LENA 

The florist arrived at three-fifteen with a problem.

She saw it before he said a word, the specific quality of a man carrying something breakable and already knowing it. He was at the service entrance with his team and seventeen arrangements loaded on two carts, and he had the expression of someone who had been rehearsing an explanation in the car.

"The centerpieces for tables nine through twelve," he said.

Lena looked at the carts.

She could see it. The arrangements for the east quadrant were wrong, not wrong in the vague way of something slightly off, wrong in the specific and measurable way of someone who had misread...