Quiet laughter filled the room.
Mom sighed. “I’d like to fight. I feel that I owe it to all of you to fight. But I want you to decide. I’ll leave my fighting with Evelyn for garden club. At least there, I have shears to defend myself with.”
“Does anyone object?” I asked, scanning their faces.
But they shook their heads in dissent just like I’d known they would. Because if there was one thing Bennets always did, it was stick together. Thick or thin. Rain or shine.
Especially when it came to our opposition to Bower Bouquets.
And to my sorrow, everyone in it.
Including Maisie Bower.
4
Bitter Pill
MAISIE
“I cannot believe you showed up to that meeting like this,” Mother said, gesturing to the length of me.
“You’ve mentioned.” I turned my gaze out the Mercedes window as we pulled away from the curb. “Would you have preferred me to go home and change first? I was late as it was.”
“I would have preferred you not disobey me. This was not part of the agreement—you were to go to and from work with me, live under my roof. One year, Margaret. You have one brief year to prove you’re responsible enough to do what’s asked of you, and you’ve already failed.”
“You were the one who refused to take me with you this morning.”
The temperature dropped several degrees. “That meeting was none of your concern. And you should have listened to me—if you had, you wouldn’t have ruined your dress. I’d ask when you were going to learn I know best, but we both know you likely won’t.” She ignored my sigh. “At the very least, you could have gotten a cab. But the subway?” She shuddered in my periphery.
“Millions of people take the subway.”
“You are not one of them.” She smoothed her skirt. “I’d almost say you got what you deserved, if I wasn’t so appalled at your display this morning.”
My heart lurched at the thought of Marcus and the ghost of his kiss even though I knew that wasn’t what she meant. It was just that it was the only thing on my mind. The only thing that seemed to matter, if for no other reason than my mother stood in the way of something I wanted. Again.
“Of all days, Margaret,” she huffed. “You know how important this is to me.”
“Taking down a tiny flower shop just to be petty doesn’t seem all that much of a priority. You run a multibillion-dollar company. Why you’d spend your time sinking the poor Bennets is beyond me.”
My bitterness was unmistakable, and I couldn’t have schooled it if I tried. Her inexplicable, small-minded dedication to the destruction of Longbourne was the reason I would never speak to Marcus again. And as a result, I had nothing charitable to say to her.
Her voice lowered an octave, sharp as a razor’s edge when she answered, “Because the Bennets take things that aren’t theirs. They believe themselves to be above their station, and I’d like to put them back in their place.”
I couldn’t even look at her for certainty I’d say more than I already had, which was too much.
“I can’t see why you care,” she said as stiffly as her back. “The Bennets have never been anything to you.”
And thanks to you, they never will be.
“They’re human beings,” I said, knowing it was useless. “Isn’t that enough reason for compassion?”
“Compassion? For the Bennets? Your grandmother just rolled over in her grave.”
I watched out the window as it began to rain again. Fat droplets hit the windows and streaked like comets across a glassy sky, and I wished on one of them that I could go back to England. Having an ocean and a five-hour time difference between me and my mother had become a crucial necessity in my life. One I hadn’t fully realized until I came back.
Of course, that was its own necessity. England had been a respite, a temporary stay of execution, and we’d all known it.
My mother had made herself a household name, hitched her wagon to 1-800-ROSES4U, and cashed in big. Bower Bouquets could be found in strip malls all over the country, and we distributed flowers all over the world. There were Bower books on floral design with my mother’s face on the covers. The floral magazine Mother had started in the nineties was one of the largest on the market, sitting right next to Star and US Weekly in the checkout line, and unsurprisingly, she featured herself on every cover. Making appearances on the most popular talk shows and national morning shows was just a regular Tuesday, and she hobnobbed so successfully that she received annual invitations to all the awards shows and the Met Gala.
Evelyn Bower was a force of nature so powerful, she single-handedly fueled an entire corporation on her energy.
And then there was me.
The great disappointment of my mother’s life was that I wasn’t a duplication of her, complete with a matching French twist and superior tilt of the chin. Though it wasn’t as if she hadn’t tried. In fact, until a few years ago, I had been the model daughter, doing all she asked in the hopes that I’d win her approval.
But my mother was no fool—she knew without question that I was nothing like her. Perhaps she thought me weak for wanting to please her so badly. Or the tenderness of my heart, which she so often criticized me for. It was no secret that I was disinterested in notoriety or fame, and I had zero desire to appear on television or write books or wear dresses to an award show that cost six times what most people spent on their monthly mortgage. But I did as I was told with a genial smile and a wish that maybe if I did things right, she’d be the mother I’d dreamed of when I was a little girl.
Two years ago, that dream had died in a fiery crash that left nothing but truth and ashes.
Evelyn Bower didn’t care about anything but herself.
I’d come to Bower after college, bright-eyed and idealistic about my future at our family company. Proud of my legacy and honored to be in the line of women who had inherited it. There was good to be done in the world, and Bower had all the resources to do it.
In my hand was a project I’d come up with in school, an idea that took root in my mind and the foundation of my heart. The concept was simple—the center was a community outreach program that turned vacant lots into parks with gardens. And not only for flowers.
For food.
The vegetables we grew were then used in a soup kitchen we ran, and all the landscaping, cooking, and management was done by volunteers and the homeless people the soup kitchen served. We taught skills and connected the homeless we served with jobs—the landscaping and construction companies hired half of the workers who volunteered in production. After that first year, some of our volunteers even ended up in management of the kitchen and groundskeeping.
Looking back, I was shocked she’d given it to me, but I saw it for what it was—a patronizing pat on the head and eventually a bargaining chip she’d use to keep me in line. But she’d let me have it without much of a fight, and it’d only taken two little words.
Public relations.
I painted the picture of the press we would get—Charitable daughter of Evelyn Bower starts nonprofit to feed homeless—and she was sold.