Season of the Dragonflies

by Sarah Creech

  “I’ll have my assistant e-mail you whatever you need,” Willow said. “Should I arrange a car to pick you up?”

  “No need. I’ll take care of everything.”

  “Good.”

  “And, Willow?”

  “Yes?” She pursed her lips in anticipation.

  “I love your hair, always have,” James said.

  “Thank you,” she said, and shifted her hair so it draped over one shoulder.

  “But I need to go now, something’s come up,” he said.

  “See you soon,” Willow said, and then the line went silent.

  Willow ran her hand over the back of her head and ended the call. She placed her phone on a bed of clover and stood up, removing her dress and standing completely naked before the pond. If only James could see her now. She dove headfirst into the warm water and remained under the surface, testing how long she could hold her breath . . . Fifteen seconds . . . Thirty-three seconds . . . Forty-two seconds . . . She opened her eyes and it looked as though she were suspended in diluted ink. Sixty-two . . . Seventy-one seconds . . . Willow didn’t want to die alone . . . Eighty-three seconds . . . Her breath gave out, and she stood up, drew in air, and peeled back the hair from her eyes. She climbed to the edge of the pond and rested there.

  Clients and the factory and the flowers had always come first and her love life last. Her last relationship—how long ago had that been? Ten years? Eleven? It had become too hard to keep track of the years. She’d broken off her relationship with the governor of Virginia right before he was elected. Lenore Incorporated would have received too much scrutiny with Paul’s advancing position. He couldn’t understand her decision: But imagine how your cosmetics business will grow, Willow. That was the last thing Paul said to her, and she had to admit, it wasn’t very romantic. Mya couldn’t stand him. At least he’d been a very good governor. Eventually he’d married a Pilates instructor.

  Willow had accepted that her love life had officially ended and she couldn’t rely on the occasional business-trip fling to satisfy her like she had when she was a younger woman focused on running the business and raising her girls. Back then she’d refused to complicate her life by introducing someone to the family unit. Willow never revealed her business to any of her lovers, and she’d resigned herself to never finding a partner who understood her. Not even the girls’ father knew. But Willow’s mother had hand-selected James Stein for her, and all these years later he’d come calling again.

  Willow wanted more, and she knew she could jeopardize her chance with James Stein if she remained as busy as she’d always been. She was starting to realize she just didn’t have it in her anymore. Being forgetful did not serve a president well. But how would she ever give up her position? Her mother had only passed on the title to Willow when she was on her deathbed, and now Willow would be forced to give it up when her body was perfectly healthy, though her mind was not. Mya had found a solution to their Zoe problem, and now that Lucia was home, she could announce the next president of Lenore Incorporated and begin the transition process.

  And who knew? Maybe this would be enough to convince her daughters to settle down. Perhaps Mya and Luke had a future together after all, one that Willow had underestimated. She couldn’t give the business over to Lucia, since Lucia had long ago rejected the possibility, but Willow had always hoped her younger daughter would come home to witness Willow’s decision. Lucia was here now and the time had come.

  CHAPTER 10

  The First Date

  MYA CLEANED UP the workshop and locked the door to that room, then went to the bathroom, washed her face, and brushed her hair and tied it back into a bun. Her cell phone chimed just as she finished brushing her teeth. Luke texted, C U shortly. She closed her eyes and shook her head at what she was about to do. Had he finally won his public date with Mya? Surely that’s how he’d see it, but it wasn’t a date, not even close. If the tea store hadn’t called about an inventory emergency, she wouldn’t have needed him, but Lucia had one of the trucks and the other work vehicles were nowhere in sight. The crew must have been using them up at the fields to prepare for harvest. And Willow had the SUV. Anyhow, no matter her excuse, she’d called him, he was on the way, and there would be no convincing him this wasn’t a real date.

  Mya decided to wait out on the porch until Luke drove up, and she settled down on the steps and crossed her legs. From around the corner of the house, her beloved Little Spots came racing like she was being chased, her eyes wide with fear. Mya reached out her hand and said, “Easy there, what’s the matter?” Mya went to the end of the porch and brought back deer corn for Spots, but the fawn refused to eat it. “Are you ill?” Mya said, and rubbed her little head. Spots backed away from Mya like she was the problem, and then she bolted away from her and back toward the tree line. Mya stood and followed the fawn’s path around the cabin. She had just cleared the side of the house when she found two dead wrens beneath the willow tree. She didn’t linger there; rather she raced back to the porch and checked the nesting wrens on the front door. She shook the eucalyptus bunch and two birds shot out from either side. Mya closed her eyes in relief but still felt sorrow for those other birds and wondered how they’d managed to die together. Had they killed each other?

  She heard Luke’s truck tires churn the gravel road, and she turned around and headed down the steps, all too eager to be away from the house for a little while, though she wasn’t sure why she felt that way. But Lucia had gone to town and her mother had left to run errands, and Mya didn’t want to be alone. And she’d missed Luke a little.

  With one tan arm hanging from his truck window, Luke didn’t turn off his ignition or step out to open her door; he just waved and said, “Hop in.” He turned the truck around for her at least. She brushed away sawdust and soil from the passenger seat and then climbed inside. He immediately leaned over, held her cheek in his hand, and kissed her. “Glad you called,” he said.

  “Texted.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “There’s a difference,” she said. “Anyway, thanks for coming to get me.”

  “My pleasure. So where to?”

  “Herbs and Wellness. Orders are all mixed up.”

  “Want to catch a movie after?”

  “Maybe,” Mya said, and tried to conceal her discomfort. It could never be that simple, just a trip to town and back home. Why did people need so much from one another?

  “Can we play some music?” she said. Luke put on a Gordon Lightfoot CD and an excruciating nostalgia filled the truck’s cab. The town was a thirty-minute drive from the cabin, so Mya might be weeping by the time they arrived, for reasons not even she would be able to pinpoint. She made an effort not to listen.

  The first half of the stretch was land owned by Mya’s family. It had been owned by the Lenores since Great-Grandmother Serena first came here in the thirties to establish a factory and grow the flowers. It was Serena’s idea to loan money to local businesses, and she turned what had been hill country into a bustling town with multiple stoplights on Main Street. Most of the families who had started businesses back then continued to run businesses many generations later. In turn, nobody asked questions about Lenore Incorporated. The kids at school had made jokes sometimes about Mya and Lucia. A few times they were called witches, and just once they were called voodoo girls.

  At least Mya and Lucia were strange in a way no one else could be. Lucia spent all her time trying to fit in and Mya spent her time on the playground telling kids what she saw in the clouds. One time she told Jake Nelson, whose family owned the organic bakery in town, that she saw him burning his forearm as he pulled cranberry walnut muffins from the oven, and he told her she was stupid. A few days later he was in the hospital with a third-degree burn. And she remembered the time she saw Bridget Lanely’s dog dead in the road, and sure enough, the next day Bridget skipped school to bury him. It wasn’t all bad news. She did tell Lindsey Wright about the Barbie bicycle she’d get for Christmas, and af
ter the break, Lindsey followed Mya around wherever she went on the playground and bugged her about the clouds. None of it had bothered Mya, not the way it bothered Lucia. But over the years even Mya started to avoid town. She was glad the herbal tea store ran smoothly on its own, for the most part. She’d only started it to give herself something to manage while she waited to be president.

  Large, shading maple trees lined the streets of Quartz Hollow. Luke parked his truck in front of Blue Ridge Books, and Mya stepped out. Even here, so many miles away, she should have been able to smell the blooming Gardenia potentiae flowers. It had been this way for a hundred years. No one in town probably noticed anymore, just like the sweet olive hedge that bloomed in September and the honeysuckle vines in May, but today the scent of her family’s flower did not linger in the air. The wind rustled the tree leaves, but it carried no scent with it. This puzzled Mya.

  Outside Blue Ridge Books old Millie stocked the metal bargain bookshelves, her cane on the ground next to her. She’d always been one of the women Willow called to watch Lucia and Mya if she was tied up with business or had to leave town for a meeting. Millie struggled to stand up, and Mya trotted up to her and took one of her elbows. “Thank you, dear,” Millie said, and then said, “Oh, that’s you, Mya? So good to see you, it’s been such a while, hasn’t it?”

  “It has,” Mya said, and handed her the cane. “Glad to see you’re well.”

  “You know me,” Millie said, and winked. “I’ll keep kicking as long as life keeps kicking me.” She’d used this line ever since her husband died, and maybe that’s why Mya had stopped coming around so much. Everything was aging, including herself, and nothing felt right about that.

  Luke stood at Mya’s side and greeted Millie, and Mya used his interruption as a good reason to move on down Main Street to the corner where Herbs and Wellness stood. “See you later,” Mya said, and Millie waved good-bye, then returned to her seat outside the store. Not too long and her mother would be old like Millie. That was hard for Mya to imagine. But it was happening; she couldn’t deny it. Only Luke appeared safe from the grip of aging. He reached over to hold Mya’s hand, and she playfully elbowed him in the side, but then he slung his arm around her shoulders and held on tight, and there wasn’t much she could do to escape him.

  The door chimed as she and Luke entered the tea shop, and Mya’s store manager, Vista, came around the glass countertop in her earth-mother head scarf and broomstick skirt, with gold bangles on both arms, which were covered in squiggled henna art. She wrapped Mya in one of her patchouli-scented hugs. “Thanks for coming,” Vista said.

  Luke took a seat by the window while Mya went behind the counter and wiped away stray loose-leaf spearmint tea on the shelves. She’d had an old restaurant converted into her tea shop, but she’d kept the bar and the shelving behind it in place. People liked to come in for a pot of tea the way they might a cold IPA. Vista went into the manager’s office, and Mya could see a mountain of cardboard boxes. Vista returned with an inventory slip for Mya. It was much longer than usual. “Just give me a second,” Mya said, and she took it over to the table where Luke sat.

  “Want anything?” Vista said.

  “How about valerian with lemongrass?” Mya said. “Something to calm the nerves. Is that okay with you?” she asked Luke.

  Luke shrugged. “As long as there’s sweetener, I don’t care.”

  “No problem,” Vista said, and went behind the bar.

  Mya squinted at the inventory list. It had been a few years since she’d had to look at one this closely. Vista ran the shop and the associated online store with a great deal of efficiency. Mya scanned the ten-page list and shook her head.

  “What is it?” Luke said.

  “It’s like we ordered our entire inventory ten times over,” Mya said. “How could this even happen?”

  Vista returned with a yellow ceramic teapot and placed it on the table along with a honeypot. “Needs to steep.”

  “Can you sit?” Mya said, and Vista pulled up a chair from a neighboring table. “How could this happen? Who placed the order?”

  Vista always smiled, no matter the circumstance. “I thought you did. I thought you’d made plans to expand without telling me or something. We don’t have the cash reserve to cover it.”

  “Of course not,” Mya said. “We don’t need any of this.”

  “I know,” Vista said.

  “So return the order.”

  “I tried already.”

  “And?”

  “No refunds.”

  “That’s impossible,” she said. “Try again.”

  “I mean, I will if you want me to,” she said, “but the bags are already open.”

  “And why is that?”

  “I thought you’d know,” Vista said. “I didn’t touch them.”

  Mya squeezed the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes. “This is ridiculous. I haven’t been here in months. Did one of the part-time girls do it?”

  “I don’t know,” Vista said. “Maybe, but I doubt it.”

  “Can we repackage them and sell it on eBay and recoup some cash?” Mya said, and Luke poured out the first cup of tea.

  “I’ll try,” she said, “but it could take a few months.”

  “Fine.”

  Vista nodded in her slow hippie way.

  “And thanks for the tea.”

  Her bracelets jangled as she walked back to the bar with the inventory slips.

  Mya poured herself a cup while Luke dropped a large spoonful of honey in his tea. “Is it a big deal?” he finally said.

  “I can’t think about it right now,” she said. Anytime money was tied up for no good reason, it was a big deal. And why had it happened? That mattered most to Mya. She should’ve been the one to hire the part-timers, but instead she had trusted Vista with the task.

