1937
Evansville had changed. Electricity hummed through its streets, the first cars lined Main Street, and the new department store towered where the elm trees once stood. Swanson’s Flower Shop still kept its modest window display, but the name on the sign had changed.
Now it read: “Swanson & Daughters.”
Vera had grown older, though time seemed to move more gently on her face than others. Her hair had silvered, her hands trembled faintly, but her eyes, those deep, cool blue eyes, still carried a brightness untouched by the years. Her eldest daughter, Marianne, ran most of the business now, while Vera tended the greenhouse behind the shop.
That summer, Marianne began a new series of bouquets inspired by her mother’s travels to France long ago. They called it La Couleur Bleue, an exploration of rare blue petals and forget-me-nots, woven through ivory lilies and lavender sprays. The blooms shimmered like frost under lamplight, delicate yet strangely resilient.
People adored them.
They said the color brought serenity, that holding the bouquet stilled the mind, as though one could hear the ocean in the quiet between breaths. The bouquets became a sensation in Louisville, Chicago, and even as far as New York. The Swansons opened a second shop, though no one could say exactly how they managed to cultivate so many flowers so quickly.
Marianne would only smile and say, “Mother taught us well.”
Still, whispers lingered. Workers who handled the soil said it was unlike any they’d touched before, cold to the touch, yet full of life. A few complained of restless sleep, of hearing faint music from the basement when no one was there. One night, a delivery boy swore he saw the faint outline of roots moving beneath the floorboards, like veins pulsing in slow rhythm.
When Vera passed quietly in her sleep later that year, the town mourned her as a saint of beauty, a woman who had brought color through war and depression alike.
At her funeral, the air was thick with the scent of lilies and violets, and though no one could explain it, a single blue petal drifted down from the rafters of the chapel, landing on her folded hands.
That night, the greenhouse lights burned brighter than they ever had before, a deep electric blue radiating into the fog. And in the morning, the La Couleur Bleue blooms had all turned toward the east, toward the long road that led back to Crimson’s Orchard.
Swanson’s Flower Shop
- Chapter I: Shades of Blauw
- Chapter I (continued): Shades of Blauw
- Chapter I (final): Shades of Blauw
- Chapter II: Shades of Brzoskwinia
- Chapter III: Shades of Natura
- Chapter IV: Shades of Violaceous
- Chapter V: Shades of La Couleur Bleue
- Chapter VI: Shades of Brun
- Chapter VII: Shades of Noire
- Epilogue: The Geddes Report