“Then we’ll write him a letter. Your mother is sure to know an address where it will reach him,” he said energetically.
“But . . . but . . .” Kuno looked first at his son, then at Flora. “What about Flora’s new floristry master? What’s he going to do if she doesn’t take up her post as planned?”
Flora and Friedrich giggled like two schoolchildren. They had forgotten all about Flora’s invented apprenticeship in Reutlingen!
The closer their train got to Flora’s home village of G?nningen, the more restless she became. What would her mother say? Would she feel that Flora had left her to fend for herself with all the work? Or would she believe, perhaps, that the whole thing had been planned like this from the start?
“Mother is going to fall off her chair, I swear. I never even hinted at anything like this in a single letter I wrote,” she fretted as the autumn landscape rolled past. “She’ll probably think I’ve been hiding it from her for months.”
Friedrich squeezed her hand and tried to reassure her, but it was not an easy task.
“What about my seed selling in winter and our customers in Baden-Baden?” Flora asked despairingly.
Friedrich frowned. “I thought you wanted to suggest to your parents that you continue to serve the customers in your Baden-Baden Samenstrich, didn’t you? There’s very little to do in the shop in winter, and you would have plenty of time to carry on with the seed business. Maybe we could even put up a rack of seeds and sell them directly.”
“Of course, but . . .” Flora’s thoughts tumbled on and on.
“You’re starting to look as worried as my mother,” Friedrich said.
Flora glared at him. “I’ve never had this many things to worry about before!”
And Hannah very nearly did fall off her chair. The newly engaged couple were sitting at the dinner table with her, the twins, Seraphine, and Suse when Flora made the announcement. After a stunned moment of silence, everyone started talking at once.
“You’re marrying a stranger, just as I did!” was the first thing Hannah said. She was on the verge of tears.
Suse let out a high-pitched squeal. “I knew it! I knew it!” She jumped up and threw her arms around Flora.
The twins made some unintelligible sounds that could be interpreted as congratulations, and then they clapped both Friedrich and Flora on the shoulder.
Hannah stood up and busied herself with the coffeepot at the stove. A minute for herself, just a minute to . . .
Her little Flora was getting married. And leaving G?nningen forever. Just as she herself had once left Nuremberg to go in search of Helmut.
She looked back over her shoulder, scrutinizing her daughter. It was all so sudden. Had Flora thought this through? The way she held Friedrich’s hand, she seemed almost childlike, na?ve. Or was she perhaps pregnant? But Hannah instantly rebuked herself for her suspicions: not every woman gets married because she has to.
So many memories came at once. It had been bitterly cold when she arrived in G?nningen just before Christmas in 1849, the snow knee-deep. And she had been so worried about whether G?nningen might be a new home for her at all. Admittedly, the situation she found herself in back then was not comparable to Flora’s. The way Friedrich seemed to idolize Flora left his love in no doubt. But in 1849, Hannah had had to fight to win her husband’s love. It was not always a fair fight, but what was it they said? All’s fair in love and war . . .
Since then, she and her rival, Seraphine—Helmut’s fiancée when Hannah arrived in G?nningen—had come to terms with how things were, and they even lived under the same roof, albeit on different floors. Seraphine had been married to Valentin almost as long as Hannah had been married to Helmut. And sometimes Valentin even managed to make his wife smile, although most of the time he tried in vain. Helmut had no interest at all in his sister-in-law, and Hannah would not have stood for any less! The bond between the brothers continued to be very close, and the two women had their work to do, so they did their best not to get in each other’s way.
Yes, many things had changed. And many things had stayed the same.
“If you like, I’ll give you my wedding dress. It’s hanging in my closet, as good as new,” said Seraphine to Flora just then.
Something felt as if it were pressing at the back of Hannah’s eye. The old times were forgotten. Her little girl in a wedding dress—it was hard for her to imagine.
Oh, if only Helmut were here. He would no doubt whisper to her that she should not be so sentimental. Or would he be even more sentimental than her? It was not easy for a father to let a daughter go, after all.
Oh, Helmut . . .
He would like Friedrich, Hannah was certain of that.
Friedrich hung on Flora’s every word, nodding almost reverently at everything she said. He was head over heels for her, that was obvious. He seemed a little quiet, but she was sure he was a decent fellow. Even the twins, lounging against the kitchen cabinets, seemed to think that; they also seemed to have forgotten that they had announced earlier that they were going off to meet their friends at The Sun. And Suse, who had just planned to pop in for a moment to welcome her friend home, also made no signs of leaving, although it was now well after dark.
Hannah set the pot of freshly brewed coffee on the table, then sliced a fruit loaf. It was really time for her to be thinking about getting dinner started, but she did not want to disturb the wonderful mood with too much bustling around. When was the last time they had all been gathered so pleasantly at the table? How often did happy news like this come along?
At some point, the last crumb of fruit loaf was gone, and the coffeepot empty. The twins took Friedrich off to the inn with them—his engagement to their sister had to be duly celebrated, after all. Suse put on a shocked face at the late hour and hurried away. Seraphine retired to her room with a headache.
Finally, mother and daughter were alone.
Hannah opened a bottle of red wine.
“Why only now?” Flora asked, indicating the bottle.
“I’m not going to waste good wine like this on your brothers,” Hannah replied with a laugh. “Well? Are you happy, my child?” she asked over the rim of her wineglass.
Flora sipped the wine thoughtfully. “Of course I’m happy. But I’ve never really been unhappy in my life, so I don’t feel much different from usual.”
Hannah frowned. “Hmm. But if you’re in love . . .”
“What do I know about being in love? Oh, Mother, I feel so stupid sometimes,” Flora suddenly said. “All summer, I’ve been going walking with Friedrich. We’ve talked and told stories and laughed together. And in all that time, it never occurred to me that we might be in love with each other. Whenever Sabine teased me about it, I actually got rather angry at her. I was firmly convinced that all we had was a remarkably close friendship.” She looked at Hannah with an almost despairing look in her eyes. “Can a person really be so na?ve?”
Hannah smiled. Her Flora, her own little know-all in everything but matters of the heart.
“Being a little slow to understand the state of your own feelings is not uncommon. I’d go so far as to say it’s probably true of most of us.”
“Really?” Flora looked at her mother hopefully. “You know, my mind was really on the flower shop most of the time.”
Love doesn’t happen in your mind, Hannah almost said, but kept it to herself. “You wanted to learn something, and your training came first. Your father and I expected nothing else of you. We knew you didn’t go to Baden-Baden to flirt with men.”
“Of course, but . . .” Flora still looked depressed. “But, well, Friedrich and I . . .”
“Yes?”
“It’s just that, somehow it seems strange to me that we will soon be husband and wife. And when I think about us, well . . .” Flora’s concentration was trained on her fingernail tracing a crack in the tabletop.