. She wasn’t sure why the petal carried that weight, but it did. She slipped it into the pocket of her robe before reaching the bottom step.

Drew stood at the stove scrambling eggs, humming tunelessly. “Morning, Mrs. Coleman,” he said without turning.

“Morning.” She tried to keep her voice steady.

He caught the tremor anyway. “You alright?”

She hesitated. “There was a rose petal on my pillow.”

He paused mid-stir. “You brought the bouquet upstairs?”

“No.”

“Maybe it stuck to your dress somehow.”

“I checked.”

He frowned, then set the spatula down. “Look, the florist said those roses last forever. Maybe they shed weird.”

“Roses don’t shed upward through walls and a staircase.”

“Okay, fair.” He leaned back against the counter. “But before we assume something supernatural, why don’t we just keep an eye on things?”

She didn’t bother arguing. She knew how she would sound.
Instead, she walked into the living room.

The bouquet sat exactly where she’d placed it, perched in the ceramic pitcher. Dew clung to the petals as if it had been cut fresh that morning. She touched one of the blooms lightly. The petal felt cool, supple, alive.

The pit of her stomach tightened.

Drew joined her, rubbing the back of his neck. “Honestly, they don’t even look like they’ve been used.”

“I know.”

She leaned down to inspect the stems. They were darker than she remembered. The green had deepened to nearly black, and the thin red-veined filaments at the base seemed more pronounced—as though the flowers had been drinking something heavier than water.

She stepped back. “I’m going to take the day off and get checked out.”

“Doctor?”

She nodded.

Drew looked relieved. “Good. Maybe they’ll tell you it’s allergies or something simple.”

She wanted to believe that. She truly did.

---

The clinic was quiet, most patients still trickling in for morning appointments. Shawna sat on the papered exam table while the doctor—a soft-spoken man named Coulter—checked her vitals.

“Dizziness?” he asked, jotting notes.
“Off and on.”
“Skin sensations?”
“I thought so, but nothing since last night.”

He examined her arm where the crawling sensation had lingered the longest. Nothing on the surface but a faint discoloration she hadn’t noticed before—thin greenish lines beneath the skin like fading bruises.

He tapped the area gently. “Tender?”
“No.”
“Could be contact dermatitis. Could be a vascular response. Hard to say.”

She asked the question she had been trying not to ask: “Could anything from a flower cause this?”

“A pesticide might. A mold or fungus. But you’d see irritation.” He wrote another note. “Nothing obvious here. I’ll do bloodwork.”

The results would take days. Days she didn’t want to wait.

She left the clinic with a growing pressure behind her ribs. The petal in her pocket warmed her skin through the fabric as though it had absorbed her body heat.

She drove instead to Destry Floral & Memorial.

---

The bell above the shop door chimed, and the cool air inside hit her like a draft from a cellar. Buckets of flowers lined the walls, sprays of lilies and carnations and hydrangea.
But none of those held her attention.

Across the room on a small display stood a single vase of the same roses she carried yesterday. Their petals were darker still, almost bruised with color, the edges curling in a way that seemed deliberate rather than wilting.

Calvin Destry emerged from the back with a slow, steady gait. He wore the same gray apron, the same pristine button-up shirt, the sleeves rolled just enough to show wiry forearms marked with faint scars.

He smiled warmly. “Mrs. Coleman. Congratulations again. How was the day after?”

She gestured to the roses. “I need to ask you something.”

He studied her face for a moment before nodding, as though expecting this conversation.

“Let’s step outside,” he said.

They walked behind the building to the garden beds where she’d first seen him tend the plants. The air smelled richer here—earth and mulch and something metallic that reminded her faintly of rust. Rows of rose bushes swayed gently, though no wind touched her skin.

Calvin leaned against the fence bordering the cemetery. “What troubles you?”

She described the dizziness, the skin sensation, the petal. Not everything—she wasn’t ready to share the hallucinations—but enough.

He listened with unsettling patience.

When she finished, he breathed out slowly. “The roses here… are particular.”

“That’s one word,” she muttered.

“They grow only in this soil. My family learned that generations ago.” He gestured toward the cemetery. “The land is old. The dead feed the ground. Minerals, nutrients… memory.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Memory is stored in everything, Mrs. Coleman. In soil. In roots. In the places we bury our grief.” His eyes drifted over the headstones beyond the fence. “These roses respond to that.”

