Welcome to Sascha’s A to Z Challenge where the theme is flowers as suggested by Maggie. While the stories will be linked, they are intended to be standalone flash fiction pieces.

If you don’t know about the challenge and think you might want to join, you can click this link for more info. I believe you have until April 7 to sign up. Of course, you don’t have to sign up if you just want to unofficially do the challenge.

Today’s flower is: amaryllis.

Deck the Halls

“Deck the bloody halls, indeed,” Angie murmured under her breath as another request for a solid red Queen Velvet amaryllis came in. “Red,” the customer had nearly snarled. “Not that pink and green striped nonsense that you people try to tell us is Christmasy.”

The order shouldn’t be a big deal. They always had plenty of inventory for the needs of their customers, especially at holidays. Well, they did when her mother ran the shop, and her dad and Uncle George ran the farm. What did it say about her and Josie that this was their very first Christmas and they were failing miserably? Unemployment probably.

Angie huffed when Josie and their cousin Charlie struggled in with trays of budding amaryllis. “It’s about time. You don’t—”

Josie held up her hand. “Just don’t, Angie. You’ve got the flowers now. We’ve apologized. End of story.”

“You need to take this seriously,” Angie said.

After Josie placed the tray on the worktable knowing that Angie would want to be the one to display them, she placed her hands on her hips. “As a heart attack,” Josie said, although she really wanted to say more. But they were no longer those kinds of sisters. The ones who could talk honestly to each other. Confide. Joke. Or cry. Not since Marcus. Look at how that had turned out.

Josie caressed the velvety petal of the one amaryllis that had begun to bloom before turning away. She hadn’t told Angie that it was her son–Angie’s son–who’d left the two palettes of sprouting amaryllis bulbs outside of the greenhouse in the snowy 20°F temperatures. The leaves spoiled and the bulbs themselves iffy, just barely still solid bulbs. Josie accepted her own responsibility. There would always be enough blame to go around.

She had just hoped that this Christmas they could go back to being a family again. It wasn’t like she was the one who had seduced Marcus away from her sister.

Back in the truck as they started to pull out of the parking lot, Charlie glanced at her. “Why treat her with kid gloves after everything she’s done? She’s the older sister. She should be able to handle it.”

“Her kind of unhappy can’t be fixed by my words,” was all Josie said. She flipped on the radio. “There’s No Place like Home for the Holidays” filled the truck cab.

end

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All about Amaryllis from wiki

Meaning and symbolism of the Amaryllis (as well as what it’s been used for)

And, if you know me, you might have guessed that just thinking about “amaryllis” has thrown a song into my head and not the Christmas ones mentioned above: