“Oh, yes, we did,” my mother said, her shoulders squared. “For business and marketing reasons.”

“We did it because of Karma,” Aunt Camellia said, waving her arms. “What goes around comes around. Karma drifts around people like the wind.” She moved her arms wildly. I think she was trying to imitate blustery wind and not a seizure.

“And we posted it because we’re vengeful,” Aunt Iris said, “when our friends are hurt.”

“Who was the bouquet for?” I asked. There was a reason for this mean bouquet, by golly.

“It was for Kora Liponski over on Lopozzo Island,” Aunt Iris said, her disgust apparent. “Her husband left her last week for that manipulative dragon. The lout. The spider. The worm. Her sister ordered Kora the bouquet to show sisterhood bonding.”

“And the manipulative dragon who seduced the husband was Tina Sorbel,” I said.

My mother and aunts nodded. I groaned. Poor Kora. Tina was prissy. Awful. Manipulative. She was a piece of work. However, she could be a sexy piece of work for a man dumb enough to fall for the vulnerable act she had perfected over the years, where she pretended that she needed protecting. Tina needed protecting about as much as a rabid viper.

“She did wrong,” my mother said. “Taking another woman’s man!”

“Hopefully her intestines will twist,” Aunt Camellia said. “I don’t like to get violent about people’s intestines—I believe that one should wish for happiness and peace for all—but Tina deserves it. Kora and Vance have five young kids. Five. Tina has a black soul poisoned by her selfishness, and Vance has the brain of a skunk, but Vance was Kora’s skunk and Tina shouldn’t have taken the skunk. The skunk was Kora’s to shoot, not Tina’s.”

“Tina Sorbel doesn’t even seem like the type of woman who would like sex, so it’s hard to picture a torrid affair here,” I said. “She’s too concerned with keeping her lipstick on straight and her hair brushed. She looks like an overgrown Barbie.”

“I don’t think she took Kora’s husband for the sex,” Aunt Iris said.

“She took him for his horses,” my mother said.

“You’re kidding.”

“Oh no,” Aunt Iris said. “Those horses are racing horses. He takes them off the island a couple of times a year. She loves traveling and wearing those fancy, silly hats to the horse races.”

“Those hats don’t compare with ours,” Aunt Camellia sniffed. “We make our hats with the intent to bring smiles to others, to make them laugh, to bring creativity and color to their day.”

“No comparison,” my mother sniffed, too. “We make our hats with love.”

“We will never make Tina a hat, or a bouquet. We will not even sell her one daisy,” Aunt Iris said. “Can we agree on that simple, rational solution?”

“Agreed,” my mother said. “She took Kora’s husband, and that makes her not hat or flower worthy.”

“She’s on The List,” Aunt Camellia intoned. She enthusiastically drew Tina’s name in the air with an imaginary pen.