Page 18 of The Fix

Cami hefted a box up on the counter of her gift shop, and Bess looked up from where she’d been unpacking new mugs on a shelf near the register. “The sample of your chrysalis kit is here,” she said with a smile.

Bess sucked in an excited breath and walked to where Cami had set the box.

She opened the lid and lifted out the prototype of the item Bess had designed.

It was a beautiful terrarium with curved glass and antique brass accents.

Even without the flowers and greenery inside, it looked like an heirloom piece that had been handed down through generations.

Bess inspected it, turning it this way and that, and then set it down. She bent and gathered some faux greenery in a cabinet near the register. After arranging the greenery inside, she replaced the dome and then stood back and looked at it, her face blooming into a smile. “It’s perfect.”

“It is.” Each one would include a small potted flower—a paperwhite or an orchid, or maybe some thistle—with added greenery and several clipped branches.

Staff would personally collect the butterfly eggs and transfer them to the flowers in the kit, and each would contain an instruction tag on how to care for it as it transformed into a caterpillar and then emerged a butterfly meant to be set free and beautify the world.

“I’ll let the company know it’s a go,” Cami said. “Three hundred units to start, and then we’ll see what’s what.”

Bess nodded excitedly. “They’re the prettiest ones on the market.”

“And the priciest,” Cami said.

“I know. But that’s why they’ll make great gifts. We should start thinking about add-ons. Maybe jewelry charms or stationery ... I’ll fill it tomorrow and start taking photos for our website.”

“Perfect,” Cami said. Her butterfly farm, Flutterfly Gardens, was an all-hands-on-deck operation, and Bess, who worked the register of the gift shop, also managed the website and did most of the photography for both online and print advertisement.

And designed new products, which Cami wasn’t so sure would be a good investment, but with the “you have to spend money to make money” idea in mind, she was willing to give it a go.

Cami had opened the butterfly farm, sanctuary, and gift shop in honor of her mother and sister seven years before, and though it barely made a profit, it was in the black, and more importantly, Cami woke up every day looking forward to her life.

She’d surrounded herself with beauty and serenity and felt purposeful in her work. Flutterfly provided live butterflies for zoos, botanical gardens, classrooms, and the like, and they also offered local butterflies for release at special events. That was one of her personal favorites.

Several years before, they’d begun building an exhibit for visitors to wander through, and it was set to be completed by the end of the year.

She’d love to add to it eventually and possibly rent out hidden corners after-hours for private dinners where proposals might happen under twinkle lights while her butterflies added to the whimsical ambience.

Ideas were constantly fueling her creativity, even if the funds didn’t exactly keep pace.

Still, to have something joyful and inspiring on which to set her mind was a blessing to her.

“Marta’s coming to take over in here in ten,” Bess told her when Cami had returned from the stockroom, where she’d left the sample for Bess to work her magic on. “You’re still coming with me to collect those plants, right?”

“Plants?”

“You know, the ones listed on Marketplace?”

“Oh, the garden estate sale?” Bess had mentioned something on the phone the day before, but Cami had been distracted by her GPS while making a delivery and had only half listened.

“Yes, brilliant, right?” Bess said. “I don’t think anything from inside the house is listed.

But apparently the garden is overrun, and rather than digging all the established plants and flowering bushes up and tossing them in a landfill, the owner offered them for free to anyone willing to come dig them up.

The pictures are insane. There are hollyhocks galore.

We could add them on the south end of the exhibit, as it’s practically empty there.

I think I saw some butterfly bushes and plenty of aster and phlox too. ”

The free part sounded amazing, and she was glad Bess regularly trolled Facebook Marketplace and had caught the listing before someone else. “Who’s going?”

“So far, just me and Quincy. Everyone else is tied up. We could use some help,” Bess said as she formed her hands in prayer.

The everyone else was only five employees, but Cami didn’t currently have anything on the agenda, and so she smiled and nodded at Bess. “I can come along for an extra pair of hands.”

“Really? Awesome. The owner said he wouldn’t be there but is leaving the side gate open.”

“Okay. Just give me ten, and I’ll be ready.”

