Season of the Dragonflies (27 page)

ALL OF QUARTZ HOLLOW HAD
gathered for this fire. Mya parked the car three blocks away from the store. Lucia could see exactly where the store was located, because smoke hovered above that stretch of brick buildings. Lucia scanned the parked cars for Ben's truck, and then she looked at Vista, who was doing the same.

“Watch out,” Vista said, and pointed down.

Lucia hopped over a pile of dog excrement on the sidewalk. “Thanks.”

“You're welcome.”

“So, how long have you and Ben been dating?”

“Not too long, about a month. We're taking our time. There's no need to rush,” she answered. “His mom's ill, so, you know, the universe asks us to prioritize.”

Lucia had no response for this kind of logic, so she said, “I'm sorry about the store.”

“Me too,” Vista said. “Negative energy attracts that sort of thing.”

The brick walls of the store were already black, and the firemen drained water on the top of the building. The blaze persisted, the flames desperate to reach the sky and consume it also. There must've been a lot of dried tea inside that shop to feed a fire this potent.

“I think I'll need another job,” Vista said.

Lucia didn't mean to think it, but the thought came to her anyway: maybe Vista would have to leave Quartz Hollow to find work. That or she'd move in with Ben officially. If Lucia knew Ben at all, he'd offer, just to be helpful.

Thinking good thoughts about Ben White must've made him manifest (if she used Vista's kind of logic). Ben cut through the crowd and waved his hand, but of course they'd both seen him already. He charged forward and seemed to reach out his arms to both of them, like he was unsure of who to embrace first. Lucia stepped aside.

“This is nuts,” he said. Vista nodded and then burst into tears. This startled Lucia. The girl had seemed so put together in the car.

Ben pulled Vista close to him, and Lucia turned away so they could have this moment, but she couldn't miss hearing Vista say, “I called and called and called Mya, and she wouldn't answer, and I had to go all the way out there to get her just to tell her, and I think I waited too long to call the fire people, and look at it now.”

Lucia turned back around to tell Vista not to worry or feel guilty, that the fire would've happened no matter what, but Ben was stroking the top of Vista's head and Lucia couldn't speak. And then he caught Lucia staring, and he stared back at her. His eyes seemed somehow less invested in his embrace than they should've been. Maybe he was just in shock like everyone else. Lucia said, “So I think I'm going to check on Mya,” and Vista nodded, tears creating the only blemishes on her delicate face. Lucia looked back once with a genuine desire to check on Vista, poor girl, but it was Ben who was still watching Lucia walk away, and this calmed her, if only for a moment.

She waved good-bye to him and he nodded once. Did Lucia detect sadness there, or was she projecting? It wasn't like she could ask him, and what nonsense this all was—he still had his arm around Vista. Plus, Lucia was barely divorced at this point, though she was years separated from satisfying sex and love. Still, she knew she shouldn't bother thinking about anyone else, especially an old boyfriend. She was foolish to think she wouldn't need more time to heal. Being in her thirties should make a girl less naïve, not more.

Her sister stood talking to the chief fireman as close to the building as they could be, the heat extending far from the flames. She turned around as Lucia approached, and Mya's face looked older than it had even yesterday; the wrinkles in her forehead stayed long after her eyebrows stopped moving. “It's burned to shit,” she told Lucia.

“I see that.”

“Will you call Mom and tell her to come get us?”

“Sure.” Lucia patted her pockets. “I don't have my phone. Let me borrow yours.”

Mya pulled a phone from her back pocket. The pink case with an Audrey Hepburn sticker definitely did not belong to Mya. She offered Lucia's phone to her but then realized her mistake and tried to take it back. Lucia snagged it before her sister could cover up what she had done and said, “Did you go through my stuff?”

Mya said, “Just call Mom.” And then she turned around and did absolutely nothing. She didn't talk to the officers or firemen, she simply stood.

Lucia grabbed Mya's arm and forced her to turn around.

Mya ran her fingers through her sweaty blond hair and said, “I heard it ringing and it wouldn't quit so I answered it. That's all. It was Jonah and I told him you'd call him back.”

