“I rescheduled the jet for tomorrow. Decided to visit Meyer Botanical. I haven’t been there in years.” She glances at our rounded front door. “And I figured it wasn’t going so well here, but, well, I didn’t want to interfere.”
The door opens and Mother marches out, wearing her dark woolen jacket from Mongolia with the embroidered edging. “You.”
“Good to see you, too, sister.”
They’re so alike, even I would have a hard time telling them apart were it not for the clothes and the opposing gray streaks.
Mother crosses her arms in front of her, as tightly closed as an iris bud. My aunt looks her up and down. “Well, I have a few pounds on you. But a few less wrinkles, too. You haven’t beenusing the cornflower, I can tell.”
“I’m sorry you had to come all this way to tell me that. Now go back to your tropical paradise and your boatman with the bad hair. I’ve already covered for you with Alice Sawyer, just like I always do, though God knows why. Good-bye.”
“Mother!”
Mother pivots around, but instead of going back inside the house, she marches through the gate to the garden.
Aunt Bryony runs her hand down my bare arm, which has started to goose bump. “You smell like you’ve been hit by a truck of swamp mud and sour strawberries.”
I almost miss the smell of my own anxiety. My throat begins to stick again and I can’t answer.
She puts an arm around my shoulders. “Let’s go talk to her.”
Mother’s wearing herThursdaygloves, even though it’s Monday, and pruning a rosebush.
“Put the clippers down, Dahli. I trimmed it yesterday.”
“I can see that. This is not a forty-five-degree angle.” Mother points at one of the clipped branches.
“You’re welcome.”
“For what? For sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong?”
Aunt Bryony folds her arms. “I have every right to be here. Mother left the garden to us both.”
“How convenient of you to reclaim your interest now, after I’ve spent the last twenty years working this soil by myself.” Mother doesn’t find anywhere to prune so she repockets herclippers. “Where were you that spring when the garden flooded and I had to replant everything? My fingers bled every night for a year.”
I’ve never seen Mother so mad. She’s almost spitting. She sways slightly as she glares through the rosebush. Cursing, she storms over to a basket of tools and removes a shovel. We follow her as she marches twenty paces in another direction.
Mother sinks to her knees, and dirt starts flying.
“I’m sorry,” says Aunt Bryony in a gentler voice.
“You abandoned me.”
“You told me I was useless. I lost my smell, remember?” Aunt Bryony slides her eyes to me. Then she kneels down beside Mother, who’s still flinging dirt.
“I needed my sister,” huffs Mother. “Not a nose. I have one of those, remember?”
“What about your daughter?” My voice comes out small and unsure.
Mother notices me, holding my elbows. “Of course I—” She pulls her shovel out of the dirt and gestures with it at my nose. “Don’t try to sidetrack me. What happened between your aunt and me has nothing to do with you and me. You withheld vital information.”
“Maybe she wouldn’t have if she wasn’t so scared you’d seal her in a cave.”
“And you’re the Miss Nose-It-All now. Seal her in a cave, my foot.” Her eyes slide to me. “For heaven’s sake. I would’veunderstood the error.”
“Yes, because you’re a fount of blue thistle,” mutters Aunt Bryony, referring to that foggy note of empathy.
“Oh, you’re one to talk about blue thistle. You weren’t exactly brimming with blue thistle yourself when you left me BY MYSELF.”
