Season of the Dragonflies

by Sarah Creech

  “Let’s say she didn’t kill herself. Your plan was to make a perfume, take a large amount of Zoe’s money for it, and kill her career at the same time?” James said. “That’s ethical to you?”

  Mya nodded.

  “But you selected her,” James said.

  “Now, hold on,” Willow protested.

  “No.” Mya stood up. “He’s right. Revenge isn’t ethical, but neither is greed. Zoe made the first mistake here. She should’ve stayed where she belonged. Cameo roles are one thing, but she had to climb and she knew it was wrong. That’s why she didn’t tell us about Schol’s film. She deserved a consequence.”

  Lucia said, “She deserved to die?”

  “I didn’t want her to die. I just didn’t want her career to ruin Jennifer Katz. I mean, that’s not ethical either, right? Not on Zoe’s part, not on our part.”

  James looked at the ceiling, and Mya followed his gaze there but found nothing but the same old skylight.

  Lucia said, “You could’ve accepted the consequences of your contract mistake.”

  “And let Zoe ruin the business?” Willow finally stepped in to defend Mya. It was about time. “That wasn’t a decision I could make, and you wouldn’t have either. You either, James, so nobody start in with the high and mighty today.”

  “I would’ve called Zoe’s bluff,” Lucia said. This made Mya want to toss a book at her sister. “She needed us more than we needed her; she would’ve quickly figured that out.”

  “After she did some damage,” James agreed. “She was impulsive.” Again he looked right at Mya. Why did he keep doing that?

  “So what?” Lucia said. “It would’ve been a glitch in the business. Not a tragedy, not like this.”

  Finally, her mother’s face pinched with annoyance. Willow said, “I’m sorry you weren’t the one to make all the decisions.”

  “You honestly think that was the best decision?” Lucia asked.

  “I did.”

  “It doesn’t matter now,” Mya told them. “It’s over.”

  “I hope the report comes back inconclusive.” James stood up from his chair. “But I wouldn’t want to live with that.”

  “Well,” Mya said, “you won’t have to.” She didn’t like this man at all. And he did not like Mya. It was palpable in the room. He didn’t seem to like Lucia much either, so that helped Mya a little.

  Willow stood with him. “Take a walk with me?”

  “I should go,” he said.

  “Just a short one, while you wait for your driver.”

  “Nice to meet you two.” He walked out of the round room and back through the kitchen to the front door. Willow said nothing and followed him out.

  Mya picked at her cuticles and waited for the front door to shut before she said, “Bastard.”

  “He did us a favor,” Lucia said. “I think.”

  “Are you my sister?” Mya said, looking directly at Lucia.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “What I said.”

  “Yes. Obviously, I’m your sister.”

  “Then act like it for a change.”

  “Fine,” Lucia said, “act like this is a big deal and I will.”

  “I’m terrified. How can you not see that?”

  “You’re scared that you might die.” It pained Mya to hear this confirmed. “Not about Zoe and what this means for us.”

  The phone rang in the office and Mya’s heart pounded faster with each ring. “You know what it is,” Mya said.

  “Should I answer it? Or get Mom?”

  Mya and Lucia hurried to the office, and Lucia stared at the phone like it might go up in smoke. “Pick it up,” Mya said.

  Lucia snatched the phone and said, “Lenore Incorporated—no, this is Lucia Lenore, that’s right . . . No, she’s not here . . . Now, hold on, Peter, you can talk to me about that . . . I don’t think that’s a good idea—hold on, let me ask her, but I doubt it.”

  Mya chewed her fingernails. She hated listening to other people’s telephone conversations, especially when she happened to be the subject.

  Lucia put him on hold and dropped the phone on the desk. “He’s so pissed, oh my God.”

  “Tell me.” Mya stood right next to her at the table.

  “He’s accusing you of crazy things, of killing her on purpose, of getting rid of evidence. He wants to press charges but can’t.”

  A wave of relief swept over Mya. “Why not?”

  “The report came back. She had trace amounts of prescription drugs in her blood but that was it. Normally not fatal, but that’s what they’re blaming it on, saying she was sensitive to it. Peter swears he knows it’s not true and all the papers are writing about Zoe’s drug problem. He’s weeping. Just weeping and screaming and wants to speak to you and only you. Breathe.”

  Mya hadn’t noticed she’d stopped until Lucia pointed it out, and she finally inhaled, her lungs burning. She said, “What should I do?” She wanted Lucia to say, “Don’t speak to anyone,” but instead her sister shrugged and offered up the phone to Mya.