Lucia dragged her thumb down the screen and saw that the call log did not back her sister's story: “It says
I
called him. Today. There's no way. Did
you
call him?”

“What the hell, Lucia?” Mya shouted, suddenly so defensive that Lucia wasn't sure what to believe. One of the firemen turned around, and his eyebrows leaped on his soot-covered face. Lucia shushed Mya, but it didn't help. Mya said, “I didn't call your fucking ex-husband. He keeps calling you and the noise was pissing me off. Maybe
you
should stop avoiding him.”

Who to trust? Her sister or her phone? Jonah had called Lucia obsessively, that much was true, but he hadn't called today, at least not that the phone reported. Lucia checked the volume. It wasn't silenced, but the volume only had one bar. And she'd buried it in her bed. No way the noise disturbed anyone. “Why'd you take my phone?” Lucia pressed.

“This is ridiculous. I have things to deal with right now,” Mya said. “I took your phone because I thought you should stop ignoring your life. You did have one before you arrived here, remember? And be glad I did, okay? There's an issue and Jonah needs you to talk to him.”

“I didn't realize you cared so much about my affairs, Mya,” Lucia said coldly.

“Well, I do,” Mya said, and still Lucia couldn't gauge whether she should trust her sister, though some issue, like a problem with the lease, did sound like a plausible reason for why Jonah had called so often.

“Forgive me if that takes me by surprise a little.”

“What're you waiting for?”

Lucia crossed her arms and stared at her sister. When would she ever stop bossing her? Becoming the boss might be the only way to change this dynamic.

“Just call Mom,” Mya continued.

As Lucia dialed their mother's office number, she forced herself not to look around for Vista and Ben. The compulsion to do so was irritatingly strong, but she couldn't give this small matter away to her sister. Willow answered and said, “Need a ride?” Lucia never had appreciated her mother's intuition as much as she should have. “We do,” she said, and Willow said, “On my way.”

AFTER A SILENT RIDE HOME
, Lucia needed space away from her sister and mother, so she pretended she had a bedroom door to lock and closed the curtain in the frame as fully as she could. If there were a doorknob she'd have hung a Do Not Disturb sign. A stray dragonfly from the front porch flew around her room and then landed on the white post on her bed frame. She cracked the window and said, “Get out while you can.” With a sweep of her hand, the dragonfly took flight and escaped. Lucia fell back on her daybed and cradled her cell phone in both hands, and each time she came close to tapping Jonah's name on the screen, she ended up dropping the phone facedown on her chest. She did this over and over until the repetition made her sleepy. Some days, like this one, had a bad habit of feeling much longer than others. Lucia drifted into a nap that accidentally extended past dinner and into a full night's rest.

W
HAT?” WILLOW SAID
to the assistant on the other end of the phone. Her laptop showed it was 6:57
A
.
M
., and as much as she'd wanted to stay in bed and ignore the phone, it wouldn't stop ringing. Lucia pushed the drapes to the side and switched on the office lights. “I just need you to repeat that; it's early.”

Lucia slid into the room like a cat and wrapped her arms around herself. “What's going on?” she whispered.

Willow held her hand in the air as Peter Sable's assistant said for the second time, “Zoe's dead. Suicide, possible overdose. Her body was discovered at her home.”

Willow covered the speaker of her cell phone and said to Lucia, “Go wake up your sister.” To Peter's assistant, she said, “When?” anxiously rubbing her silk nightgown between her fingers.

“Around midnight.” The assistant sniffled.

“I appreciate you calling,” Willow said. “And I'm so sorry to hear this.”

“We received a message from Mya yesterday,” the girl said, not at all receptive to Willow's graciousness.

“I don't know anything about that.” Willow frowned.

“She asked Zoe to stop using something she sent to her. Said there was a dangerous mistake.”

Lucia returned to the office with Mya, who was still wiping the sleep from her eyes. Willow stared at Mya until she had to look her in the eyes, and Willow could see right then that Mya already knew what was happening. “What're you suggesting?” Willow said.

