The delivery driver was already halfway back to his van when I hurried to the doorway and called after him.
“Excuse me! Are you certain these flowers are meant for me?”
He paused, checked the clipboard tucked beneath his arm, then glanced back at the label.
“Mary?”
“Yes.”
“Then they’re yours, ma’am.”
He offered me a polite but slightly puzzled smile, the sort of expression a young man wears when delivering an extravagant bouquet to an elderly woman who clearly lives alone.
Weddings
“Have a nice day.”
Then he climbed into his van and disappeared down the street.
I remained in the doorway, barely able to see over the enormous bouquet in my arms.
Yellow roses.
Dozens of them.
Their fragrance filled the chilly morning air as I carried them into the kitchen and placed them carefully on the table.
Something about the bouquet bothered me.
So I counted them.
Then I counted them again.
Fifty-six.
My hand froze on the last stem.
Fifty-six yellow roses.
Today would have been my fifty-sixth wedding anniversary.
For several moments, I simply stared at them.
Nobody sent me flowers anymore.
Most of my closest friends had passed away, and the handful who remained certainly wouldn’t spend hundreds of dollars on such an elaborate arrangement.
I lived carefully on my retirement income.
And I had never bought flowers for myself.
No.
This wasn’t an accident.
Fifty-six was far too precise.
I pulled the largest vase I owned from beneath the sink.
It was an old crystal vase someone had given us as a wedding gift, one I had barely used over the decades.
I filled it with water and began arranging the roses.
Then something scraped sharply against my thumb.
“Ow.”
I jerked my hand away, expecting a thorn.
But there was no thorn.
Deep between the fresh roses was something strange.
Something yellow.
Something crushed and faded.
Paper.
Carefully, I pulled it free.
It was supposed to be a rose.
At least, I thought it was.
Someone had folded an old piece of yellow paper into a flower, but whoever made it clearly had no talent for delicate work.
The petals were uneven.
One side leaned farther outward than the other.
The paper stem had been strengthened with an old strip of tape that had turned amber with age.
I almost laughed.
It was easily the ugliest paper rose I had ever seen.