  Luke took a sip and grimaced. His muscular body didn’t fit in the tea shop with its delicate wares. He reached underneath the table and squeezed her thigh. He said, “I can think of a couple ways to distract you. Let’s go see a movie.”

  She brought the teacup to her lips so she wouldn’t have to respond.

  “Come on, Mya,” he said. “I did your work thing, now go do something fun with me.”

  “I just don’t—”

  “Are you afraid or something?” he said. He removed his hand from her leg.

  “Goodness no,” she said.

  “Is it our ages?” he said. “Because I don’t care about that.”

  Vista turned on the small flat-screen TV mounted behind the bar. Mya had conceded and installed a television for Vista because the day-to-day business was so often slow—they did their best business online. Luke stared at the TV and broke from his questioning. Mya was relieved until she turned around to figure out what had captured his attention so fully. Jennifer Katz in a red couture gown filled the screen, and a headline scrolled by beneath: STAR TURNED HERMIT? WHERE HAS SHE GONE? COME BACK, JENNIFER!

  Not good. So, so not good. Her perfume for Zoe needed to work and work fast, and though she believed in what she made, she was never 100 percent sure about anything. Not anymore. Not after what happened in the business deal with Zoe. If Jennifer refused to play her part as superstar in Hollywood, she might quit the perfume and expose herself before Zoe had the chance. What Mya wanted to do was go home immediately and send that perfume to Zoe, but the concoction had to rest a little longer to be effective.

  Luke said, “She’s still hot,” and Mya glared at him. The TV cut to a commercial for men’s hair-growth products and Luke lost interest. He was many years away from requiring products like those.

  Mya rubbed her temples.

  “It’s a Saturday. Couples do things like go see movies,” Luke said.

  “Couples?” Mya said.

  He finished his tea like he was taking a shot of tequila, and then his blue eyes brightened. He nodded and said, “Couples,” as if she hadn’t heard him correctly the first time.

  Mya sighed. He
was much too young for her and this proved it. He still had the gumption for romance. She no longer had the energy to hurt his feelings, not after the day she’d had. Plus, if she returned home now, all she’d do was hover over the formula. “Fine,” Mya said, acquiescing. “I’ll go see a movie with you.” Luke clapped his hands together like he’d just won the lottery.

  CHAPTER 11

  The First Love

  DISTRACTED, LUCIA DROVE for at least an hour before she finally remembered the correct route to town. Her hunger refused to subside. What was one more detour before the farmer’s market? Lucia crossed the street without looking and headed for the bakery. Stress had often sent Lucia to some of the finest bakeries in New York City for French pastries and desserts. A fight with Jonah equaled a puff with rich, creamy filling, and a rejection from her agent for a dog food commercial or a lead in a B-rated play qualified her for two champagne glasses filled with chocolate mousse and homemade whipped cream, with a raspberry on top. She couldn’t buy a classic strawberry tart at the Quartz Hollow Bakery, but she could at least find a homemade cinnamon roll and a cup of black coffee.

  No one recognized her, so she ordered a half dozen cinnamon rolls and the largest coffee they had on the menu. Most people were out rafting, hiking, working the shops, or farming at this time of day, so Lucia was one of the few customers. The entire place smelled like vanilla and coffee beans, and a few other people sat around the shop reading tablets or the Quartz Hollow Gazette newspaper.

  With her white bag of cinnamon-scented stress relief in one hand and black coffee in the other, Lucia left through the glass door, a small brass chime dinging on her way out. She took a left down the sun-drenched sidewalk. The Blue Ridge Mountains, with their deep periwinkle hue; smooth, rolling curves; and perfect visibility loomed in the far distance of Main Street. She understood for a moment why people born here rarely left and why people traveled from all over the world to hike these majestic mountains. Lucia remembered running errands around town as a little girl and encountering filthy, sweaty, hairy women and men who had just stepped off the Virginia highlands section of the Appalachian Trail. They came to Quartz Hollow to shower and eat and pick up packages in town, and if they arrived at just the right time, they swooned over a scent they didn’t recognize from their journey. Hikers often asked locals to name it—a few had even asked Willow—but everyone answered with a shrug.