By nine the next morning, Orrin's men were carrying the conservatory's orchids out of the glasshouse in wooden crates.
Marielle stood in the aisle with her clipboard and watched a whole season of blooms leave through the front door.
Orrin: Tell your father the account is closed. No money, no orchids.
Marielle: Those are the auction orchids. We need them in six weeks.
Orrin: Then your father should have paid me six weeks ago. I have waited three months.
Alfred: Orrin. Put those crates down this instant. Do you know who I am?
Orrin: I know what your account says, Mr. Dunley, and it says zero. That is the only name that matters to me.
Alfred turned on his daughter with his face already red, because it was easier to blame her than to find the money.
Alfred: This is your doing. Your events, your spending, your mess.
Marielle: I turned in every receipt. The orchid order is not mine.
Benedict came down the aisle carrying a box of lamps, and Orrin's men stepped around him the way people step around a wet floor.
Alfred: Here he is. The man of the house. Come and watch your wife lose her orchids.
Benedict: Orrin. Give me one minute.
Orrin: I gave your family three months of minutes.
Benedict set the box down, took out his phone, and walked to the far glass wall while Alfred shouted after him.
He spoke into the phone for less than a minute, and his voice was so low that nobody in the aisle could hear a single word.
Orrin's phone rang in his hand. He looked at the number, and his face went the same gray as Otis's face in this glasshouse two days before.
Orrin: Yes. Yes, sir. I understand.
He listened with his shoulders bent, like a man taking a scolding from a voice he could not see.
Orrin: Put them back. All of them. Gently.
His men stopped and turned around with the crates still in their arms, and Orrin waved both hands at them.
Orrin: Gently, I said! Those are the best plants in Bellcrest.
Alfred: What did you just say to them?
Orrin: The account is settled. Every month of it. The orchids stay.
Alfred: Settled by who?
Orrin: I am not paid to ask names.
Orrin: Mr. Roe. I am sorry for the trouble. It will not happen again.
Alfred: Mr. Roe? Why is every man in this city bowing to my handyman?
Benedict picked up his box of lamps and gave the room nothing at all.
Alfred: Do you see what your husband has done? He made a call, and now there is a bill.
Marielle: You heard the man. The account is settled.
Alfred: Settled with whose money? Yours, girl. Out of your budget, every penny.
Alfred's hand closed around Marielle's arm and pulled her sleeve tight, and the workers in the aisle stopped to watch.
Alfred: Your husband is a leech with a phone, and you are the fool who brought him into this family. Pay it or get out.
Benedict crossed the aisle and put his hand on Alfred's wrist, and his voice was quiet enough to make the whole glasshouse lean in.
Benedict: Take your hand off my wife. Now.
Alfred let go, but only because every eye in the room was on him, and Priscilla laughed from the far door in her red dress.
Alfred: Out, both of you. And Marielle, that bill comes out of your budget, so find it.
He walked away fast, and the glasshouse door banged shut behind him.
Benedict took Marielle's arm where her father had held it and rubbed the red mark with his thumb, slow and careful, and she felt every inch of it.
Benedict: Did he hurt you?
Marielle: No. Benedict, what did you say on that phone?
Benedict: I asked a friend for a favor.
Marielle: What kind of friend answers a phone like that?
Benedict: The kind who owes me.
He stood close, his eyes dropped to her mouth, and her breath caught in her chest.
The orchids came back one crate at a time, and the bill sat on the event desk with her name on it.
Benedict: Do not pay it. Not one penny.
Marielle: He will take it from my salary.
Benedict: Then I will have a word with the bank.
Marielle: With the bank? Benedict, what are you?
He touched her cheek once and said nothing, and she looked at him like a woman meeting her husband for the first time.