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I nodded.
Lydian gave a satisfied grunt and tottered her way toward the stairs, her granddaughters hovering like anxious insects on either side of her. I watched her climb with surprising nimbleness into the little rickshaw. Selene and Vesta hoisted themselves onto the two bicycle seats in front of her and began to pedal her away like a pair of matched ponies. Lydian turned before she reached the end of the drive to give a regal wave over her shoulder.
And then she was gone, leaving a heavy silence in her wake, and unanswered questions burning on all of our tongues.
8
Lydian may have been gone, but the emotions she’d unleashed in the room loomed over everything like a sentient being.
My mother sat staring into the fireplace. Persi continued to smoke out on the porch, lighting a second cigarette off the first. I was afraid to open my mouth, feeling quite suddenly like a villain in a story I didn’t fully understand. Finally, it was Rhi who broke the silence.
“Well,” she said, stuffing her damp bandana back into her overall pocket, “I suppose I’d better get supper started.”
“Don’t go to any trouble, Rhi. I’m not hungry,” mom muttered.
“It’s no trouble, and anyway, I’ve got to stay occupied. I can’t just sit here anymore, it’s too…” She swallowed hard. “Anyway. I’ll be in the kitchen.”
“Can I help?” I asked. I was just trying to be polite, but there was a note of desperation in my voice, and I knew I wasn’t really talking about dinner.
Rhi smiled at me in a way that made me feel like she could read my thoughts on my face. “No, Wren. You relax, sweetheart. You’ve had a long day today.” And she hurried off through the hallway to the back of the house.
The back of my house,a tiny voice whispered in the back of my head. This was nuts. I felt like the walls were closing in on me. I had to get out of here, get some fresh air, or this house that was suddenly mine would swallow me whole.
I didn’t dare go back out the front door; the thought of facing Persi’s wrath was more than I could handle. My eyes found the French doors at the back of the living room, and I crossed to them, peering out. They led to a flagstone patio surrounded by a wooden trellis, up which a riot of flowering vines raced each other toward the sun. I took the brass handle in my hand.
“I’m going outside for a few minutes,” I told my mom. She made a sound like “Mm-hmm,” which I took as acknowledgment, and slipped out into the garden before she could protest.
The smells of the garden were cloying at first in the early-summer humidity. There was a constant underscore of buzzing bees and the steady trickle of water from somewhere. A fountain, maybe? I couldn’t see one from where I was standing. To my left the lawn sloped away from the gardens into a little sunken orchard of fruit trees, and in the midst of them stood a greenhouse and another small building rather like a large garden shed. Rhi had said that Asteria was in the summer house—was that the place she was talking about? I shuddered at the thought and turned my back on that part of the yard, choosing instead a path that wound through a collection of rose bushes in the opposite direction. The air was so heavy with moisture that I could taste it on my tongue, and it clung to my hair, weighing it down in bedraggled tendrils against my neck. My glasses seemed in imminent danger of fogging up and made near-constant attempts to escape down the bridge of my nose.
I followed the path through some low flowering trees and beds of herbs, past a birdbath and a low, stone bench, finally arriving abruptly at the stone wall I’d seen when we’d first arrived. I turned and walked along it, running my hands over the mossy stones, and following it to an arched door so overgrown with ivy and clusters of morning glories and Carolina jessamine that I wouldn’t have seen it at all, but for the peeling remains of lavender paint. The door had an old-fashioned keyhole and a simple iron ring for a handle. My fingers itched to pull it, to open the door to whatever lay beyond, but I didn’t even try. The rustiness of the hardware and the greenery creeping over the bottom of the doorframe meant it probably hadn’t been opened in years. And so instead, I walked past the door, trailing my fingers over it wistfully before turning around a massive azalea bush, and stopping dead in my tracks.
Persi was sitting on a swing that hung from the branch of an ancient-looking tree. One arm was wrapped around the rope, the other holding her flask.
“Oh. Um… hi,” I said stupidly. I took a deep breath and tried again. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to bother you. I didn’t know anyone was out here.”
“Bother me? Haven’t you heard? This is your garden now. I’m the interloper, not you.”
My cheeks burned as I struggled to respond.
“I suppose you want to case the place, decide what to chop down and replace. Here, would you like the clothes off my back? I’m pretty sure I stole this from Asteria’s closet, so it’s probably yours now anyway.”
“No!” I gasped, for she showed every indication of pulling her blouse over her head.
She smirked at me, letting her shirt fall back in place. Then she reached out and waved her flask under my nose.
“Fancy a little nip? It takes the edge off.”
“I’m only sixteen,” I told her.
She smiled and winked conspiratorially. “Never stopped me,” she said. When I hesitated, she narrowed her eyes. “You’re not one of those girls who follows all the rules, are you? How dull.”
Actually, I was. I had never been remotely susceptible to peer pressure, not that anyone tried to put any on me. I’d never attracted enough notice from any of the popular kids to warrant an invitation to the kind of party where drinking happened, and I wouldn’t have accepted even if someone had thought to ask me. But something inside me seemed to ignite at Persi’s words. I didn’t want to be the girl she thought I was. I wanted to do something to show her that I wasn’t the devious interloper she’d clearly pegged me as. I wanted to impress her. And so I did the only thing I could think to do in the moment: I took the flask from her hands, put it to my lips and took a swallow.
My regret was instant and all encompassing. The liquor—whatever it was—was like fire down my throat, and I coughed and choked as I tried to force it down.
Persi laughed at me, but there was a glint of something like approval in her gaze when I caught her eye between coughing fits, and I managed a smile. I collapsed onto an overturned bucket beside her, trying to catch my breath.
“I distilled that myself,” Persi said, taking the flask back from me and taking a long, smooth draught. She smacked her lips. “Can you taste the juniper and the orange peel?”