“Respond how?”

“They bond,” he said simply.

She stared at him. “Bonded to what?”

His gaze settled on her with quiet certainty. “To you. To your loss.”

Her breath caught. “My mother?”

Calvin didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.

A surge of warmth bloomed beneath Shawna’s sleeve, exactly where she had felt the crawling sensation the day before. She clutched her arm. Calvin noticed but didn’t move toward her.

“They remember,” he said again. “And sometimes they reach back.”

Her skin prickled. She took a step away from him. “Is this dangerous?”

“Not immediately,” he said. “But you must understand… the bouquet is not finished with you yet.”

The warmth at her wrist pulsed once, faint and rhythmic.

She backed away. “I should go.”

“If the sensations worsen, come back,” he said. “I’ll help you however I can.”

She didn’t answer. She practically fled to her car, her arm throbbing beneath her sleeve in tiny, creeping lines.

As she drove off, she glanced in the rearview mirror and saw Calvin standing motionless beside the rose beds, watching her leave.

Not smiling.

Not waving.

Just watching.

And behind him, in the windless stillness, the roses leaned ever so slightly toward him, as if listening.

Part III

Shawna parked at the far end of her driveway and sat motionless for several minutes, hands gripping the wheel, trying to make the warmth in her wrist fade through sheer force of will. It pulsed in slow, measured intervals. Not painful—just present. A soft, insistent reminder of the bouquet waiting inside the house.

She finally stepped out of the car. The air carried the clean bite of early autumn. Normally she loved mornings like this, when the season teetered between warmth and the first real chill. Today the temperature made no difference. She felt the warmth in her arm more acutely now, like something beneath the skin had its own idea of comfort.

Drew was standing at the front door when she approached. “You alright? You were gone longer than I thought.”

“I went to see the florist,” she said.

His eyebrows lifted. “Already?”

“I needed answers.”

He started to respond but noticed her expression and softened. “Come inside. Tell me what’s going on.”

They kept their voices low at the kitchen table. Shawna explained the parts she could say out loud without hearing how strange they sounded—Calvin’s talk about soil, memory, how the roses “bonded.” She didn’t mention the warmth spreading up her arm in a slow, branching pattern. She didn’t mention the petal that had appeared on her pillow, or how it had seemed to glow faintly in the morning light, almost pulsing in tandem with the sensation under her skin.

Drew listened, troubled. “That doesn’t make sense, Shawna. He’s trying to sound poetic or mysterious or something. Flowers don’t bond with people.”

“I know. I know how it sounds.” She squeezed her wrist beneath the table. “But I keep… feeling things.”

“What things?”

She didn’t answer. Not directly. “Something’s wrong.”

He reached across the table and took her free hand. “Let’s go back there together.”

“Not yet,” she whispered.

She lifted her eyes toward the living room. The bouquet wasn’t visible from where they sat, but she felt its presence anyway, as if the house had a new occupant taking up space where light and air already belonged.

---

That afternoon, Shawna returned alone to Destry Floral & Memorial.

She didn’t tell Drew. She wasn’t sure why—only that a part of her feared bringing anyone else near what she was learning, as if the secret would spread like a stain.

Calvin must have seen her through the window because he unlocked the back door before she knocked.

“You came back sooner than I expected,” he said.

“You said the bouquet wasn’t finished with me.” Her voice felt smaller than she wanted it to. “What does that mean?”

Calvin stepped aside and motioned her in. “Come. There’s something I want to show you. It may help.”

The back corridor led to a storage room lined with tools, bags of soil, gardening wire, and stacks of wooden crates marked with years in faded paint—1963, 1978, 1991. A single workbench sat in the center of the space.

He opened one of the crates and lifted out a small, tightly sealed jar. Inside, preserved in cloudy solution, floated a knot of roots. At least, that’s what she assumed at first. But the longer she looked, the more details emerged—something like the shape of tiny digits, the suggestion of cartilage.

She recoiled. “What is that?”

“A remnant,” he said. “From the old days. Before we understood what we were tending.”

“That’s not a plant.”

“It is now,” he said quietly. “But it wasn’t always.”

Her breath hitched. “You’re telling me your family buried people in the garden?”

