Season of the Dragonflies (16 page)

“Please,” Willow said, and then the other eye opened in quick surprise. “What's this about?” She shot up in the bed. “Did Robert call?”

Mya shook her head, hoping her mother might see the cloud like Lucia did, but Willow gave no sign that she did. She propped herself up on her elbows and closed her eyes again like she'd fallen back to sleep.

Mya pointed at Lucia and said, “Tell her.”

“I, um,” Lucia began, and her mother stared at Lucia. “It's just that I see something.”

“Not just something,” Mya said, and she could hear the panic in her own voice.

Lucia continued. “I see a black cloud over Mya and it makes me nervous.”

Willow sat all the way up in bed and massaged her eyebrows with one hand. She removed the cap, shook out her silver hair like a horse's mane, and stared above Mya's head. Mya decided then and there that she really hated people looking just past her all the time. Willow said, “I don't see anything.”

Urgently, Lucia said, “Well, I do, it's right there.” She pointed at nothingness. “It follows her around, and I know it's bad.”

“Has anyone in the family seen things like this before?” Mya asked.

Willow took a sip of Mya's coffee and sat quietly for a moment. When she did begin to speak, she seemed to be talking to herself: “Grandmother Serena didn't, but her younger daughter saw visions in the clouds like Mya, and my sister did as well, but they drove Iris crazy. My dream visions have always directed my client selections, up until now anyway. But there's no history of anything stormy, and the visions never stuck around.” She sipped the coffee again and finally looked up at Lucia. “You see it all the time?”

“I do.”

“Just great.” Mya gripped the foot of their mother's bed.

“Something's wrong,” Lucia said.

“No shit.”

Willow took a deep breath. “Between this, the flowers, and Zoe, I don't know what the hell's going on anymore. But they must be connected. When did it first appear?”

“In the workshop. When she told us about that new perfume. Right when she mixed that musk with water.” Willow stared at Lucia for a long moment, and something intimate passed between them. Mya couldn't place it exactly but they seemed closer somehow, like partners.

“Have you finished?” Willow asked Mya.

“It'll be done today.”

“What if the cloud and the flowers
don't
want Mya to do this? We weren't allowed to stray from the original formula,” Lucia said.

“Look at you,” Mya said sarcastically. “So invested in the family business all of a sudden.”

“I just—”

“I'm making that perfume for her, Mom,” Mya said. “You already agreed.”

“But what if Lucia's right?”

Her mother deferred to Lucia now? The one who hadn't had a family gift for thirty-three years and now, poof, she swayed Willow's decisions? Zoe, the flowers, the cloud—all of these troubles would pass, but Lucia might stay. Above all else, this couldn't happen. Mya said, “You know we have no other choice. If anything, I need to get this out the door so we have one less problem today.”

“We do have bigger problems,” Willow said to Lucia, as though she felt obligated to convince her or receive her approval.

What had happened yesterday?
I should've never gone out with Luke
, Mya told herself.
Stupid, stupid girl.

“Look, the cloud's only over me. And let's say it is Great-Grandmother's warning; why wouldn't it be over you and Lucia too? We were all in that room together. You agreed to it, Mother, so wouldn't you be cursed? And Lucia witnessed it, so why not her? It has to be the bad deal with Zoe; the new perfume will fix it.”

“And if that's not it?” Lucia said.

“Then I'm willing to deal with whatever comes.”

“You're sure?”

“Stop talking to me like I'm a child,” Mya said. “Yes, I'm very sure.” She was sure she didn't believe in that stupid curse or in her younger sister's right to act like this. One vision, so what?

“When will you ship it?” Willow asked.

“You're kidding,” Lucia said.

“I can have it to her by this evening.”

“Fix it,” Willow said, and then stood up from the bed and exited to the bathroom. Her mother didn't seem too concerned about that cloud, and Mya should've been glad. So why did she still feel so uneasy? As silly as it sounded, her mother seemed mad at her, like a hurt friend, more so than she had yesterday. But what more had she done since then? Mya could
feel
Lucia staring at the cloud. Mya couldn't stand another minute of that concerned look on Lucia's face, so she walked past her sister without another word and went straight to the workshop, where she could lock herself away.

W
ILLOW WAITED UNTIL
Mya closed herself in the workshop before she sequestered herself in the office. Willow was doing everything she could to control herself for Mya's sake, but that stormy cloud scared her to death. Grandmother Serena had promised bad things would come if the formula was changed. Willow's mother had never strayed and insisted Willow agree to this one rule when the business changed hands. She'd promised her mother on her deathbed.

Neither her mother nor Serena could've foreseen a situation like this one. Only
her
daughter would be flighty enough to forget to add the most important clause in a contract. Why Mya hadn't simply copied the language from any number of contracts Willow had offered her, she'd never know, and that way Willow wouldn't have needed to check it over before she sent it out. Mya was strong-willed to a fault and had been that way since she was a toddler who refused to wear anything but tights and tutus, even to go swimming in the pond. How she missed those trivial conflicts. Willow was as angry with Mya now as she was scared for her, scared of what that cloud could mean. Love for her daughter wrapped around all this frustration. Willow had long since experienced these conflicting emotions. Once the girls had matured and learned to talk back to her, the stress of young, single motherhood and ceaseless work created a withering exhaustion and resentment. She had done her best to quell these feelings.

And of all times for Lucia to finally have a vision, one unlike those of anyone else in the family . . . Willow believed her. One thing Lucia had never been was a liar. Her two daughters couldn't have been more different. With one exception: as babies they both loved to stroke Willow's long hair as they breast-fed, and those quiet moments still buoyed Willow during the troubling times with her girls. But beyond that quality during infancy, Mya and Lucia had little in common. Lucia believed she didn't have a place in the family because her skills with the flower and perfumery had failed to manifest; she might not admit it, but Willow knew this had been a compelling reason for her to follow a career in acting. Sometimes it had felt like she had one healthy daughter, born with all the Lenore family gifts, and one perfectly intelligent and lovely but mute daughter. Still, Willow didn't love Lucia any less. Early on Willow had sensed her daughter had the power to make people worship her, because the dragonflies congregated around her and rode into the cabin on her shoulders, and Willow had to promptly turn Lucia around and get her back out to the porch so she could send the dragonflies outside. Willow desired for Lucia to be successful, and the older she became, the more her talent with people appeared to be her magic—a perfect skill for the business. But Lucia didn't believe in it. Acting called her instead. At least today proved to Lucia that she wasn't a defective Lenore after all. So many years spent worrying about Lucia, and now Willow could finally relax, only to switch her concern to Mya. Such was the way of motherhood.

She didn't have the nerve to dial James Stein's number. She couldn't explain that she had to cancel because her younger daughter had a vision of a dark cloud hovering over her older daughter's head. To anyone outside the family, that would sound ludicrous. Willow would tell James some business issue had come up. It wasn't a total lie. Right now wasn't a good time, not with the flowers and the cloud. Would she ever live a life without interruptions?

Her girlhood had been the only time that flowed as one long, straight river, a time when she craved a bend to enliven her world. Any interruption had been welcome. She had most looked forward to her trips abroad. She remembered when her mother took Iris and Willow to France for the first time and they studied flower cultivation in Grasse in June and July, just when the jasmine had bloomed. Then they spent six months in Paris in the Eighth Arrondissement learning Parisian French from a college student attending the Sorbonne. During the day Willow and Iris were tutored while their mother visited the Louvre or the Musée d'Orsay or shopped on the rue de Rivoli, and in the afternoons she came back for them and they stopped at a
boulangerie
for a buttery baguette sandwich before taking the metro to 38 avenue Pierre 1er de Serbie. They walked to the House of Dubois storefront to study the art of perfumery under Henri Dubois.

