Season of the Dragonflies (31 page)

Lucia said, “Mya's out with Luke.”

“But at breakfast I told her not to leave.”

Lucia shrugged. “She's with Luke and I'm sure it's fine, and we're going to Ben's after we look at the fields.”

“We'll just stay here then and wait for Mya,” Willow said to James, and he nodded. Lucia didn't want to think about what might go on in the empty house. She should tell Willow about Peter Sable's phone call, but it could wait. No reason to ruin this moment for her mother.

Willow turned to Ben. “Let me know as soon as you find something.”

“I will,” Ben said. James took Willow's arm and they continued walking. Lucia watched them as they headed back to the cabin. No space was visible between their bodies, and Lucia didn't know what to say. Her mother could be so secretive sometimes. She'd fallen in love and told no one.

“James seems like a good guy,” Ben said as they continued their walk.

“How do you know? He didn't speak.”

“I just know,” Ben said.

They crested the hill, and Lucia caught sight of hedges that should have had blossoms white and grand, just like a bride. Yet here at the top of the hill those blossoms were choking with green. The tips of the flowers were still white, but that was all, like fingertips poking from a green sinkhole. “This isn't right.”

“It looks much worse,” Ben said. “Your mother didn't say anything about that.”

“I can't figure her out,” Lucia told him. “Seriously, it's like she's just given up. I'm worried.”

“Let's just see.” Ben led Lucia down the rows. She stared at the dying flowers as she passed and thought about her great-grandmother Serena and all the years of successful business. These fields looked like some alien species. This couldn't be their family's flower. Her family's flower could not be weakened, let alone wiped out.

They neared the end of the shrubs, and wilderness stretched for many miles beyond that. Ben placed his hand on Lucia's shoulder and said, “You can come help me if you want.” It was like asking if she wanted to apply makeup to her mother's corpse.

“That's okay,” she said, demurring. “I'll wait here.”

Lucia found a boulder near the tree line and climbed up. She rested supine on the flat top, draped one arm over her eyes to shield them from the sun, and held her breath as she waited for Ben to finish his work. But she could hear him nearby—the snip of his scissors, the yank of a hedge from the ground, the shake of the dirt from the roots—and it was all too much like an autopsy.

Eventually, she heard his boots in the grass and then felt his hand tugging on her overhanging foot. Lucia propped herself up on the boulder and looked down at him.

“Just like those blueberry fields,” he said, and smiled at her with all the knowing of the teenage boy he once was. She wasn't expecting this from him, more like “The flower's completely dead. Your family's business is finished.” But this? No matter how preoccupied she was, she could remember how she never picked the blueberries because she liked watching his back muscles contract as he bent over and stripped the bushes of their bounty. He would bring those ripe, warm berries to her mouth and feed her, and when they kissed it tasted of summer juice. The blueberry field was one of their favorite places to make love. She might've forgotten some moments they shared, but not that. Obviously, he still remembered too. They stared at each other's sunlit faces. It had been ages since she'd had sex, and all Lucia wanted to do was wrap her legs around him and hang on.
To hell with Vista,
she thought, though instantly this made her feel bad—but he'd mentioned the blueberries for a reason.

He anxiously looked through his work bag and said, “I left something, I'll be back.” He set down the hedge sample he'd uprooted, the stems slightly flaccid, and turned to walk back to the rows from which he came. That's when Lucia saw it, and it made her whip her head around in disbelief—the green flowers leaned after him like children reaching out for a parent. She wasn't imagining anything. Lucia hopped down next to the hedge sample. The flowers leaned in Lucia's direction now. Their roots were no longer in the ground; they moved. They absolutely moved. She bent down next to a flower and held out her hand, and the green, dying blossom stretched out to meet her and rested in the palm of her hand. She'd heard the stories. Her mother made this happen when they were girls, but the flowers had never moved for Lucia or Mya. Ben had to witness this or her mother wouldn't believe her—the flowers couldn't be dying if they were still moving. She stared after him, at his tan neck and the buzzed hair on his head.

