Page 9 (1/2)
She was drea, vital blooms, flowed around her It was perfect, tidied and ordered, its edges ruler-straight to forrass
Color swept into color, whites and pinks, yellows and silvery greens, all soft and delicate pastels that shiolden bea and drew a pretty bevy of busy butterflies, the curiosity of a single shibird No weed intruded on its flawlessness, and every blosso their turn to open
She&039;d done this As she circled the bed it ith a sense of pride and satisfaction She&039;d turned the earth and fed it, she&039;d planned and selected and set each plant in exactly the right place The garden so precisely raph
It had taken her years to plan and toil and create But now everything she&039;d wanted to acco at her feet
Yet even as she watched, a ste the syht, round, growing up, unfurling its leaves
A dahlia? She&039;d planted no dahlias there They belonged in the back She&039;d specifically planted a trio of tall pink dahlias at the back of the bed, exactly one foot apart
Puzzled, she tilted her head, studied it as the sterew and thickened, as buds for and unexpected
Even as she started to smile, she heard - felt? - a whisper over the skin, athere Wrong It has to be re left
She shivered The air around her was suddenly cool, with a hint of raw daolden sun
In the pit of her belly was a kind of dread
Don&039;t let it grow It will strangle the life out of everything you &039;ve done
That was right Of course, that was right It had no business growing there,the order
She&039;d have to dig it out, find another place for it Reorganize everything, just when she&039;d thought she was finished And look at that, she thought, as the buds formed, as they broke open to spread their deep blue petals It was entirely the wrong color Too bold, too dark, too bright
It was beautiful; she couldn&039;t deny it In fact, she&039;d never seen a , so vivid It was already nearly as tall as she, with flowers as wide as dinner plates
It lies It lies
That whisper, so brain She whimpered a little, tossed restlessly in her chilly bed
Kill it! Kill it Hurry before it&039;s too late
No, she couldn&039;t kill so so beautiful, so alive, so vivid But that didn&039;t mean she could just leave it there, out of its place, upsetting the rest of the bed
All that work, the preparation, the planning, and now this She&039;cf just have to plan another bed and work it in With a sigh, she reached out, feathered her fingers over those bold blue petals It would be a lot of work, she thought, a lot of trouble, but -
"Mom"
"Isn&039;t it pretty?" she murmured "It&039;s so blue"
"Mom, wake up"
"What?" She tu off sleep as she saw Luke kneeling in the bed beside her
God, the rooed the spread over hiood ina hand on his brow to check for fever A little warht "Does it hurt?"
He shook his head She could see the gleam of his eyes, the sheen of tears "It feels sick Can I sleep in your bed?"
"Okay" She drew the sheets back "Lie down and bundle up, baby I don&039;t knohy it&039;s so cold in here I&039; to take your temperature, just to see" She pressed her lips to his forehead as he snuggled onto her pillow Definitely a little war on the bedside laet the thermometer from the bathrooh your brain" She stroked his hair as she set the gauge to his ear
"Did you feel sick when you went to bed?"
"Nuh-uh, it was " His body tightened, and heto retch before he did With a mother&039;s speed, she scooped him up, dashed into the bathroom They made it, barely, and she murmured and stroked and fretted while he was sick
Then he turned his pale little face up to hers "I frew up"
"I know, baby I&039; to ave him a little water, cooled his face with a cloth, then carried hiht, the room felt fine now
"It doesn&039;t feel as sick in ood" Still, she took his teht the wastebasket over beside the bed "Does it hurt anywhere?"
"Nuh-uh, but I don&039;t like to frow up It makes it taste bad in my throat And ain, it&039;ll come out and I won&039;t have it to put under my pillow"
"Don&039;t you worry about that You&039;ll absolutely have your tooth for under your pillow, just like the other one Now, I&039;ll go down and get you soht here, and I&039;ll be back in just a minute Okay?"