“No.” He set the jar down carefully. “People were already buried. We simply… didn’t move the cemetery when the town grew around it. The roots found what they needed. My ancestors observed. Encouraged. They didn’t realize what they had until it was too late to stop.”

Shawna stared at the jar. The thing inside had grown into itself, twisting until root and bone were indistinguishable.

Calvin continued, “The roses flourished. Thrived. And we learned that they responded strongly to grief. Those who had lost someone dear—the roses recognized them.”

“Recognized?”

“This is difficult to explain.” Calvin folded his hands. “The soil remembers the dead. Their memories, their attachments, their sorrow. It all leaches outward into the ground. The roses drink deep.”

Her stomach turned. “And what does that have to do with me?”

“You carried the bouquet. You carried your loss.”

The warmth in her wrist pulsed sharply, pushing up toward her forearm. She gripped her opposite arm, fingers pressing through her sleeve.

Calvin watched the gesture. “It’s already begun, hasn’t it?”

She nodded.

He sighed. “I’m sorry. I truly am. It shouldn’t have been bridal stock. I only use these roses for funerals now. I told the employees that. Someone must have forgotten.”

“You’re telling me I’m being affected by… what? Dead people? Their memories?”

“Not memories,” Calvin said. “The residue of grief. The part that never quite lets go.”

The world tilted slightly. She braced a hand against the table.

“Mrs. Coleman,” Calvin said gently, “you need to understand something important. The bouquet is still… connected to what fed it.”

“Meaning?”

He paused before answering, and that pause told her too much.

“Meaning it’s alive,” he said at last. “Alive in a way that looks for the nearest place to take root. It reached toward you because you were open. Because you still carry sorrow. The roses respond to that kind of ache.”

She swallowed hard. “How do I stop it?”

Calvin’s eyes softened with pity. “You sever the connection.”

“And how do I do that?”

He hesitated again.

That hesitation undid her.

“Tell me,” she demanded.

“You must let go of what fed it,” he said quietly. “Let go of the grief that binds you to your mother’s memory.”

Her throat tightened. “You’re saying the only way to stop this is to stop loving her?”

“No,” Calvin said gently. “Not love. Grief. The bouquet doesn’t understand the difference.”

The warmth reached the inside of her elbow, curling like roots beneath the skin.

She backed toward the door. “I need to go.”

“Mrs. Coleman—”

“I said I need to go.”

Calvin didn’t follow her. He didn’t raise his voice. He simply watched with the resigned expression of someone witnessing a process he’d seen before.

A process he feared he couldn’t interrupt.

Shawna stepped out into the pale afternoon light and felt the warmth climb higher still, branching into her shoulder in delicate, creeping lines.

By the time she reached her car, she had to grip the door frame to steady herself.

Behind her, in the garden beyond the fence, the roses swayed again in the still air.

As though welcoming her to something she hadn’t agreed to join.

Part IV

Shawna didn’t remember the drive home.

She remembered gripping the steering wheel, willing her arm to behave like it belonged to her. She remembered the warmth spreading in delicate, creeping paths—subtle, branching lines that teased the surface of her skin without breaking it. She remembered the way her sleeve shifted against it, as if something beneath was adjusting its position.

But the actual drive dissolved into a smear of road and motion.

When she stepped into the house, Drew was on the phone in the kitchen. He ended the call as soon as he saw her.

“Hey—where were you? I called twice.”

“I needed air.” She didn’t trust her voice to carry anything more.

“You’re pale.” He came closer, searching her expression. “Sit down a minute.”

She shook her head. “I’m fine.”

But she wasn’t. Every inch of her right arm hummed with warmth now—not heat, nothing alarming, but a steady spread that refused to dissipate. When she flexed her fingers, she felt a faint tug beneath the skin, as though something had learned the contours of her arm and decided to settle in.

Drew reached toward her sleeve. “Let me see.”

“Don’t.” The word came out sharper than she intended.

He stopped, hands raised. “Okay. But Shawna… something’s wrong. And it’s getting worse.”

She turned away. She didn’t want him seeing the faint green tracings climbing from her wrist to her shoulder. They looked like veins, but slightly off—too fine, too patterned, too precise. They followed the same delicate branching she’d seen on the preserved specimen Calvin showed her.

She went upstairs. Drew followed at a distance, unsure whether to press her or give her space.

In the bathroom, she locked the door and rolled up her sleeve.

