The rest of the day went by like a snail headed for his own funeral. Jody was still in a snit because of Lyle. Paula worked on finding existing patterns that could be adapted to sew what Ellie Mae and the twins wanted. Mitzi watched the clock and could have shouted when the girls arrived fifteen minutes early.

“Hey, we’re here!” Tabby called out.

“In the sewing room,” Jody yelled.

In seconds they were at the door, each of them holding up a tote bag. “Did you get flowers? Where can we work? We brought our scissors and tape and all that stuff we had for class so you don’t have to buy any of that.” Tabby bubbled with excitement.

“The flowers are still in the van because it was raining this morning, but I didn’t realize you needed more than that, so I’m glad you brought supplies.” She wasn’t about to admit that she was so rattled after she talked to Graham that she’d filled up the cart and barely had room to fit them into the back of her van with all the other flowers.

“We’ll bring them in,” Tabby said. “Just tell us where to put them.”

“How about for now you work out of the kitchen? But we really should discuss what I’m going to pay you to do this,” Mitzi said.

“Pay?” Tabby gasped. “We don’t need money. This is for fun.”

“But what if later, someone sees the mannequin display and wants the store to do their flowers? You can’t do that for free. Follow me, and I’ll unlock the van.” Mitzi led the way across the foyer to the kitchen, opened the back door, and pressed a button on her key fob to open the hatch on the van.

The girls put their heads together and whispered, then Dixie said, “If that happens, we’ll talk about it then. Right now we’re just glad to get out of the house and get to play around in this place.”

“This is like amazing,” Tabby said when she brought in the first armload of flowers. “We weren’t expecting to have so much to work with.”

“I guess I got carried away.” Mitzi smiled at their enthusiasm.

“Heaven must be just like this.” Dixie hugged herself when the countertops were filled with flowers.

“I’ll leave you girls to it. Could you make the first bouquet in red roses and use some of the black lace on the table in the fabric room for an accent? Then maybe come back the first of the week and do up one in fall colors that we’ll use in October?”

“We’d come back every day and sweep up the scraps from the floors to get to spend time here,” Dixie said.

“Could we use some black ribbon, too?” Tabby asked. “We’ll be careful and not be wasteful.”