"Okay"
"If you have to be sick again, try to use this" She set the wastebasket beside hiht back, baby"
She hurried out, jogging down the stairs in her nightshirt One of the disadvantages of a really big house, she realized, was that the kitchen was a mile away fro a little fridge, like the one she&039;d had in her dor rooht as she rushed into the kitchen He&039;d probably be better by tomorrow If he wasn&039;t, she&039;d call the doctor
She hunted up ginger ale, filled a tall glass with ice, grabbed a bottle of water, and dashed back upstairs
"I get ginger ale," she heard Luke say as she walked back down the hall to her rooh I feel better, I can still have it You can have some, too, if you want"
"Thanks, honey, but - " When she swung into the rooainst the pillows And the rooain, so cold that she saw the vapor of her own breath
"She went away," Luke said
So that was more than the cold danced up her spine "Who went away?"
"The lady" His sleepy eyes brightened a bit when he saw the ginger ale "She stayed with me when you went downstairs"
"What lady, Luke? Miss Roz? Hayley?"
"Nuh-uh The lady who coer ale?"
"You can have sohtly as she poured "Where did you see her?"
"Right here" He pointed to the bed, then took the glass in both hands and drank "This tastes good"
"You&039;ve seen her before?"
"Uh-huh Sos the dilly-dilly song"
Lavender&039;s blue, dilly dilly Lavender&039;s green That&039;s the song she&039;d heard, Stella realized with a nu
"Did she - " No, don&039;t frighten him, she warned herself "What does she look like?"
"She&039;s pretty, I guess She has yellow hair I think she&039;s an angel, a lady angel? &039;Meel?"
"Guardian angel"
"But she doesn&039;t have wings Gavin says she&039;s ood one like in Harry Potter!&039;
Her throat went desert dry "Gavin&039;s seen her too?"
"Yeah, when she colass back to Stella, rubbed his eyes "My tummy feels better now, but I&039;m sleepy Can I still sleep in your bed?"
"Absolutely" But before she got into bed with hiht
She looked in on Gavin, struggled against the urge to pluck hi the connecting doors wide open, she walked back into her room
She turned off the bedside laathering him close, she held him as he slept
He seeht and bouncy, and cheerfully told David over breakfast that he&039;d thrown up and had ginger ale
She considered keeping hi by his appetite, no stomach problems
"No ill effects there," David coet their books "You, on the other hand, look like you put in a rough one" He poured her another cup of coffee
"I did And not all of it because Luke was sick After he &039;frew up,&039; he settled down and slept like a baby But before he settled down, he told ht"
David rested his elbows on the island counter, leaned forward "Tell Daddy all"
"He says " She glanced around, cocking an ear so she&039;d hear the boys when they came back down "There&039;s a lady with yellow hair who cos to hian to mop the counter
"Don&039;t say &039;oh&039; with that silly little smile"
"Hey, I&039;ll have you know this issilly about it"
"David"
"Stella," he said with the sahost, didn&039;t she?"
"She mentioned it But there&039;s just one little problehosts"
"So, what, soht, heads to the boys&039; roo? That&039;s oing on I&039;ve heard soy, she twisted the band of her watch "Regardless, the idea of a ghost is ridiculous But so on with my boys"
"Is he afraid of her?"
"No I probably just iine anything"
"Have you asked Gavin?"
"No Luke said they&039;d both seen her, but"
"So have I"
"Oh, please"
David rinsed the dishcloth, squeezed out the excess water, then laid it over the lip of the sink to dry
"Not since I was a kid, but I saw her a few times when I&039;d sleep over Freaked me out at first, but she&039;d just sort of be there You can ask Harper He saw her plenty"
"Okay Just who is this fictional ghost supposed to be?" She threw up a hand as she heard the thunder of feet on the stairs "Later"
She tried to put it out of her mind, and succeeded from time to time when the work took over But it snuck back into her brain, and played there, like the ghostly lullaby
Byon bulb planters and Ruby at the counter, and grabbing a clipboard, headed toward the grafting house
Two birds, she thought, one stone
The music today was Rachmaninoff Or was it Mozart? Either way, it was a lot of passionate strings and flutes She passed the staging areas, the tools, the soils and additives rooting mediums
She found Harper down at the far end at a worktable with a pile of five-inch pots, several cacti as stock plants, and a tray of rooting medium She noted the clothespins, the rubber bands, the raffia, the jar of denatured alcohol