“Aunt Aurelia, I couldn’t help it! We have this unbelievable thing happening. How can we keep it a secret?”
“Because, Julia,” Aurelia said sharply as the phone rang in her hand, almost certainly Antonia again, “people worry when you say things that sound absolutely mad! What am I supposed to tell your mother?”
“Tell her the truth!”
The truth.Was this it, then? It was all happening too fast. Aurelia couldn’t get her bearings. She’d wanted to tell Oliver first—he deserved to have her share this part of her life with him, even though it might be one of the hardest things she’d ever do. But then Julia had found out, and now she’d told Antonia—and Oliver wasn’t home for her to run and tell him. Aurelia’s poor planning, her fear, and her constant pushing off of this hard thing were finally catching up to her.
“I need more time,” she whispered to herself. Then she looked up and told Julia, “Not yet, okay? Oliver’s not here, and I need to talk to him first. I just need a little more time.”
“But I don’t have more time! Only two more weeks, and I’m not making any progress. And you said once Oliver gets back, we can’t go down as often.”
“I said wemightnot be able to go down as often.”
The phone was still ringing and Aurelia let out a huge groan before answering.
“What’s going on, Aurelia?” Antonia asked angrily before her sister could say so much as a ‘hello.’
“Nothing… Julia was just having a laugh.”
“No, I wasn’t,” Julia said, stepping out from behind the staircase.
Aurelia turned away from her, hoping to shield the phone so that Antonia wouldn’t hear her.
“It sounds like you’re filling her head with some strange stories about Marigold, and the shop—”
“I’m not filling her head with anything,” Aurelia said. “I don’t know why she told you that.”
“Because it’s true!” Julia said more loudly.
Aurelia walked toward the front of the shop to get some distance from her.
“Is she alright?” Antonia asked.
“Of course! We’ve just had a couple of late nights here, that’s all,” Aurelia said quietly, attempting a casual tone.
“That’s not all!” Julia said, nearly shouting now.
Aurelia turned and stared at her. It took a moment to recover from the shock of Julia’s outburst.
“Can I call you back? Someone’s just come into the shop,” she said, making no effort to sell the lie.
“I didn’t hear the bell at the shop door, Aurelia. And that was Julia yelling. Put me on speaker.”
“No, look—we’re in the middle of something. Can we just call you back?”
“We’re not in the middle of anything!” Julia cried out. “It happened! She’s lying if she says it didn’t!”
“Put me on speaker!” Antonia commanded.
Aurelia shook her head at Julia, completely undone by what was unfolding, at how any control she’d had of the situation was now irretrievably lost. She saw no choice but to do as Antonia said or risk her sister finding some way to fly through the phone to make sure Julia was unharmed.
“Okay, you’re on speaker.”
Aurelia considered for a moment whether she could feel any part of her body below her neck and decided she couldn’t. It was as though her head were floating in the shop, watching everything unwind.
“What is happening there?”
Julia and Aurelia both spoke at once:
