MYA STOOD ON top of the hill before the many acres of flowers in full bloom. The dark, glossy leaves relished the full sun, and the white flowers congregated like a crowd of summer-blond children, more beautiful than any stretch of sunflowers or Queen Anne’s lace you might stumble upon in the Blue Ridge. The woody shrubs stood six feet tall in dense rows that stretched far back toward the forest line but stopped with just enough space to ensure there was no root competition between the trees and the Gardenia potentiae plants.
June reigned as Mya’s favorite month and most anticipated time of year. She wished things were less chaotic so she could enjoy it before the workers cultivated all the flowers and transported them to the factory down the road to capture the scent for the family’s perfume. But time still remained for Mya to inhale the warm summer winds saturated with the smell of these most unusual flowers, nothing like the scent of their cousin the common gardenia. No, Gardenia potentiae smelled like ocean gusts of lavender, vanilla, and cedar, and something much deeper and elusive, like the smell of lust or envy.
Mya lay down on a bed of clover and reached her palms out to the thick hedge of flowers, just to see if they’d move. They remained blithely unaware of her presence, just as they always had. She picked a bloom and held it in her hand. Mya touched the stamen, and the pollen from the anthers stuck to her fingertip like a stamp. The sepal encasing the pistil and ovary seemed overgrown compared to past years, she was sure of it. How strange. And the petals felt harder, less supple. Maybe they hadn’t finished blooming. She’d inform her mother in case they needed to push back the harvest a week or two—another first for their company.
The herd of deer that had accompanied her on the walk circled around her, and one nudged her arm as if to ask when she’d be ready to go. The thick clouds above formed a walkway like a footbridge over a deep canyon, and Mya placed her hand over her eyebrows to shield her eyes from the sun. And then Lucia’s face appeared above her. Mya squinted to make sure she wasn’t hallucinating, then said, “You found me.”
Lucia plopped down next to Mya, and her cheeks were red. “Sorry,” she said, “I followed the path.”
Mya and the deer left thin, winding paths in the tall grass. Her mother had never needed to concern herself about Mya’s whereabouts, even when she was a little girl. The beaten meadow paths acted as her trail of bread crumbs. “How’d that go?” Mya said.
“Easy enough,” Lucia said. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
“I meant with Mom,” Mya said.
“Not great,” Lucia said, and picked a piece of wild wheatgrass and began to braid a crown. “She’s clearly preoccupied about something.”
“We made a mistake,” Mya said, and she immediately wished she hadn’t divulged this detail.
Lucia said, “Oh?” in a tone that Mya recognized—Lucia always spoke in a detached and cold way about family matters. She might’ve inherited Great-Grandmother Serena’s beautiful black hair and skin as blemish free and fresh as the flowers around them, but growing up, Lucia always copied Mya’s spell work because she had no intuition for such things. Lucia had excelled where Mya had not, with normal stuff like school and extracurricular activities and boyfriends, but she did so to compensate for not being gifted in the only way that mattered in the Lenore family.
“What’d you do?” Lucia said.
“Why do you just assume I fucked up?” Mya said, though the only answer to Lucia’s question would reveal that she had, indeed, fucked up.
“Come on, Mya,” Lucia said.
Mya covered her face with both hands. No reason to hide it now. She said, “I saturated a market.”
“Which one?” Lucia said. She stopped braiding the grass.
“The worst one,” Mya said, and then lifted her hands from her face to see her sister’s reaction. If only she looked more surprised.
“Zoe Bennett, isn’t it? She came out of nowhere,” Lucia said. “I knew it, had to be when she got nominated for that small supporting role in The Break Away last year.” She placed the finished crown on top of the soft tan head of one of Mya’s favorite fawns, Little Spots. “Wasn’t she in music?” Lucia continued. “I thought I remembered seeing her videos.”
Something bit Mya from the grass below, a red ant probably, and she rubbed her elbow. “She was,” Mya said. “She seemed right for it, but then she took the role in The Break Away and we had no idea she was even considered for it. She kept the audition hushed up, that’s for sure.”
“What about her contract?” Lucia said as she petted the fawn resting beside Mya.
