Jill Churchill: The Accidental Florist

"She's a terror."

"But a rich one. I've made rules. I chose all the flowers, I've chosen the hotel, and they can only supply rooms for three hundred guests."

"I don't think I even know three hundred people I'd want to invite to a wedding,"Jim said with a laugh.

"Neither do I," Jane admitted. `But Addie wants to force all her richest clients into coming to `her' wedding and eating and drinking well. Purely a business deal in her view."

"If she's paying for it, good for her. So when and where do Mel and I go to be fitted for tuxes?"

Jane consulted her notes and told him the answer. "Now, you tell me a good, pleasant judge we can prevail on to marry us."

Jim gave her three names, in order of preference, and told her their office phone numbers. He said again, "I can't wait to get to meet with your parents in person. It's been far too long since I've been able to just sit around and jaw with them."

"They feel the same way, Uncle Jim. And thanks for the names of judges. And by the way, would you take Todd along with you and Mel? Mike will have to go, too, the minute he gets home."

Two more revisions to the list, she thought.

Jane was pleased to cross a number of things off her list. The first judge she called was very impressed that Jim was her honorary uncle and would be glad to do the civil wedding. They set up a time.

The printing outfit she'd interviewed about business cards was glad to do the inserts for the wedding invitations. Jane instructed them that they should say, "Jane Jeffry and Mel VanDyne are combining households and don't need gifts. If guests wish to make a donation to Habitat for Humanity, the Red Cross, or the Salvation Army, Jane and Mel would be very grateful."

The printer suggested the printing style, the paper weight, and the color, and Jane accepted all of his advice. They would be ready by tomorrow.

Next on the list was picking up her hat. She still had a few quarters left; and the hat was ready and looked wonderful and wouldn't blow or fall off her head.

When she got back home, she called Ted about web-sites. He told her who had set up and updated the Jeffry

Pharmacy pages. "It's a bit expensive, but you won't have as much data to work with quite yet. Here's the name and number of the Webmaster."

She'd deal with this after the wedding, but was enormously smug at having tended to everything on her list. All she had to do was pick up the inserts for the wedding announcements the next day and FedEx half of them to Addie, then alert everybody involved as to where and when the civil wedding would take place.

A new list to make.

Chapter

TWENTY

J

ane had finished everything on her list the day before, except calling the Webmaster Ted had suggested. That could wait until after the weddings. She started a new list. The fridge was nearly empty and after getting rid of some very overripe cheese and lumpy milk, and the last of the congealed inch of orange juice, she went hunting for other things that were way past their sell date. Some cream cheese that had never been opened and she feared it was too old to even examine closely.

Then she made a new list of meals and what she needed for each one. Chili sounded too hot for summer, and so was pot roast. Though she did both superbly in the winter. So she put down eggs, salad stuff, and good sourdough bread. Since the caper bottle had only fourlittle mildewed globs, she also disposed of those and put them on the list along with a new bottle of salad dressing, mayo, and a variety of chips and soft drinks. Hamburger, hot dogs, bacon, and good summer tomatoes.

Then she rewrote the list by aisles in her closest grocery store. No point in wasting time going back to where she'd already been for something else.

Shelley was the only person who fully understood Jane's obsession with lists. Shelley sometimes made lists herself.

Jane came home with six bags. She had everything on the list, but she'd been drawn to some expensive little plastic bottles of pomegranate juice that she thought might be good for a special salad dressing she'd seen as a recipe in a magazine. She'd also bought some Ben and Jerry's Cherry Garcia ice cream. She hadn't purged the freezer, but she knew that Todd had eaten the last of the carton she thought she'd hidden to eat herself as a guilty pleasure from time to time.

There were some new interesting chips and crackers as well. Parmesan Cheez-Its, of all things. And great big Wheat Thins, and a bag of York Peppermint Patties, which weren't anywhere on the list, but were displayed next to the checkout line.

When she got home, she realized that the pantry also needed purging before she could put anything more in it. After hiding the ice cream behind a big bag of Texas Toast, she put away everything else that had to go in the fridge and started on the pantry.

There were soggy potato chips, three remaining Cheez-Its occupying a big box, Pringles that had also lost their crispness due to a missing lid, a box of Bisquick that felt solidified, many half-filled bags of various sizes and shapes of pastas, and three boxes of instant stuffing that had dates on the boxes that were three years old.

She was filling a trash bag when the phone rang.

Setting down the bag, she picked up the kitchen phone.

"Jane, it's Ted. Mother's gone."

"Oh, Ted. I'm so sorry,"Jane said, trying hard to sound sincere.

"Jane, not even I am that sorry," Ted said.

"How did it happen? Another stroke?"

"Not exactly. There were protective plastic-covered bars around her bed to keep her from accidentally falling out of it. Apparently she'd been watching how the release button worked on the right side. She was only paralyzed on her left side. She apparently pressed the release button, and left her right arm between the bars, and catapulted out of the bed."

Jane smiled, and said, "Fighting life to the very last minute, wasn't she?"

Ted said, "It was what she did best." She could tell by his voice that he, too, was smiling.

"Was anybody in the room with her?" Jane asked.

"Yes, one of the younger nurses. The nurse tried to catch her, but Mother was half again the nurse's height and weight and broke several of the nurse's fingers on the fall.

Then she struck her head on the corner of the nightstand. They said she was dead before she even reached the floor."

"You're not thinking of bringing legal suit against the nursing home, are you?"

"Lord, no! Mother caused her own death, and injury to the nurse."

"She'll be buried next to your father, I assume." "Yes, they bought four lots ages ago."

"Let me know when the funeral will be, please."

"Jane, you don't need to go. Dixie and the girls aren't even going. It's just going to be me and the church ladies. There will be a memorial service for our employees first."

"I need to be there to help you fend off the church ladies, Ted."

"I suppose that would help. I'll let you know the date as soon as I can."

The memorial service for the local employees was planned for Tuesday, and the burial for Wednesday. Ted asked Jane if she could write up this information and turn it in to several of the local newspapers.

It was the least she could do for Ted. Not Thelma.

She was especially careful not to let her personal opinion show. Or anything emotional. Just where and when Thelma Johnson Jeffry had been born to start the piece. Jane had asked for this information when Mike was born and she was filling in his baby book. Too bad Katie and Todd didn't have baby books. Between Mike's birth and Katie's she'd been too busy learning to be a cook, dishwasher, and diaper-changing mother.

Anyway, she had the information about Thelma, and said she was the widow of Elmer Jeffry, the founder of the Jeffry Pharmacy chain. Time and place of interment.