  “You decide,” Lucia said.

  Mya accepted the receiver and Lucia pushed the button. “This is Mya Lenore,” she said.

  Peter Sable, who was a legendary entertainment-industry hard-ass, remained silent on the other end of the line. Mya almost hung up until she heard him cough.

  “Peter?” she said softly.

  “I don’t even know what to say,” he said in a voice so low and so hoarse that she almost didn’t recognize it.

  “How about you call back later then?”

  He grew louder as he said, “But I know what you did. No one can prove it, but I know that it was here and what it did to her. I watched her use it and saw how much she changed. As soon as it touched her skin she turned into someone else, someone deluded and angry and sad and ill, and now it’s just gone. How’d you get your hands on it? Where is it?”

  “Peter,” Mya said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Sure you don’t. Not on the phone you don’t.”

  “Is that all?” She scratched her snakebite bandage with her nails.

  “You watch out,” Peter said. “You hear me? You think you can’t be touched?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me, I know you did,” Peter spat, and hung up.

  Mya’s mouth remained open as she handed the phone back to Lucia.

  “What happened?”

  Mya dropped onto the couch and put her head between her legs, taking deep breaths to curb the oncoming panic. The other side of the couch dipped and Mya felt Lucia rubbing her back. Lucia asked, “Seriously, what just happened?”

  She couldn’t talk. Where was her breath?

  “Mya,” Lucia pleaded. “Talk to me.”

  She shook her head back and forth.

  Lucia said, “Are they pressing charges or something?”

  Mya continued to shake her head, and she squeezed her eyes shut tight. She’d never meant to hurt Zoe, not like this. But no one would believe her. She gripped her hair and finally found her voice: “He told me to watch out.”

  “For what?” Lucia said naïvely.

  Mya finally sat up and laughed at how childish her sister could be sometimes. “For whatever’s coming.”

  “He threatened you?”

  “I’m pretty sure,” Mya said.

  “You think he meant it, or he was just upset?” Lucia kept her hand resting on Mya’s back. They’d lost this kind of affection so many years ago that it felt foreign to Mya now, but it brought her comfort and she was grateful.

  “He meant it,” Mya said. “This is it, I told you.”

  Lucia moved to the edge of the couch and put her hands together. She said, “Then you need to go. You can’t stay here.”

  Mya shook her head. “I won’t feel safe anywhere but here.”

  “You’ll need to go somewhere until we hear from him again. I don’t think you did it on purpose, but I do think you’ve
always been reckless, and that’s why we’ve come to this.”

  Mya wanted to respond with some forceful comeback, but her entire body felt like a dried leaf crumbled beneath a boot. It was true, what her sister said. Why did her actions have such permanent results? Other people seemed to make mistakes that worked out just fine in the end. She couldn’t stand being Mya Lenore sometimes, and she had no idea how to fix herself.

  CHAPTER 30

  Experiments

  FROM THE WAY Mya stared at the slow spin of the ceiling fan and refused to speak, Lucia could tell that her sister didn’t want company, at least not Lucia’s, so when Mya called Luke to come pick her up, Lucia slipped out of the office with her mother’s laptop and went to the kitchen. Lucia searched Zoe’s name. She needed proof of her death.

  Zoe’s movies still played. Her red carpet appearances streamed on YouTube with millions of viewers, more now than ever before. Her name appeared on page after page of Google hits that heralded her overdose. She lived; at least that’s how it felt. All over the world people blogged with sad messages for a woman they felt they knew but never had the chance to meet, hope of that day dying along with her. The world loved her, apparently, and had lost her and grieved her. It was as if Mya had bestowed on Zoe the exact amount of attention she’d always wanted.

  Lucia closed out the browser and shut her mother’s laptop. Too much was happening now. She drummed her fingers on the black machine and wondered if she was foolish to stick around and take on not just a failing company but a compromised one. No sane person would do that. She had a job waiting for her, a paid apartment, maybe even regular sex with her ex-husband. All she had to do was make the call to her agent.

  Except she couldn’t feel the desire. Just poof—no longer there. Lucia had been defined by doubt her entire life: she doubted her family gifts, and they never presented themselves; she doubted her marriage, and it ended; she doubted her acting skills, and her career never took off. Now she doubted what felt like her last option in the world, one that, for whatever reason, she believed could work. A storm was brewing all around Lucia here at home, and at any point a lightning bolt might strike her. She needed more than ever to trust that she could handle this. That she might even be the one to help.