Willow's mother respected the Dubois dynasty, which had been passed down from father to son for more than two hundred years, and avidly collected the variety of rare scents they produced. But it was Grandmother Serena whom Henri Dubois first contacted. Rumor had it that the finest, richest American actresses, who should've been the Dubois family's clientele, had a scent they adored but kept fiercely secret. The Dubois family was passionate about scent and traveled to Bulgaria and Turkey and Italy in search of the most luxurious rose, jasmine, and iris essences. The idea that a flower as powerful as
Gardenia potentiae
existed in secret nearly drove Henri Dubois mad. He was a wise businessman and a charming fellow, and Grandmother Serena relented and told him he could experience the flower if he allowed her dynasty of daughters to apprentice at the House of Dubois during the summer and study the time-honored techniques of infusion, maceration, and filtration for which his house was so famous. Serena's girls could study alongside the male heirs of that company, and perhaps a marriage or two would evolve from her deal. That hadn't happened, though. Lenore women seemed to prefer American men. To this day, the Dubois family master perfumers were the only perfumers in Paris to know of the existence of the
Gardenia potentiae
flower. Forever Willow would connect Paris with the smells of freshly baked bread and urine in the metro, and the absolute intensity of the rose and jasmine and tuberose and violet in the Dubois family perfumes. These scent memories, so easy to recall today but perhaps not tomorrow. Her entire life reduced to nothing but the present.

The phone rang in its cradle, making Willow jump like the smoke alarm had been triggered. When she answered the phone and said, “Willow Lenore speaking,” the sound on the other line made her smile immediately.

James said, “I like when your voice sounds so professional.”

“I was just thinking about you.”

“All good things, I hope.”

She sat back down. Nothing mattered now in the space between his phone connection and her own. “Absolutely.” Willow couldn't keep the sadness out of her voice.

“Something's wrong.” But before Willow could respond he said, “I've set up a meeting with Jennifer Katz and her manager and agent to find out what's going on. I hope that doesn't bother you, but I figure it's easier for me to do it from here than you flying out again. And it's a personal matter for me too.”

She should know exactly what he was talking about. “About the perfume?” she asked.

He paused. “Jennifer's manager didn't call you?”

“I haven't seen my assistant today.”

“Jennifer's convinced the perfume stopped working for her because of Zoe. She's refusing to present at the Oscars now and her people are panicking. She won't leave her house for appointments. Her PR girl told the press she's vacationing in the South Pacific. I'm set to meet with them tomorrow but I doubt she'll show. You should call her,” James said.

“I will, as soon as we're done here.” Jennifer should've called Willow immediately if she believed the perfume wasn't working for her. Willow doubted that claim; she was probably just letting Zoe get to her, but with the way things were going, she couldn't rule out any possibility.

“Any update about Zoe?” he said.

“She'll have the new formula tonight. I'll let Jennifer know that also. I should've already.”

“And we'll see each other next week.”

“About that,” Willow said. “I have to reschedule, although I really wish I didn't. Business matters.”

“Now I'm disappointed. I had many plans to spoil you.” Willow's thighs and abdomen grew warmer.

“Next time,” Willow said, her voice breaking a little.

“You let me know when it's a good time,” he said, “and I'll be there.”

“I will.” And then they said good-bye and hung up. She put the phone down. She needed to dial Jennifer's personal number; it was urgent and she had to do it, but she just couldn't force herself to pick up the phone again.

L
UCIA HAD ABHORRED
the nights in high school when Willow worked late and asked Lucia to make dinner. Maybe she assumed cooking would be Lucia's one useful skill to contribute to the family. Inevitably she'd forget to remove the organs of the chicken before she roasted it, and soon enough Mya took over those duties for her and became the family chef. Now that Mya had locked herself away in the workshop with a Do Not Disturb sign on the door handle, Lucia couldn't ask for some much-needed advice. She searched through a few recipe books in the kitchen, but the many suggestions overwhelmed her. What did Ben White like to eat? She forced herself to remember what he ate as a growing teenage boy, and the only memory she had was of pizza. He ate pizza almost every day for school lunch and still wanted his mother to order it on weekends. Few people develop a dislike for pizza, so Lucia found a recipe for homemade dough and went to the store for the essentials: all-purpose flour, yeast, olive oil, sauce, and toppings galore. He ate meat, so Lucia bought Virginia baked ham and local sausage, and to that she'd add green bell pepper, onions, olives. Maybe she'd surprise herself in the kitchen.