MYA BLASTED FLEETWOOD MAC for the thirty-minute ride away from town and back up the curving lanes to her land. Bright orange and luminous, the sun would sink behind the wall of mountains in an hour and twenty-two minutes, and Mya would have the pleasure of watching it set after a long day of hard and productive work. The rhododendron thickened as Mya approached the turnoff for their gravel driveway, lined this time of year with pink phlox, black-eyed Susan, and yarrow. It was perfection, just like the new formula. She couldn’t keep herself from thinking about it.
When Mya had finished blending the musk with the alcohol solution in her workshop and added the essences of patchouli, orange blossom, and Bulgarian rose, she had stopped a moment, waved the small glass bottle beneath her nose, and inhaled as deeply as she could. The word “ecstasy” normally languished in her vocabulary, but the experience of completing Zoe’s perfume left her with that single word in mind.
The scent alone could become a top-tier perfume competing with the best of Parisian houses, but then Mya added the essence of Gardenia potentiae, and its notes of vanilla and cedar and salt water made the scent unstoppable. Mya could not keep the bottle beneath her nose for long. Just a few seconds of exposure and all she could imagine were naughty positions she’d ask Luke to try with her.
The final ingredient made Mya pause before she added it. If the drops of Mya’s dissolved lock of hair failed—she’d only know that once Zoe received it—then Zoe’s career could grow even more powerful, and Jennifer Katz would be finished. This new formula could be stronger than Great-Grandmother Serena’s. Mya couldn’t be totally sure that the perfume would have its intended effect, but she had to risk it.
Mya had held her breath as she used a long dropper to add the final drops to the vial. Normally she’d let a new perfume sit for a few months to meld, but one, she didn’t have that kind of time, and two, she wasn’t really sure how effective the final ingredient would be after a long wait.
She gave it one hour to rest before she smelled her experiment again. At first when she brought the bottle to her nose, it smelled exactly like it had before she added a few drops of her dissolved hair. She desired Luke and wanted to tie up his wrists and play with him for hours. But nothing more. Mya set the bottle down on her worktable and lowered her head, convinced she had failed. All of her confidence left her body at that moment, and she gripped the edge of the table until her fingertips pulsed.
The feeling crept over her body so slowly that she didn’t notice it for the first twenty minutes, but then she fixed her stare on the wall of dried flowers and her thoughts began to oscillate without her control. They’re lovely, she told herself, for plain meadow flowers. She tried to look away but couldn’t, and her thoughts became more negative. Stupid flowers. And then they became dark. Douse the wall in alcohol to rid the room of the ugliness parading there, let the whole house burn. Mya took the bottle of moonshine out of the cabinet, walked to the wall slowly, and almost soaked the dried herbs and flowers and the curtain too, until the scent finally escaped from her nose and she rushed to the sink to wash her face, her hands, and any part of her that had come into contact with it.
The perfume was well beyond sensual—it was controlling. And that’s what Zoe needed. That’s what Mya wanted to give her. No more capricious, malicious decisions for Zoe Bennett. The scent would work on her inner circle first, her entourage and leading man, her agent, manager, public relations specialist, and stylist, and then outward with the directors and investors and executives, and finally the public. They’d all despise her; it could be that swift.
Mya sealed the perfume and then printed instructions and signed it: So sorry for the mix-up. Hope this helps. With love and admiration. Yours sincerely, Mya Lenore. She sped to the factory and commissioned her mother’s pilot and his assistant to deliver the package today, ecstasy filling her heart to capacity. Nothing else gave her a feeling like this. Only an experiment proven successful had this kind of pull.
Now that one problem had been resolved, Mya worried about the plants. She tried to convince herself that whatever was going on was a one-time fluke, a result of poor hydration or sensitivity to the frost, but she just didn’t believe it. The plant didn’t operate that way. It was the most resilient plant she’d ever known.
Mya drove up the driveway and crested the hill at dusk to see a Ford truck parked in front of the cabin with a sign plastered on the back. With her headlights on, she squinted to read the words WHITE FARM ORGANIC PRODUCE. Instead of paying attention to the road, Mya was thinking, What’s Ben White doing here? and then she felt a small thud underneath her tires. She parked the truck right there, assuming she had run over an Adirondack chair or weed whacker. She hopped out and her red cowgirl boot landed on the delicate leg of a young fawn pinned beneath her front left tire.
Mya screamed without thinking, and her mother came out of the cabin first, followed by Lucia and Ben. The legs twitched, but she couldn’t see the little one’s head, and her entire body froze: it was Spots. No matter how badly she wanted to move the truck or not move the truck or do whatever was best, she couldn’t motivate her body.
Willow ran to Mya and stopped short as soon as she saw the blood on the grass.
Lucia followed behind her and said, “What is it?”
“Nowhere,” Mya said. “I didn’t see her. Just out of nowhere. I don’t know.”
Lucia looked at Willow as if Mya had lost her mind, and maybe she had. In all the years she’d lived in the mountains, she had never hit a deer. She’d come across many dead animals on her hikes, but a fawn was the one animal she never wanted to watch suffer, much less kill. Willow walked over to Mya and wrapped an arm around her, and Lucia followed. Ben dropped down on his knees to look under the truck, and the fawn’s legs began to jump like it wanted to dash away.
Ben put the truck in neutral and then pushed it backward to free the fawn. Once the weight lifted, Spots jumped off the ground and then collapsed and let out grunt after miserable grunt. Quickly, Ben put his hands around the fawn’s neck and broke it. Lucia let out a whimper. Ben scooped the deer up and turned toward the forest without asking what to do with the body. Mya watched him go as if viewing a play, and then suddenly her breath returned and she shouted, “No!”
Ben stopped. She ran to him and he refused to look her in the eyes. Mya outstretched her arms and said, “Give her to me, it’s my fault.”
Ben finally looked up, and his eyes told her that he definitely agreed. She’d seen that look from him before. “Here,” he said.
She took the fawn’s dead body from Ben and held the deer close to her chest as if it were an infant. Its little body was still warm, and behind her she heard Lucia say, “Hang on a minute.” Ben quickly walked away, like he couldn’t be around Mya and Lucia at the same time.
Mya just wanted to be alone, and she moved forward. A dragonfly landed on Mya’s shoulder and she flicked it away, then Lucia’s hand touched down in its place. Mya stopped walking. “I’m fine,” she said.
“It’s not that,” Lucia said. “I thought you’d want to know the cloud’s gone.”
Mya turned around quickly. “It is?” she said. “Like gone gone? Disappeared?”
Lucia nodded.
So that’s what it took to make the cloud go away: she had to sacrifice her favorite fawn. Zoe wasn’t worth it. “Forever?” Mya said.
“I guess,” Lucia said.
“Thanks for telling me,” Mya said. Lucia returned to Ben and Willow.
She didn’t need to see Ben. Why had that happened? Why hadn’t Lucia warned her that he was coming over? It was all so long ago, but it still made her feel guilty, especially with Lucia so near. Mya clutched Spots tighter as she walked away into the faint golden light of the setting sun, and she wondered if she’d ever be forgiven for the many bad choices she’d made in her life thus far.