The scent hits Saskia before she even kills the engine—a thick, cloying sweetness that smells less like a wedding and more like a wake. On the loading dock of the Karetnikov estate, forty crates of imported Duchesse de Nemours peonies sit beneath the brutal Hamptons sun, their creamy petals turned to the color of bruised parchment. Thousands of dollars in specialty blooms are hemorrhaging brown liquid onto the concrete, and the silence from the main house is so total it feels enforced.
She steps out of her van, her gold floristry shears heavy in her apron pocket, and walks toward the wreckage. There are no groomsmen joking by the pool, no frantic caterers, only the distant, rhythmic thrum of the Atlantic against the dunes. The estate feels hollowed out, a stage set waiting for a lead who hasn't arrived. Even Magda, the wedding planner who usually vibrates with high-tensile anxiety, is nowhere to be seen. Saskia reaches for a ledger tucked into the side of the top crate, her fingers trembling as she calculates the loss.
The stillness of the morning shatters as a high-performance engine echoes against the limestone walls of the garage. The crunch of tires on gravel announces a sleek black town car pulling rapidly into the loading bay.