Lucia called, “Ben, wait up,” and ran after him. He stopped and turned, waiting with a confused and frightened look on his face, like some disaster had occurred. She had every intention of stopping and speaking and telling him to come back to the flowers and see, he had to see what they were doing—this was what she willed—but she couldn't stop running; she had no control. Ben held out both arms, and Lucia put both of her arms around his strong neck and felt his soft hair underneath her fingertips, and before she could kiss him first his mouth was already on hers and her body exploded with warmth. They kissed and stroked each other; Lucia kept her eyes closed, but then she felt him watching her and she opened them. His eyes wrinkled at the sides as he smiled. She smiled back, and out of the corner of her eye she saw something move like the flight of a dragonfly.

“Did you see that?” Lucia said, and Ben looked over, then shook his head and brought Lucia's mouth back to his. She kissed him again but still stared over at the flowers. He followed her eyes over, and then they both pulled away from each other.

“Did they just do that?” Ben asked incredulously.

“I think so.” Lucia didn't know what to do. She wanted to kiss him again because it felt so good after so long, but she also wanted to test the flowers. But he went first and kissed her with more passion than he had before. He stopped only when the flowers closest to them leaned over and brushed against their legs.

He jerked away and said, “Holy shit,” and the flowers immediately retracted.

Lucia was too elated to feel scared, but Ben looked frightened. “Lucia,” he said quietly, like the flowers might hear him.

She moved away from him and said, “I know.” She bent down to touch the flowers and they didn't move, but then she reached out for Ben's hand and he interlaced his fingers with hers. When she reached out again, the woody stems bent like rainbows, and the green petals lifted to Lucia. Ben squeezed Lucia's hand, and the flower continued to rise. The green on the petals began to recede just slightly, and the scent emerged.

“This can't be explained.” Ben looked up like he needed an escape route. “No rational answer, not a single one.”

Lucia stood up from the flower and it moved back; the leaves began to turn green and thick again, and the smell vanished. Lucia reached out to Ben, put her hand on one of his cheeks, and kissed him again lightly, then let her hands move under his shirt and up to his smooth, contoured chest. He kissed her back.

“Like an experiment.” Lucia cast her eyes down to the grass.

“You mean . . . ?”

Lucia nodded.

“Right here?”

“Here,” she said, and Ben kissed her neck and then her collarbone and quickly lifted her shirt off her body like all he'd needed was her permission. He removed her bra and kissed each breast softly, cupping them in his hands. Lucia closed her eyes in deep pleasure and guided his body to the ground.

J
AMES HELD HER
hand on the walk but didn't try to kiss or hug her, and Willow refused to be the one to initiate it after the night they'd spent together in the L.A. hotel room, a night she had been sure she wouldn't forget for as long as she lived, like some smitten schoolgirl. But now she couldn't remember if she'd kissed him first, if he'd asked to stay or if she'd asked him. It had been only a few days, but she couldn't remember, and this made her too anxious to concentrate on romance.

Instead, they talked. About the flowers and Willow's grandmother Serena and how she discovered the plant that first time in Borneo and how deeply in love she had been with her husband, and about Willow's mother, who'd died widowed but still very much in love with Willow's father. The word “love” kept coming up in every context except between Willow and James. Yet she felt a deep urge for James, like she had when she first met him. Now her knees ached, and she mourned all those youthful years when she could've been in love with James and had a successful relationship like her mother and Grandmother Serena had.

When they returned to the cabin, Willow knocked the mud off her hiking boots against the bottom porch step. James copied her even though he had opted not to step in the mud at the bank of the pond, a place he insisted he wanted to see rather than the fields of flowers. Willow hadn't been in the mood to see the flowers either. Before stepping into the cabin James said, “I don't think your daughters approve of me.”

