Jill Churchill - The Accidental Florist

This turned out to be every bit as fruitless as shopping, but Jane made the best of it and purged a lot of things she hadn't worn for at least three years.

"Jane, that's a great skirt and jacket but you look more like a widow than a bride, to tell the truth. It would be great for a cocktail party."

"But I am a widow."

"Of course you are. But for this ceremony you should look like a bride, not a widow."

"You're right. But I might take this outfit back. I'm never invited to cocktail parties."

"Neither am I, except for Paul's meetings with his managers. But it would be great for fancy dinners, and it really flatters you."

Jane sat down on the heap of clothing now on her bed waiting to be recycled to a battered women's shelter and said, "Okay. I've made a nondecision decision. I'm keeping the skirt and jacket and I'm wearing the emerald dress to both the real and fake wedding. Mel loves it when I wear that dress and very few people will know I'd already worn it for the civil wedding. And we can forget all about matching fabrics for the cummerbunds for the tuxes."

With this shopping victory stalled out for all time, Jane was relieved that she could get on with real life. Going out to lunches with Shelley or dinners with Mel, doing research for her next book, gawking at the rapid progress of the room addition. She also kept asking the workers questions about what they were doing. They were kind to her. She brought them iced tea and sodas to ensure they'd remain tolerant of her.

The room was almost starting to look like a room, not a place to roller skate. Timbers were going up, firmly attached to the foundation.

She was told that electricity had to be next. There were several copies of Jack's blueprints. The overall structure. Where electrical lines went. Where windows of precise dimensions would be put in were marked as such. Where phone lines went. There were even water and sewer lines chalked out so Mel could have his own bathroom and sink.

Jack himself was there for at least an hour every day, overseeing the work. Sometimes he stayed longer.

"This is the fastest, most professional crew I've ever had the luck to put to work. A few of them are new to me, Jane."

He looked so smug about this that Jane was compelled to compliment him. And she meant it, too. He cared about how his projects turned out, and zealously pursued a timely, perfect completion.

"Your workers have been very polite about my uninformed questions."

"I know. They say you're the nicest lady most of them have ever worked for."

Jane actually simpered at the compliment. But she added, "There's a truck behind my car and I need to run an errand. Could you ask someone to move it? I'll park mine on the street when I get back."

She drove to the nearest public phone she could find and called her brother-in-law Ted. She feared that Thelma might be around and see the caller ID of her home phone.

"Ted, it's Jane. Don't say anything. Just let me ask you a favor. Your mother has forged a codicil to Steve's will cutting me out if I remarry."

Ted said, as if this was an ordinary business call, "That doesn't surprise me."

"Furthermore, I suspect she's hired a detective to keep track of where I go and how I'm dressed."

Ted's response was simply, "Ah."

"Here's what I'd like to do," Jane said. "Meet with me at the McDonald's down the street to the north of my house. You get there by eleven-thirty and I'll arrive ten or fifteen minutes later. Surely if there is a detective following me, he won't bother to come inside."

"Done."

When Jane arrived Ted was sitting as far from a window as it was possible to be. She joined him. "Was someone following you?" he asked.

"There was a black car parked down the block that turned in here just two cars behind mine."

"Jane, I can't tell you how sorry I am. My mother should be put away somewhere. She's always been a rude woman. Now she's out of control. Right in front of our daughters she called our girls `Chinks' without realizing how offensive it was. Poor Dixie cried all night. But I knew that my mother wouldn't be able to negate the adoption of the girls. Every single step was done correctly."

"I'm sorry for you, too, Ted. You have to spend a lot more time with her than I do. And thank goodness the girls aren't old enough or know enough English words to realize they had been insulted."

"It's getting harder and harder to put up with her," he admitted. "Dixie says she'll never allow my mother to be around the girls again, and I agree."

He went on, "As for the detective, I think I can easily put a stop to it. I do my mother's taxes every year andkeep her checkbook balanced monthly, and this year there was a suspicious check for a thousand dollars that she wouldn't explain. She just said it was none of my business. But I still have the check in the file and it was endorsed by a detective agency. I thought at first she'd hired them to try to find something wrong with the adoption papers and get the girls sent back to China, and I knew that it was all in perfect order, so I didn't give it another thought. I'll call them off you. I'll also tell her I know what she's doing and put a stop to it. I'll tell the agency she's demented."

"Ted, you're a good man. I owe you a big thank-you."

"No, you don't. You just confirmed for me that Mom is truly around the bend. Not only dotty, but downright mean as well."

"As we're already here, I'll treat you to a burger, fries, and a drink. Just so you leave the restaurant before I do."

"It's a deal. I hate to say this, but I love fast food."

Jane watched Ted leave. The black car followed her home at a distance when she left ten minutes later.

When Jane got home, she called Shelley and said, "Take a

little walk with me down the street. You'll enjoy it." "Why?"

"You'll see,"Jane said cheerfully.

Shelley joined her as they approached the black car parked down the block. Jane led Shelley to the driver's

side of the car, and tapped on the window. The driver rolled down the window and said, "Who are you and what do you want?"

"You know perfectly well that I'm Jane Jeffry, and that Thelma Jeffry hired you to follow me around and report where I'd gone and with whom. As of tomorrow, you won't have this job. Thelma Jeffry has been put in a nursing home for terminal dementia. Have a good day."

"Ma'am, I just do what my boss tells me to do."

"Your boss is going to assign you to follow someone else around. Let's go home, Shelley," she said as she walked away.

When they returned to Jane's house, they were both laughing hysterically.

As Jane was pouring them cups of fresh coffee, she said, "I sneaked away to have a heart-to-heart talk with Ted Jeffry at lunch. He says he'll get rid of the detective. He thought Thelma was trying to get their baby girls sent back to China when he saw the endorsement on one of her checks. He knew she didn't stand a chance of pulling it off. Dixie won't ever let Thelma near the girls again because last time she visited Ted and Dixie, she called the girls `Chinks.'"

"Oh no. I didn't realize how truly evil she is."

"Ted knows now. I'm sorrier for him than I am for myself And I'm not sending her invitations to either of the weddings. I dearly hope I never have to see or speak to her again."

"I'll bet that goes for Dixie, and possibly Ted, too."

"I believe he's ready to do all he can to put her out to pasture," Jane said.

"How can he do that?" Shelley asked.

"Ted's bright and angry and loves his wife and little girls. He'll find a way."

Mel called Jane around five that afternoon and said, "I'm hungry for a Chili's burger. Want me to order pickup and bring it over? My treat."

"Oh, please do. Shelley and I were just sitting here lamenting about empty fridges."