“
I'm
not suggesting anything,” the assistant said.

Willow said, “All the world knows what Zoe was going through lately. Let me speak to Peter, right now please.”

The girl said, “Zoe's dead; he's too busy to talk right now.”

“Then what is this about?”

“He asked me to schedule a time and he'll only speak to Mya,” the assistant said.

“If he speaks to anyone, he'll speak to me,” Willow said. “You tell him to let the guy, you know, the, the—coroner, yes, let the coroner do his work and determine what happened. He's paranoid—you can tell him I said that too. And tell him for matters like these he'd better be the one to make the call to me.”

Mya leaned on Lucia and whispered to her. Lucia nodded.

Willow hung up the phone. They all stood together in the office for an achingly long time, the only sound coming from the percolating coffee in the kitchen.

Mya interrupted the silence. “She's gone, right?”

Willow nodded and said, “I need coffee.”

“Come on,” Lucia said, and they followed her to the kitchen, where she removed three clay mugs from the cabinet and brought them all fresh cups of coffee.

They sat at the round kitchen table, and Willow had no idea what to say to Mya. She'd left a message for a client and didn't
say
anything to Willow. How many more mistakes could one daughter make?

Mya placed one hand on top of the mug and let the steam escape between her fingers. She said, “I was going to tell you. I thought I had time.”

“Tell us what?” Lucia said. “What's going on?” she said to Willow.

“I spoke to Jennifer Katz yesterday, right before I found out about my shop, and she mentioned Zoe's behavior. I just knew it was the perfume. I called her on an impulse; I thought it was the right thing to do. I left a message and told her to stop using the product considering everything she was going through,” Mya said.

“I knew it,” Lucia said, “I knew you shouldn't have put your hair in it.”

Mya's face turned red and she shouted, “Too bad you weren't president at the time, Lucia! Could've saved the day and stopped your sister from another fuckup. That's what you're saying, right?”

“Yes, Mya!” Lucia shouted back. “That's exactly right. You should've found another way, that's what I do know. Not your hair. You killed her. She's dead, don't you understand? She's dead, dead, dead.”

“Stop saying that.” Mya shoved Lucia so hard she almost tipped backward.

“Stop it,” Willow said quietly, but she could tell Mya was about to respond again, so she pounded on the table and yelled, “Stop it, you two!”

They both stared at her.

“Nothing gets solved like this. And keep your hands to yourself.”

Mya glared at Lucia. Sometimes they had fought like this as girls, and Willow had just tuned out the noise because the stakes were low: a borrowed purse ruined or a cut in line for the bathroom. She couldn't ignore them now, however. Willow said, “Is it the new formula? Yes or no?”

Mya sipped her black coffee and then paused. “I wanted her to feel irresistible at first, so she wouldn't notice a difference, and then I wanted her to become repulsive. Only to others though, not herself. I had no idea it would turn that way.”

“She killed herself,” Lucia said. “Except not really. But there's still a mother out there who thinks her daughter was so low that she committed suicide.”

“They can't prove anything,” Mya said.

“They have the perfume,” Willow said, “and your message.”

“I didn't spell it out,” Mya protested. “If anyone asks, I'll clarify what I meant and say that she'd have a breakout in the sun or something like that.”

“Was she on drugs, any that you know of?” Lucia asked. She still hadn't touched her coffee.

“I don't think so,” Willow said. Mya shook her head in agreement.

“So what happens if the toxicology report comes back clean?” Lucia's eyes were as large as quarters. “Her manager knows.”

“What it did to her can't be traced in her system,” Mya answered. “You know that.”

They all sat silently for a moment. Mya said, “They'll find a way to charge me.”

“Should they?” Willow said.

Mya's mouth dropped and her eyes narrowed. “Let's not forget that
you
told me it was okay to make it. You agreed, no one else, and it was your decision, your business too. You'll go to jail with me.”

“Stop being so dramatic,” Lucia said. “Mom had no idea what it would do. Only you could've.”