The tracings were more visible in the bright light—threadlike lines, pale green and faintly luminescent in certain angles. They spread from her wrist like roots explored the soil, branching outward with an organic logic she didn’t want to understand.

She placed both palms on the counter to keep herself steady.

She needed to throw out the bouquet.

Immediately.

She hurried downstairs, ignoring Drew’s calls, and strode into the living room. The bouquet sat in the ceramic pitcher exactly where she’d left it. The blossoms looked fuller than before, as though hours had passed like days for them. The petals gleamed with moisture.

Shawna grabbed the arrangement at the base of the stems.

The bouquet’s ribbon-wrapped spine pressed into her palm.

She tightened her grip.

And tried to lift.

At first, nothing happened. Then she realized the stems weren’t rising cleanly from the pitcher—they resisted. She pulled harder, and something tugged back. The movement was tiny, but undeniably there. The stems flexed under her hand like living tissue.

She froze.

No. Absolutely not. She braced her feet and gave a sharp, desperate yank.

The bouquet came free.

But for a breathless second, she could have sworn a tendril of something pale and stringy snapped inside the water. The pitcher rattled against the mantel.

She carried the bouquet toward the front door with her arm fully extended, as far from her body as she could manage. The stems writhed faintly against her grip, the same way a handful of reeds might tremble in a strong current.

She felt pressure across her wrist where she held it. A subtle squeeze. A tightening.

“No,” she whispered.

She reached the porch and hurled the bouquet onto the lawn.

The roses struck the ground with a heavy thud, far too weighty for flowers. They landed in an unnatural cluster, stems splayed, petals shuddering as though catching breath.

She backed up a step.

The blossoms shifted fractionally, angling themselves toward her.

Behind her, the storm door opened. Drew stepped out. “What are you doing?”

“Stay back,” she said.

He didn’t. He came to her side, confusion knitting his features. “Shawna… they’re just flowers.”

“I don’t think they are.”

She looked down at her right arm. The green tracings beneath her skin glowed faintly in the late afternoon light. They had reached her collarbone.

Drew saw the look on her face and followed her gaze.

His expression changed.

“Shawna,” he whispered. “We’re going to the hospital.”

“No.” She stepped away. “They won’t know what to do. I know where I have to go.”

“That florist again? No. Absolutely not.”

“You didn’t hear what he told me.”

“I don’t care what he told you,” Drew said, voice cracking. “Something is happening to you and he’s the only one who seems calm about it.”

Shawna shook her head, trying to steady herself. “I’m not going to the clinic. I’m going back there.”

Drew grabbed her shoulders gently. “We go together.”

She wanted to tell him no. She wanted to keep him away from this—away from the thing crawling through her arm like it was mapping her from the inside.

But another wave of warmth pulsed toward her shoulder, deeper this time, and her knees weakened.

She needed help.

“Fine,” she whispered. “Together.”

They headed to the car.

Behind them, on the lawn, the bouquet shifted again.

One bloom tilted upward, angling toward the house.

And then another.

And another.

As though they were tracking her retreat.

Part V

Dusk was settling by the time Shawna and Drew pulled into the cracked asphalt lot behind Destry Floral & Memorial. The sign above the back door glowed faintly in the dimming light, but the rest of the shop stood in deep shadow. No cars. No movement. Just the heavy stillness of closing hours.

“Are you sure he’s here?” Drew asked.

“He said to come back if it got worse.”

She didn’t say the rest—that Calvin had spoken the words with the weary resignation of someone who didn’t expect help to come in time.

Her arm throbbed again. Not painfully. Just insistently. The green tracings beneath her skin had reached her shoulder and crept toward the base of her throat like a vine following its favorite support.

Drew noticed her expression and opened his mouth to speak, but she pushed the door open before he could.

The bell above it didn’t ring.

It didn’t even move.

Inside, the shop lights flickered weakly. The walls of floral arrangements seemed to close in around them, colors and petals arranged in unreal stillness. The scent was overpowering—roses, lilies, the metallic damp of fresh soil, and something deeper. Something like old water drawn from the bottom of a well.

“Calvin?” Shawna called.

A shuffling sound came from the back.

Drew put an arm out protectively. “Stay behind me.”

She didn’t argue, but she didn’t retreat either.

