The Language of Flowers

The Language of Flowers is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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Copyright © 2011 by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Ballantine, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

BALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Diffenbaugh, Vanessa.

The language of flowers: a novel / Vanessa Diffenbaugh.

p. cm.

Summary: “The story of a woman whose gift for flowers helps her change the lives of others even as she struggles to overcome her own past”—Provided by publisher.

eISBN: 978-0-345-52556-7

1. Young women—Fiction. 2. Florists—Fiction. 3. Flower language—Fiction. 4. San Francisco (Calif.)—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3604.I2255L36 2011

813′.6—dc22               2010051026

www.ballantinebooks.com

Jacket design: Anna Bauer

Jacket photograph: Wildcard Images/Glasshouse Images

v3.1

Moss is selected to be the emblem of maternal love, because, like that love, it glads the heart when the winter of adversity overtakes us, and when summer friends have deserted us.—HENRIETTA DUMONT, The Floral Offering

Contents

CoverTitle PageCopyrightEpigraph

Part One / Common Thistle

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Part Two / A Heart Unacquainted

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Part Three / Moss

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Part Four / New Beginnings

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7Victoria’s Dictionary of FlowersAuthor’s NoteDedicationAcknowledgmentsAbout the AuthorDiscussion Questions for The Language of Flowers

1.

For eight years I dreamed of fire. Trees ignited as I passed them; oceans burned. The sugary smoke settled in my hair as I slept, the scent like a cloud left on my pillow as I rose. Even so, the moment my mattress started to burn, I bolted awake. The sharp, chemical smell was nothing like the hazy syrup of my dreams; the two were as different as Carolina and Indian jasmine, separation and attachment. They could not be confused.

Standing in the middle of the room, I located the source of the fire. A neat row of wooden matches lined the foot of the bed. They ignited, one after the next, a glowing picket fence across the piped edging. Watching them light, I felt a terror unequal to the size of the flickering flames, and for a paralyzing moment I was ten years old again, desperate and hopeful in a way I had never been before and would never be again.

But the bare synthetic mattress did not ignite like the thistle had in late October. It smoldered, and then the fire went out.

It was my eighteenth birthday.