“Yes.” I hold my breath.
She lifts off the lid and sprays the plant. Even holding my breath, the jam scent assails me. Slowly, I let out my air. Only the initial release knocks me out. I broke a baby tooth learning that.
Now I’ll have to bring it upagain. When I’m breathing normally, I ask, “So about that PUF . . .”
“Why do you want to know about that?” She looks up sharply.
I quickly reign in my curiosity. Happy penguins. A note of defensiveness, like sour strawberries, wades from her direction. “No reason. Just didn’t want to miss a card.”
Spritz,spritz, goes her water sprayer. “Don’t bother. I threw it out.”
“What?” Stress fumes dribble out from me, but Mother doesn’t notice. She seems to have drawn into herself, spraying Layla’s Sacrifice at every angle even though she’s gone over it twice already. “Why?”
“She refused to take it. No use keeping a record of something that was never used.”
I begin to pick up threads of bitter chicory, the scent of regret, which resembles burning coffee fields. Why is she getting so emotional? “Whonever took it?”
Mother makes an annoyed sound at the back of her throat. “Your aunt Bryony.”
My eyes go round. She hardly ever talks about Aunt Bryony. So her sister was the one Mother tried to PUF? “Whydidn’t you just hit her from behind?”
“Mim! Of course I couldn’t. She was already living in Hawaii by that time. She knew what I was up to as soon as I stepped off the jet.”
I knew the basics of their fallout. The year that Grandmother Narcissa died, the governor of Hawaii commissioned the twins to make him an elixir, so they flew to Maui and hired a certain Captain Michael to help them collect marine flowers. Aunt Bryony married him within months.
Mother finally moves on to the next terrarium. “I knew I shouldn’t have agreed to using that Captain Michael’s boat. I could smell she was attracted to him.” Her eyes grow large.
“How did it happen?”
She releases an especially vigorous round of her sprayer. “She fell into the ocean.”
“But she couldn’t swim, could she?” Aromateurs have a long-standing tradition of staying out of the ocean. Swimming pools are out, too, since the chlorine makes us nauseous.
“She was fine.” Her nose wrinkles. “Michael gave her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. After that, her ability to smell faded away like summer sweet peas.”
She sits heavily at the large farm table that spans the length of the room.
“Poor Aunt Bryony,” I mutter. If she had been born before our ancestor Larkspur jinxed us in 1698, she could’ve had loveandher nose.
Mother gasps. “What do you mean poor Aunt Bryony? I had to make the governor’s elixir by myself. And don’t give me that smell. Larkspur’s Last Word exists for a reason.”
I make no attempt to suppress the lavandin notes of empathy lifting off me, which is the most camphorous form of lavender. “It’s a Last Word, not a rule.” We’ve tracked over this same patch of ground so many times the dirt’s packed tight. Mother knows where I stand.
“Larkspur was a powerful aromateur and her grief over her sister’s death was profound. Her Last Word might as well be a rule.” With a sigh, Mother removes her reading glasses and rubs them against her shirt. The glasses leave tiny indents on the side of her petite nose.
Our spinster tradition began when Percy Adams, the Court Sawyer of his day, fell in love with a six-fingered aromateur named Hyacinth and she with him. The daughter of the mayor, who fancied Percy for herself, convinced her Puritan father that the only reason Percy could fall for someone so digitally challenged was that Hyacinth must be a witch. She was tied to a stone and cast into the sea.
Hyacinth’s aggrieved sister, Larkspur, banned romantic relationships in her Last Word, reasoning, if aromateurs avoided romantic entanglement, there would be no more witch hunts.
“But why would she jinx us?” I ask in a huff, even though I already know what she’s going to say. My mind flits back to Court, and I quickly shove those thoughts away.
Mother pops her glasses back on her face. “Larkspur was trying toprotectus.” She flicks her gaze to the skylight and shakes her head. A gunmetal streak on the right side of her hair lies in a flat line, like a disapproving mouth. “Romantic love, like all extreme emotions, distracts us from our life’s work.The wise will catch a falling heart. We must keep our heart right here”—she taps her chest—“where it belongs. Your grandmother Narcissa only became great through her single-minded devotion to her craft. Bryony wanted it all.”
She glances at my souring expression and adds more gently, “It’s not as if you can’t have love in your life—we do have each other, don’t we?”
“Sure. You and me.” I give her a reassuring smile. “So, how did you make her PUF?” Dirt. I sound way too eager. She’s going to get suspicious. The cards make a clacking sound against my desktop as I straighten them.
“Sniff-matching, of course. It wasn’t December, you know.”