Mya said, “I didn’t add a clause to keep her from crossing over. I didn’t know I needed to since we told her in her interview. It was made as clear as moonshine. Mom would’ve caught it, and I know I asked her to check it. She was at her desk and looked right at me and said she’d do it that afternoon, and I sent it off the next day.” Lucia remained silent except for the sound of her breath. What could she really say in response? “Anyway,” Mya said, “it wasn’t a huge deal until she got Arrow Heights and Jennifer Katz confronted her and figured it out.”
In an exact imitation of Jennifer Katz, Lucia said, “Excuse me, Zoe, but may I try a spritz of that perfume? Smells an awful lot like the one I use.” She laughed and then returned to her normal voice and said, “I bet that was an awkward moment in the ladies’ room.”
Mya couldn’t help herself and had to laugh too. “I never asked.”
They were quiet for a few minutes before Lucia said, “Mom forgot Jonah’s name.”
“Not like they were close or anything,” Mya said. She was always quick to defend their mother, even when Willow wasn’t pleased with Mya. It was a response as automatic as blinking.
Lucia narrowed her eyes and said, “But she never forgot names. ‘Good business starts with names.’ Wasn’t that what she always said?”
Mya scratched the ground with her fingernails and exposed the roots of the grass.
Lucia said, “She forgot to read that contract, you know she did. Is something going on?”
“I don’t know,” Mya said. “Feel free to ask her.”
“No way,” Lucia said. “You saw how she just acted. I’m just a weekend guest at the Lenore bed-and-breakfast; she made that very clear. The weekend might be too long of a stay even.”
“Do what you have to do,” Mya said, and wiped the dirt from her nails on her jeans. Lucia’s leaving in the next day or two would be just fine with Mya, but she didn’t want to seem too eager. Mya said, “She’s in there waiting for me.”
“You’re stalling,” Lucia said.
“Yep,” Mya said, and rested her back against the ground again. She lifted her long hair up and spread it over the grass. The feel of the earth on her bare neck centered her. Lucia didn’t join her; instead she stared off into the distance like she’d dropped her keys somewhere but didn’t have the energy to search for them.
Mya stared up at her little sister, so unlike the girl Mya had known, the girl who was so sure of what the future held for her. “I just don’t get it.”
“Get what?” Lucia said.
“Why you always refused.” Every single time Mya sent Lucia a small vial of the family perfume, she always returned it in the original bubble wrap. If she’d used it, she’d have had an Oscar nomination by now and she wouldn’t have been sitting here.
“I just . . .” Lucia paused. She glanced at Mya and then looked toward the woods again. “I wanted to know that it was my talent alone or I’d never think I deserved it, and that always seemed much worse than never getting it.” Lucia laughed in a low and defeated way. “All I ever wanted was to be an actress, and I suppose I didn’t want to find out that I was meant for something else.”
A neon-blue dragonfly spiraled down like a falling leaf and made a delicate landing on Mya’s fawn. The fawn rested its chin on Lucia’s thigh. Lucia said, “Remember when I fell out of that weeping willow and broke my arm and that huge deer carried me back to the cabin? For the longest time I thought he was one of Santa’s missing reindeer.”
Mya laughed and then said, “I do remember that.”
“Does he still come around?”
“He died a couple days ago.”
“Oh,” Lucia said. “Sorry.”
“He was old.” Mya sat up, stretched her arms, and looked back at the cabin. It was as still as their mother’s anger. Mya said, “She’ll come out here to find me.”
Lucia said, “Should I go with you?”
“Why would you?” The last thing she needed was Lucia to be tangled in their affairs.
“What else is there to do? Sit out here? Go for a hike?”
That was exactly what Mya would have preferred to do.
Lucia finished the crown of dandelions she’d been working on and placed it on her head. “I’ll be quiet,” Lucia said.
Mya didn’t want Lucia involved, especially not now, but she didn’t know how to tell her. She said, “She might kick you out.”
“If she does, then fine,” Lucia said. “Let her. But you don’t care, so why should she?” Lucia stood up and stared down at Mya.
“Now?” Mya said.
“Yes, now, let’s get it over with,” Lucia said. “You’re sure you don’t mind, right?” The way she said this suggested she knew how much Mya didn’t want her in there.
“Why would I mind?” Mya said, and accepted Lucia’s offered hand. “It’s not a huge deal or anything.”
“Exactly,” Lucia said. “So no reason to keep me out.”
Lucia led the way, and they left the deer and dragonflies in the meadow and hiked back through the cherry trees to the family cabin, where Willow awaited them.