Willow laughed. Perhaps returning to the house reminded him of the girls; he hadn't mentioned them once during the walk, not even when they passed Lucia and Ben. “They're not sure what to think of you.”

“My mother never was either,” he said. “The loud one, that's how she thought of me.”

This was the first time he'd mentioned his childhood. “I was the reliable one,” Willow said.

James took Willow by the arm as they entered through the red door, the wrens shooting out of their nest of eucalyptus branches. James ducked out of their way. “Do they do that every time?”

“Almost,” Willow said. “But only if they like you.”

James slowly inched his way around the door like more might fly out if they spotted his movement.

“Want some tea?” Willow said, and left him at the doorway peering into the empty nest. Willow removed the loose-leaf green tea from the cabinet and kept an eye on James as she prepared their cups, but he didn't notice, as he was too busy inspecting the framed pressed-flower arrangements decorating the walls.

“It's quiet,” James said. “No daggers in the room.”

“I'm sure they think you're my boyfriend,” Willow said as she filled the kettle at the sink, “and they're mad I didn't tell them. I know my girls.”

“Is that far off?” James pulled out one of the wooden chairs at the table and sat down.

“About as far off as China.” Willow flashed a small smile at him. “I don't date.”

“Me either,” he said. “Too busy.”

“Exactly.” She secured the top on the kettle and lit the stove.

“But then there's you,” James said, “and the whole not being able to stop wondering what you're doing or where you are. And now I know. This place is beautiful, Willow. I see why you hate coming to L.A. The land rolls on like a woman's curves.”

Willow said, “I might not've described it that way, but I've always loved it.” The teakettle boiled and began to whistle, so Willow pulled it off the stove and filled her white porcelain teapot. Sharing space with James felt natural to Willow, as if they'd carried out this morning routine before.

Willow offered a teacup to James and placed the pot in the center of the table.

“And when you retire, will you stay?” James said.

She sat down next to him. “Who made up that fantasy?”

“It'll happen,” he said. “Maybe you don't want to retire.”

Willow tried not to stare at his mouth as he talked. She couldn't help wondering about those lips and wanting to feel them against her mouth again, but she didn't want to let on. She said, “Maybe I'll buy an island, just a small one.”

James laughed. “Move-in ready, complete with a landing strip?”

“Nothing else will do,” she said.

“I want to hire a captain for my yacht and just go.”

“That sounds fun too.” Willow checked the teapot to see if the leaves had finished steeping. As she poured his cup she said, “You can sail over to my island and visit.”

“Thank you.” James brought the tea to his mouth, took a small sip, and put the cup down. “But what if I want more?”

“There should be more in the pot,” Willow said, peering into the teapot and checking the level once more. “There's still some.” She took her first bitter sip and then squeezed a lemon slice and dropped it into her cup.

James laughed and placed his hand on top of Willow's, and it was so warm and so large that she couldn't see her hand anymore. “I meant with you.”

“Oh,” Willow said. “Oh.”

“Oh, no? Or oh, yes?”

“Oh, I don't know.”

“What good will retirement be without companionship?”

She paused for a moment. “I've been with people for as long as I can remember. Mya's never left home. Some time alone might be nice.”

“Maybe for a year or two, but then what?” James wouldn't let her hand go.

Willow didn't know why she was arguing for something she didn't really believe. She didn't want to be alone, yet his offer had come so suddenly and so directly that she didn't know how to respond except to push him away. A little bit of romance would've been nice. This felt more like a negotiation. “You hardly know me,” she said.

“Not true,” he said. “I know the younger you, and that's how we'll live in retirement.”

“I don't even know if you have kids.”

“Catching up gives us something to do while we sail,” James joked, but Willow shook her head, because this wasn't good enough.

“I hate sailing,” she said.

He rested against the chair back. “Two kids, five grandkids, two ex-wives,” he said, like he was listing off his résumé.