She thought of Bryn, of the first time she’d shown up at her house with the bright purple flowers. How did that already seem like a lifetime ago? Vivian’s stomach dropped. What she wouldn’t give to go back. To start again.
“So, I miss her, okay?”
She shot the plant a look and turned down a residential street.
“Oh, don’t be coy. You know exactly who. You’re probably against me too. Working with Iris to make this all my fault.”
She made another turn without knowing where she was going. Without a plan.
“You probably loved being with her.” Vivian sighed. She couldn’t blame the violets for picking favorites. Not when everything was infinitely better in Bryn’s presence.
“Yeah, well. Me too,” she admitted, tears blurring her sore eyes in a way she couldn’t stop anymore. “But I fucked it up, okay? It’s too late. What am I supposed to say now? Hey, sorry I’m a hot mess, wanna go for dinner?”
Vivian gripped the steering wheel tight. It did nothing to help her feel in control. She was spinning hard and fast and didn’t know how to get off the ride. She pulled over into the parking lot of a daycare, curled forward, and cried.
She cried so hard that the roof of her mouth tasted like blood. She kept her swollen, burning eyes closed and cried until the tears ran out. Until she was dry heaving and fighting for air.
“It doesn’t matter,” she rasped to her silent passenger. “No matter what I say or what I want, it doesn’t change anything.” The truth broke free and there was no one there to counter it. “Bryn is young and incandescent and untarnished. She deserves someone who’s not all fucked up and broken. I can’t even keep a plant alive, how can I ever nurture a whole other person? A person as incredible as Bryn?”
She banged her head against the steering wheel.
“We all have to accept that my time has passed. Happiness was just never mine to have, Violet.” She calmed herself. “The quicker we move on from this, the sooner we’ll clear the rot from our roots, right?”
On the roundabout drive home, Vivian played Vivaldi’sSeasons. She entered through the front door, evicted a massive vase from the foyer, and set the plant down on the round table directly under the skylight.
She stepped back and looked at the violets in their new home, bathed in natural light. “Alright, Violet. Let’s see if you can figure out how to bloom again.”
ChapterThirty-One
September in Miami was hell.The heat of the summer met the dead center of the rainy season, and every day was a disgusting steam bath where everyone forgot how to drive. Add to that the constant stress of watching systems form in the Atlantic and hoping that they didn’t turn into hurricanes, and if they did, that they curved away from land without causing any damage. When that wasn’t in the forecast, all that was left to do was hope it wasn’t coming to destroy you.
Bryn was driving through a dang monsoon to pick Gloria up from her podiatrist appointment. She was over the weather and over her day and over people who drove like it was a contact sport.
“Oh, Bryn honey, I’m so sorry I’m getting water all over your new car.” Gloria took the plastic bonnet off her head, as if there was anywhere else for the rain to go but on her leatherette seats.
“It’s okay, G. I’m sorry it took me so long to get here,” she replied, waiting for Gloria to get herself settled and put her seatbelt on. If Bryn put her Subaru in drive before she was ready, Gloria would get frazzled.
“I can’t believe they didn’t let me reschedule.” She put her enormous purse in four different places before she landed on the back seat like she always did. “I called Lenore this morning. She’s the girl who works at the front, you know, and I said, Lenore, can you bump me to Friday? Lenore used to get her hair done at Marta’s, but there was a whole dust-up with her and… oh, what’s her name… the one with the bursitis. Always on about the bursitis,” she complained as if she didn’t have running commentary on her sciatica.
Gloria produced a plastic bag, made sure her paperwork from the doctor’s office was in it, and continued.
“Well, anyway. I said, Lenny, it’s not raining cats and dogs, we’ve got the whole damn petting zoo!” She finally reached for her seatbelt. “But she said they had to charge me the fifty-dollar fee if I wanted to change my day with less than forty-eight hour notice.” She huffed. “Can you believe that? Highway robbery, I said. Making an old lady haul her cookies in the rain.”
The belt clicked into place.
“And do you know what that girl said to me?” Gloria looked at her through rain-streaked lemon-yellow glasses. “She got real fresh, that one. Had the nerve to tell me she was six months older than me and she’d be getting herself to work.”
Bryn laughed. “The nerve.”
“The nerve!” Gloria agreed. “I told her, I said, Lenny, what did you want me to do? Predict the weather?” She chuckled to herself. “You can’t go by what the weatherman says. The other day it was supposed to be sunny all day. Yeah? Well tell that to my flooded parking lot.”
Bryn agreed and let Gloria go on about her theory that her favorite station’s meteorologist was havinga thingwith the sportscaster. It was mostly predicated on her conviction that they’d make adorable babies.
“Bryn, honey, are you okay?” Gloria asked when they were crawling through sheets of rain and afternoon gridlock.
“Yeah, sorry. Driving today has just been?—”
“Not just today.” Gloria rested her hand gently on Bryn’s arm. “Since last week when you came back from your big trip. You’ve been so down, honey.”