Calvin emerged from the hallway a moment later. His expression was drawn, tight around the eyes, as though he’d aged a decade in a few hours. Soil dusted his sleeves. His apron was stained dark at the hem.

“I was hoping you wouldn’t come back,” he said.

Drew stepped forward. “She’s getting worse. Look at her arm.”

Calvin didn’t need to. His gaze found the green tracings at her throat immediately.

“It’s quick with some people,” he said softly. “Especially those carrying recent sorrow.”

Shawna took a steadying breath. “You told me how it started. Now tell me how it ends.”

Calvin motioned for them to follow.

They entered the workroom. The faint hum of a single overhead bulb cast long, trembling shapes across the floor. Crates lined the walls, some sealed, some open with dried roots curling out from the edges.

The roses in the back beds were visible through the window—tall, still, and unnervingly alert.

Calvin turned toward her, his expression strained. “The bouquet you carried has established a bond. It’s drawing from you now. Feeding on what called to it.”

“My grief,” she said.

He nodded. “The pain you carry is fertile ground. A perfect medium.”

Drew bristled. “She’s not soil.”

“No,” Calvin agreed. “She is the opposite. That’s why it reached for her.”

Shawna swallowed hard. “You said I could sever it. How?”

His eyes lowered. “By letting go.”

“You mean forgetting her.”

“No. Grief isn’t memory. It’s a weight you keep carrying even after you can’t bear it anymore. The bouquet doesn’t understand that the two are separate things. It only follows the pull.”

She felt the warmth rise again beneath her skin, curling like a tendril wrapping around bone.

“And if I don’t let go?” she asked.

Calvin’s silence chilled the air.

Drew stepped closer. “Tell us.”

“The bouquet will finish its work,” Calvin said. “It will grow. It will root. And it will anchor itself to the strongest part of you—your sorrow.”

Drew’s voice tightened. “And then?”

Calvin hesitated before answering. “You won’t be yourself anymore.”

The warmth surged suddenly, a wave up Shawna’s neck. She gasped and braced a hand on the workbench as a faint whisper threaded behind her ear—not a voice exactly, but echoing the sound of one. Familiar. Gentle. A tone she would know anywhere.

Her mother.

Drew caught her shoulders. “Shawna?”

She shook her head, tears blurring her sight. “I heard her.”

Calvin stepped back, face pale. “It’s accelerating.”

Shawna pressed her palm to her throat, feeling the strange second pulse there—a gentle thrum matching the warmth beneath her skin. Not hers. Not entirely.

The whisper brushed her ear again, and for a moment the grief cracked open inside her, raw and bright. The old ache rose with it. The longing. The loss. All the things she had carried, unburied, for far too long.

Calvin’s voice was careful, quiet. “You can break the bond. But it requires choosing to release the part of your grief that the bouquet recognizes. The painful thread. The anchor.”

Shawna’s tears fell faster now. “I don’t know how.”

“No one does,” Calvin murmured. “But you must try.”

She closed her eyes.

Her mother’s voice murmured again—not words, but the shape of a memory. She felt the warmth shift under her skin, responding to the rising ache. Feeding on it. Thriving.

Drew held her tightly. “You don’t have to do this alone.”

“I know,” she whispered.

But the truth settled heavily.

Some grief could not be parted with.

Some grief defined the shape of who someone had become.

She steadied herself and met Calvin’s gaze. “I can’t let her go. Not that way.”

He looked pained. “Then you need to leave quickly. It’s almost finished.”

Shawna shook her head slowly. “No. I came here for answers. Not escape.”

The warmth in her throat deepened. A faint pulse beneath her skin jumped twice—hers and something else. The tracings along her arm brightened faintly, as though stirred by an unseen breeze.

Calvin stepped back. Drew stepped closer.

Shawna exhaled. “Whatever comes next… I’ll carry it.”

The whispers softened. Almost soothed.

The glow beneath her skin steadied.

Calvin bowed his head—not in reverence, but resignation. “Then it’s chosen its place.”

Shawna lowered her hand and straightened.

The second heartbeat pulsed softly beneath her skin.

Alive.

Settled.

Fully rooted.

She turned toward the doorway with Drew supporting her.

Outside, beyond the wall of the shop, the roses in the back garden inclined toward the window in slow unison, their petals stirring without wind, as if acknowledging one of their own.