You Can Ask The Flowers

The telegram arrived on a Tuesday morning when Iris Bloom was contemplating whether thirty-two years of spinsterhood warranted throwing herself into Boston Harbor, and it contained news that would either save her life or condemn her soul—though she wouldn't discover which until she stood in a greenhouse full of impossible flowers, listening to plants that whispered secrets in the dark.

She read the yellow paper three times before the words settled into meaning, her fingers trembling against the rough telegraph stock as Mrs. Pemberton's sewing machine clattered its disapproval from across the cramped workroom. The other seamstresses pretended not to watch as Iris sank onto her stool, the telegram crackling in her suddenly nerveless grip.

ELEANOR BLOOM DECEASED STOP YOU ARE SOLE INHERITOR STOP PLEASE CONTACT WHITMORE ASSOCIATES LEGAL MILLBROOK MASSACHUSETTS IMMEDIATE ATTENTION REQUIRED STOP

"Bad news, dear?" Mrs. Pemberton's voice carried that particular blend of sympathy and curiosity that made Iris's teeth ache. The older woman had perfected the art of extracting gossip while hemming wedding dresses for other people's daughters—daughters who hadn't spent their prime years hunched over someone else's needle and thread, watching their youth disappear into the seams of other women's dreams.

"My grandmother," Iris managed, though the word tasted strange on her tongue. Eleanor Bloom had been banished from family conversation when Iris was barely ten, dismissed as the mad relation who claimed to speak with spirits and spent her inheritance on botanical nonsense in some godforsaken Massachusetts village. Mother had forbidden even mentioning Eleanor's name after the embarrassing incident at Cousin Margaret's wedding, when Eleanor had arrived uninvited and spent the reception warning guests about "creatures that walk between worlds."

"Oh, the poor dear," Mrs. Pemberton clucked, though her needle never slowed. "Was she quite elderly?"

Iris calculated quickly. Eleanor would have been—what? Eighty-something? Ancient by any measure, though she'd outlived both of Iris's parents and most of their generation. "Eighty-four," she said, surprising herself by knowing the number.

"A good long life, then. Still, family is family." Mrs. Pemberton's tone suggested that family was also an inconvenience, particularly when it interfered with the autumn rush of debutante gowns. "You'll be needing time for the funeral, I suppose?"

The word 'inheritor' pulsed behind Iris's eyes like a heartbeat. Sole inheritor. She'd never inherited so much as a thimble, had never expected to own anything beyond her sewing basket and the cramped room she rented above Murphy's bakery. The very concept seemed as fantastical as Eleanor's old stories about flowers that bloomed in moonlight.

"I'll need to travel to Massachusetts," Iris said, the words feeling foreign as she spoke them. "For—for legal matters."

Mrs. Pemberton's eyebrows rose toward her steel-gray hairline. "Massachusetts? How long might you be gone?"

Iris stared at the telegram until the letters blurred. How long did it take to inherit a life? How long to discover what a woman like Eleanor Bloom—brilliant, unmarried, mysteriously wealthy—had built in her years of exile from proper society?

"I'm not certain," she said finally. "Perhaps... perhaps indefinitely."

The sewing machine stopped mid-stitch. Mrs. Pemberton's mouth formed a perfect circle of shock, while the other girls turned with undisguised interest. Iris Bloom, the reliable spinster who'd never missed a day's work in twelve years, who'd sewn through influenza and heartbreak and the terrible winter when the heating failed—Iris Bloom was contemplating abandoning her position for a dead woman's mystery.

"Now, dear," Mrs. Pemberton began in the tone she used for hysterical brides, "you mustn't make hasty decisions in your grief. This grandmother of yours—you hadn't spoken in years, had you? She's probably left you some old furniture and perhaps a small inheritance. Nothing worth leaving steady employment over."

But Iris was remembering Eleanor's last visit, twenty-two years ago now. She'd been ten years old, hiding behind the parlor curtains while Mother and Eleanor argued in furious whispers. Eleanor had worn a traveling dress of deep green velvet, her silver hair pinned with ornaments that seemed to catch light even in the dim room. When she'd finally stormed toward the door, she'd paused, turned, and looked directly at Iris's hiding place.

"The flowers remember everything," Eleanor had said, her voice carrying clearly across the room. "When you're ready to listen, they'll tell you the truth about our family."

Mother had gasped and rushed to draw the curtains properly closed, but not before Iris had seen Eleanor's smile—sad and knowing and somehow full of promise.

"I believe," Iris said slowly, folding the telegram with careful precision, "that my grandmother may have left me considerably more than furniture."

She stood, ignoring Mrs. Pemberton's sputtered protests, and walked to the coat rack where her threadbare shawl hung alongside the elaborate wraps of her more fashionable coworkers. October in Boston carried a chill that promised winter, but for the first time in years, Iris felt warmth spreading through her chest.

Eleanor Bloom had been the family scandal, the cautionary tale whispered at Christmas dinners about what happened to women who rejected marriage for mysterious pursuits. She'd been brilliant and educated and utterly unmarriageable, had owned property and conducted correspondence with universities and spent her considerable inheritance on projects that respectable people deemed eccentric at best, dangerous at worst.

She'd been everything Iris had never dared to be.

"Miss Bloom," Mrs. Pemberton called as Iris reached the door. "If you leave now, I can't guarantee your position will be waiting when you return."

Iris paused with her hand on the brass doorknob, looking back at the workroom that had contained her entire adult life. Bolts of silk and satin lined the walls like rainbow prison bars, while half-finished gowns hung from dress forms like the ghosts of other women's happiness. She'd sewn thousands of wedding dresses, christening gowns, debutante presentations—all the milestones of conventional feminine success that had passed her by.

"Mrs. Pemberton," she said quietly, "I don't believe I'll be returning."

The door closed behind her with a soft click that sounded remarkably like freedom.

Outside, Boston's October afternoon pressed against her with familiar weight—the smell of coal smoke and horse manure, the clatter of carriages on cobblestones, the endless gray sky that had defined her days for thirty-two years. But beneath it all, Iris caught something else: the faint, impossible scent of roses blooming out of season.

She walked quickly toward the telegraph office, Eleanor's words echoing in her memory. The flowers remember everything. What did that mean? What truth had Eleanor discovered in her exile from proper society? And why had she left it all to the granddaughter who'd never answered her letters, never visited her mysterious Massachusetts estate?

The telegram in her reticule crackled as she walked, but Iris barely noticed. For the first time in her adult life, she was walking toward something instead of away from it. Somewhere in Massachusetts, a dead woman's secrets were waiting, and with them, perhaps, the answer to what Iris Bloom was meant to become.

Behind her, the sewing machines resumed their mechanical chorus, stitching together the dreams of women who'd chosen conventional paths. Ahead lay Millbrook, Massachusetts, and whatever Eleanor Bloom had built in her decades of glorious, scandalous independence.

Iris quickened her pace, her heart beating in rhythm with her footsteps on the cobblestones. The scent of impossible roses grew stronger with each step, as if the very air were trying to tell her something.

As if, perhaps, it were.