I laughed, imagining Mrs. Bennet going after Marcus, finger wagging and face bent up and red. “I was thinking next week, we can use two of the ladders to suspend from the ceiling for me to hang arrangements off of.”

“Oh, you know—I know a guy who laser-cuts acrylics and welds. I know you like geometrics, right?”

I glanced at him, surprised. “I do. How’d you know?”

He shot me a little smile. “You just ordered all those planters with the gold wire frames. Kyle could totally make you something like that. Or acrylic planters, big ones. We could do a big display, plant succulents, make it look like a minimalist jungle.”

I smiled. “I like it. How fast can he get something to us?”

“Draw something up, and I’ll ask.”

We walked for a second in silence. The cool of the summer evening was welcome after the sweltering heat of the day. Marcus had just spent a small fortune installing air-conditioning in the front, promising we’d sell more if we kept it under eighty degrees, and he’d tasked Mrs. Bennet with keeping a water dispenser on the display table just inside the door to lure people in.

Honestly, it worked. I swear, some people just came in under the promise that frosted, sweating cooler full of sliced fruit water made. But they always left with a bouquet.

At the last kid meeting, Marcus told us we had a long way to go, years to catch up to the debt, but this was an excellent start. We’d put our best foot forward. I only hoped we could keep up the pace.

“How do you know so many people?” I asked, unable to catalog the array of encounters he’d had.

Seriously, he had a guy for just about everything.

“As you so kindly noted, I’ve had a lot of jobs. I collect friends like some people collect matryoksa dolls.”

My brows gathered. “What dolls?”

“Russian nesting dolls. Wendy and I used to live next door to this little old Russian lady who had about a thousand of them. No lie—I really do think she had a thousand. They covered every wall in her living room. She said her grandfather owned a shop in St. Petersburg about the same time my ancestors were opening Longbourne.”

My heart slid into my stomach at the mention of Wendy. “I bet she had stories to tell.”

“That she did. She would call me synochik, make me tea in a pot older than God, and tell me about her village. Her husband and kids. Her parents and grandparents. Surviving the winter by sleeping on a massive stove made of clay. Foraging and storing food in spring and summer. The war. It’s crazy, what she’s been through. I used to go down every Saturday morning and eat biscuits with her and just listen.”

“Wendy didn’t go with you?” I asked tentatively.

He huffed a laugh. “Wendy couldn’t be bothered to listen to an old woman talk. She was too deep in her own head for anyone but herself.”