“We shall let you two talk privately. Please enjoy our garden as long as you wish.”
Who knows if they hear her. They’re still staring at each other.
I trot after Mother who surely has her own private talk in store for me, and it won’t be nearly as pleasant.
THIRTY-SEVEN
“AHOT TEMPER CAN WILT PETUNIAS.”
—Kohana, Aromateur, 1728
“WHAT WERE YOUthinking? You must always witness the fixing.” Mother slaps one hand against the other. Her unopened suitcase lies upon her bed. “Always. Now you understand why we have the rules? They’re to keep us from making life-altering blunders.”
“Okay, I’m sorry,” I say for the tenth time. I push aside the antique lace curtains of the turret and stare down at Mr. Frederics, helping Alice into her car one story below. “Their lives turned out okay.”
“You lost your smell! And you should never have called your aunt.”
“Who should I have called?”
“Me.”
“I did try calling you. The circuits were busy.”
She sucks in her breath, then groans. “Well, you wouldn’thave needed to call anyone had you focused on your task, instead of, what’s his name?”
“Court.” Just saying it stabs my heart.
“Yes, him. Is it over between you two?”
I nod.
“Good. Then maybe we can do something about thisproblem. Do you know how long it took me to make that elixir for Bryony? I had to go to forty-seven countries.Countries, Mim. By the time I got everything together, it was too late.”
I should tell her about Aunt Bryony’s nose returning, but I don’t want to yet.
The Merengue roses and chicory wave good-bye to our clients as their cars ease down the long driveway to the street. Maybe it’s a road all must walk, this margin between bitter and sweet, not just in love, but in life. The driveway tiles form a stony rainbow, which flow into the sweetbriar hedges. Inside the sweetbriar, sprightly dogbane forms an even row, followed by goldenrod, lavender, and so forth. Layers wrapping us tight as an onion.
“What if it’s too late for me, too?” I finally say.
She pulls her hair. “If that’s the case, then all of this”—she opens her hands and sweeps them around the room—“and the garden? A waste.”
“Maybe there’s more to life than just smelling plants.”
“Like what?” Her lips form a tight line.
“Who was Edward?”
She throws her arms to her sides. “She told you about him?”
I rub my finger over one of the bench’s velvet-covered buttons.
“Did you like him?”
“Of course not.”
“Then why do you carry around that bookmark? You must have sort of liked him.”
Her lips unstick. “I may have been curious about certain things that it is natural to be curious over, but I never veered from the course predestined for me.”
