As I study the painting, a sense of determination swells within me, a strong impulse to find what lies on the other side of fear and self-doubt. It’s the way my mother wanted her students to feel when they faced their own blank canvases, and so she painted the emotion into this image that her students looked at each time they entered her studio.
I look away from the painting, thinking of the stack of flyers Louis gave me and the potted flowers filling my truck bed. On the way out of the studio, I pause in front of my mother’s plaque. The brass is smudged a little, so I pull my T-shirt away from my stomach and rub the brass until it shines.
Ten minutes later, I find a parking spot right in the middle of the commercial stretch along Miramonte Drive. For a moment, I just sit there, a familiar knot of shame tightening in my chest as I look out at all of the shops. How long have I been running from this feeling? Running from the place where I experienced my biggest regret, but also the place that is at the core of all of my best memories? From the bed of my truck, the heady balm of phlox, primroses, daylilies, cosmos, and Persian buttercups tumbles toward me, steadying my pulse. I think of my mother’s painting, and a feeling of determination spreads within me. I take a deep breath, grab a flyer from the stack that Louis gave me, lift a pot of creamy white phlox into my arms, and head into Corde’s Hardware, Gully beside me.
“I see you’re putting those pots to good use,” Roberta says, nodding her head with gruff approval.
“This one’s for you,” I tell her, setting the phlox down on the counter. The soft vanilla scent of the blossoms drifts arounds us, wafting gently through the aisles of the store. “A gift from the Oceanview Home, along with an invitation.” I hand her the flyer and watch her eyes skate over the words.
When she looks up at me, I’m surprised to see that her eyes shinewith excitement. “You might not know this about me, Lucy,” she says, leaning an elbow on the counter and lowering her voice conspiratorially, “but the only thing I love more than a good cause is a good party. Count me in.”
In Bantom Bay Books, Jody hangs up the flyer and assures me that she wouldn’t miss it. She tells me that the buttercups on the counter have filled the store with the most intoxicating fragrance all week, enticing customers to linger, leading them to discover books that they can’t resist purchasing.
In every shop I walk into along Miramonte Drive, store clerks familiar and unfamiliar to me breathe in the scent of the flowers that I set down on the counter, hang up the flyers, and promise to attend the party. Many have never been to the Oceanview Home and are excited to finally see it in person. Others have relatives or friends living at the home and are grateful to have an opportunity to help save it. To my relief, not a single person mentions Jack Harris.
By the time I’ve stopped into every shop, the fog has lifted, the early evening sky is a gentle shade of blue, and the air of Bantom Bay shimmers with the soft, fresh promise of spring, transformed by the scent of flowers.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Wood anemone: A long-stemmed wildflower in the buttercup family with delicate, star-shaped blooms whose musky fragrance foretells misfortune
The very next morning, I awaken to the powdery, animal scent of the forest’s wood anemones slipping through my open window. I sit up, a shiver of foreboding running down my spine. On my phone, there is a text from Donovan.
Call me.
His words seem to vibrate tensely on my phone screen, and I am filled with a sudden surety that he has found out about the party.
I don’t call him.
When I pull open the door to the home and step into the quiet lobby an hour later, Noreen is at her station, her face unusually pale and pinched with worry. She springs to her feet as though she’s been waiting for me.
“He knows, doesn’t he?” I ask, walking toward her.
She blinks. “Who?”
“Donovan. Did he find out about the party?”
“Oh. I don’t know.” She bites her lip.
“Noreen,” I say, staring at her. “What’s going on? What’s wrong?”
“It’s—it’s Cynthia,” she tells me, her voice wobbling.
I feel my entire body go very still. “What happened?”
Noreen speaks haltingly, through small sobs. “Yesterday evening… she must have gone for a walk. No one saw her leave. Eva… Eva found her, later. She was in one of the smaller walled gardens.”
The cottage garden. She’d gone out to smell the honeysuckle. I see it in my mind—Cynthia in flowing, pale clothes, walking alone through the flowers. There is no cane in her hand.
“She wasn’t conscious,” Noreen goes on with some effort. “An… an ambulance came for her.”
“Has there been any news since then?”
Noreen shakes her head.
Gully nudges his head below my hand, steadying me. “Is Jill here?” I ask. If anyone knows how Cynthia is doing, it is Jill.
“I think so.”