  Lucia’s phone buzzed as Mya walked past her at the table. Without stopping she said, “Luke’s here, we’re going for a drive.” Lucia turned around to ask her when she’d be back but she’d already shut the door.

  Ben had sent Lucia a text message: Can I come by now instead of tonite? She texted: That’s fine. He wrote back, See u soon, and Lucia cradled the phone between her palms.

  LUCIA CLEANED UP THE MORNING dishes but couldn’t handle the quiet in the cabin. She walked outside and sat in the gazebo to listen to the stream passing underneath. The tall meadow grass moved so fluidly that at first Lucia hadn’t noticed the small breeze. She took a deep breath, hoping to smell the family flower, just as she had for so many years as a girl, but now the scent no longer hung over her like a cloak. She ached for its sweet, pungent return. To lose the flower would be like losing a mother or a father, and they couldn’t afford to lose another family member. Not that she had any memories of her father. She did have memories of the flower, and as such, it would be a much greater loss. How was it that she still had time to sit at a place like this alone and hear the water pass, the crickets chirp in the grass, and the wind maneuver through the leaves all around as if a client hadn’t died that morning, as if the world around her wasn’t in chaos?

  Ben’s truck moved up the driveway. Lucia wasn’t sure what she would do with more quiet without answers, so the sound of his door opening was a welcome one. Ben didn’t see her at the gazebo at first and she watched him pull out his bag, his biceps like one of the smooth stones from the creek below. His T-shirt hugged his chest as he stretched over his truck bed to shut a storage unit. He smiled as he made his way toward the cabin.

  “Ben!” Lucia called, and he glanced around to find her. She waved, and he finally spotted her and walked up the few steps into the gazebo. “Missed you there,” he said.

  “Sorry,” Lucia said. “I needed some air and the porch swing’s taken.” She pointed toward the cabin, where dragonflies continued to zip vertically, freeze, and disappear, able to change direction so swiftly that Lucia could stay outside all day long and watch them.

  “Still here?” he asked, and at first Lucia thought he was referring to her. Lucia’s extended stay in New York City had made her forget how long the dragonfly season lasted, but as much as she tried, she couldn’t remember a time when there were so many, and so close to the cabin.

  Ben dropped his heavy bag on the table. “Appreciate you letting me come early.”

  “It’s fine,” she said. “We appreciate you coming at all.” He must have made a date for the evening with Vista, and this interrupted their schedule, so that’s why he couldn’t come at five. “And don’t worry about dinner,” she added.

  “About that . . .” Ben wiped his brow with the back of his hand.

  “It’s okay, really,” Lucia said. “Another time.”

  “No,” he said, and Lucia’s face grew hot. That was a rather blunt rejection. “Not like that,” he said. “I meant no about canceling dinner. I was just hoping you’d come to my place early tonight and let me cook for you this time.”

  “Really?” she said. Technically, she was aware that there were men in the world who cooked for women (often she viewed them chopping and mixing and kneading on culinary shows), but she’d never met one before. She thought about how she and Jonah had been experts at dining out, and then she stopped herself. Would there ever be a time when she didn’t compare her life now as single Lucia to her life then as miserably married Lucia? This state of limbo could not make for a happy life.

  Ben appeared embarrassed by her surprise. “I like showing off the kitchen.”

  “Oh, if that’s all,” Lucia said. “In that case . . .”

  “I just want to hang out with you like old times,” he said. “We can ride over after this.”

  How had she forgotten what to do when a boy said something like this? Flip her hair? Bat her eyes? Purse her lips? Stare in a cold and unforgiving way just to make him sweat? Why be compelled to do anything at all? Instead laughter exploded from deep inside her and his face fell. She waved her hand and said, “I really want to, I swear.”

  “But?”

  “No but,” Lucia said. “I want to.”

  “Roast okay?”

  “Perfect.”

  “Ready?” Ben said, and picked up his bag and hung it on one shoulder, then left the gazebo.

  She followed him down the stairs. “We can go around that way.” Lucia pointed toward the cherry trees and they began their walk to the flowers. Just as they rounded the cabin, her mother and James were making their way back, hand in hand.

  “Who’s that?” Ben said, and stopped.

  “I guess he’s my mother’s boyfriend, I don’t really know. I’d never heard about him until this morning.” Lucia squinted at them in the distance.

  “Why’s he here?” Ben suddenly sounded protective. Back in high school he’d been the only man regularly around the house.

  “Long story,” Lucia said.

  Willow and James walked directly to them, and Willow first gave Ben a hug and then introduced him to James.

  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.