She’d almost laughed out loud when she first saw the garden.

Cami, Bess, and Quincy had walked through the side gate to see that the entirety of the yard was filled with wildflowers of every sort and color.

It was completely untamed and overly filled.

It was both delirious and charming and felt fairy tale–esque in a way she couldn’t quite describe.

The Mad Hatter’s garden. The place of Tinkerbell’s birth.

“My gosh,” she’d breathed. “This is ...”

“Unhinged?” Quincy suggested.

“Unruly,” she said with a smile. “But beautiful.”

She ran her hand over a hydrangea that was as high as her shoulders, its ball-like flowers the size of a toddler’s head.

There were hollyhocks that must have been six feet tall, and delphinium and meadow rue that reached for the sky.

She could smell the lavender and roses from where she stood, an intoxicating mix that was both heady and calming.

“The owner is giving this away for free? All of it?”

“Anything we want, as long as we dig it up,” Bess had said. “He’s selling this property, though, so we should probably leave a few, at least by the fence to maintain privacy.”

“We’d need triple our crew to get all this out of here anyway,” Quincy, the high school student who worked weekends doing landscaping for Flutterfly, added.

Four hours later, the entirety of the back of the delivery vehicle was full, some plants piled in multiple layers.

They were already looking pretty wilted, but that was to be expected.

They’d be in shock for a few days, but then hopefully, with some TLC, each of them would spring right back to the glory in which they’d been found.

When Bess had mentioned this listing, Cami had had no idea what a plant windfall it was.

They couldn’t have bought flowers this established from any nursery, and this quantity of plants would have cost thousands.

Thousands they didn’t have. These were going to fill in the exhibit area so beautifully.

“That’s all we can fit,” she told the rest of the two-person crew, who’d just worked until they had blisters and sunburn.

“And we still have a job ahead of us getting these in the ground, even though that can wait until tomorrow.” They’d unload and give them a good spray-down at least, and then put them in the dirt in the morning.

But even the unloading was going to take energy that had been zapped for the last half hour.

This work was worth it, but it’d been a lot. Her arm muscles burned.

Bess stood as Cami looked around at the cleared yard. There were still plenty of plants and flowers, but they’d removed enough that it all looked purposeful now, the mosaic stepping stones creating a clear path from the back door to the far fence.

“Do you think the owner would throw in the bird feeders?” Quincy asked.

“Those weren’t listed,” Bess said.

“Yeah, but they couldn’t even be seen before we got here. He might not know they existed. Maybe they’re just something else to get rid of.”

Cami spotted a rustic-looking cast-iron feeder on a stake with a scalloped edge and an iron bird sitting on the edge.

It was lovely and delicate, and if the owner was just going to toss it, she’d certainly be happy to take it off his hands.

“We can message him and ask. If so, we can always come back another day.” Cami bent and picked up the last plant that Quincy had just dug up, a lovely purple coneflower that her butterflies were going to love.

“We’ll gather the tools,” Bess said as Cami turned to carry the last plant to the truck.

“Thanks.” As she was walking, she heard the approach of a vehicle and looked over her shoulder to see a black truck approaching the house.

The sun was just beginning to set and had lowered so that the clouds were outlined in pink against a blue background.

It was beautiful and dreamy, and the overwhelming scent of flowers just added to the ambience.

She could hear the man get out of his truck and then the sounds of Bess talking to him as Cami rearranged a few plants near the front and made room for the final one.

“Hold tight, ladies, we’ll get you to your new home soon.

” Then she fiddled with them a little, checking that they were tolerating the stress they were under before closing the door and bringing out the key in her pocket to lock it up tight.

Cami rounded the vehicle and smiled at Quincy, who had his hands full of the shovels they’d used. “Go ahead and put those in my trunk,” Cami said. “The truck is full to the brim.”

“Got it,” Quincy said.

Cami turned in the direction of the house, squinting toward the porch, where she could see the masculine outline of the man who’d just kindly gifted her business thousands of dollars of beautiful, established greenery.

Bess was standing to his right, and Cami lifted her hand against the glare as she approached, that pink-and-blue glow right in her eyes making it difficult to see.