Season of the Dragonflies (39 page)

He said, “I've only been to two states. Did you know that? Down to North Carolina for a beach trip once and then back home.”

“I didn't know,” she said.

“I want to go to Disney World and Thailand.”

Mya smiled. “You should do that, all of it.”

He took a sip of water from a small white cup on his table. “I never thought about it much before.”

Luke was too young
not
to travel. He would meet good people and beautiful women his age who would fall for him as easily as Mya had. Quartz Hollow shouldn't be his only place. “I think you'd love it. And you can always come home.”

“Yeah, that's what my mom said.”

So he was serious. Mya knew she'd have to let him go, but to have his plans be so final so soon made her chest burn. All she could say was, “Good,” and she opened the door to go.

“But I can't go,” Luke said, “if you stay. I need a tour guide.”

The places on her body where she'd been rubbed with the oil warmed instantly. Luke looked down at his own arm and touched a spot.

“Do you feel that?” she said.

His eye widened and he looked startled. “I've got these warm spots all over.” He pointed to a few others. “How'd you know?”

She returned to his bed and lifted up her arm for him. Luke examined her skin and then smelled it. “That's it,” he said, like he'd solved a Rubik's Cube, and then he smelled his own arm.

“My sister did this,” Mya said, “to protect us from further harm.”

Luke said, “Oh,” like he needed no other explanation, and she loved this most about him. He laced his hand in hers. “I'm serious, Mya. Go with me.”

She shook her head. “My sister's pregnant.”

“You're shitting me,” he said. “Whose?”

“Ben's,” Mya said.

“Damn, that was fast. An accident?”

“Planned, I think,” Mya said.

“Old Bennie,” he said. “That bastard. I had plans.” A small smile appeared on his face.

“To impregnate my sister?” Mya said.

“Don't be stupid. I wanted to be the first to knock up a Lenore girl. I've sure been trying my hardest.”

Mya said, “How romantic.”

Luke put his hand on her shoulder and forced her to lean down closer. “You know I mean it,” he said.

“I believe you,” Mya said. She couldn't stop herself as she closed the blinds to Luke's room and locked the door. She climbed onto the hospital bed with him and he was ready for her. He lifted the sheet and she climbed underneath, keeping her weight off him as best she could in case he was sore. All the more reason they shouldn't do this right here, right now, but Mya couldn't stop. “I love you,” Luke said in her ear, and she whispered, “I love you too,” before sealing his mouth with hers.

S
O WE'LL BEGIN
production on that when, again?” Lucia scrolled down the November calendar. “Three weeks from now?”

Brenda said, “Right before Thanksgiving,” with her notebook open in her hand. Lucia wasn't sure how Brenda kept up with everything in one tiny notebook and without an electronic device, but Willow had promised Lucia she could, and she was right.

Robert scratched his beard and said, “It'll increase winter productivity at least forty percent, and we won't cut the workforce this season.”

“It's a good deal.” Lucia smiled as she marked the date, then saved it and closed the laptop. She dropped both hands on top of the smooth metal and said, “I think that's it for today.”

Robert and Brenda stood and gathered their coats. Robert helped Lucia put on her red pea coat and she buttoned the front; it was still large enough to cover her second-trimester baby bump. “Feeling well?” Robert said.

Lucia nodded. “Too good. Can't stop eating.” She finished her sixth chocolate chip granola bar of the day.

They walked into the kitchen, and Lucia looked out the window above the sink at the world outside. It had already started to darken, as it did too soon in the autumn months. The leaves were golden, ruby, and orange and fell with the large wind gusts. The grass had already begun to disappear beneath the blanket of leaves.

“Want me to wait?” Brenda said.

“No, I'll close up,” Lucia said, and opened the refrigerator. The shelves were bare except for diet ginger ales and juices. “Thanks, both of you, for coming.”

“Tell your mother hello when she calls,” Robert said.

Lucia laughed. “If she ever does.”

“She's having too much fun.” Brenda wrapped a blue scarf around her neck.

“Too much sun.” Robert opened the door and a wren flew into the house. Brenda waved her hands and said, “Shoo,” but it landed on top of the kitchen table. Robert and Brenda left the cabin and waved good-bye.

“Every time,” Lucia said to herself, but then she grew quiet thinking about Mya and how long it had been since she'd called home too. Lucia missed them both. The cabin was just an office space now, uncluttered and hollow. No books out, stacks of paper, or piles of laundry, and no bird's nests, antlers, snakeskins, or whatever else Mya brought in from the woods.

Mya and her mother had probably felt the same way about Lucia while she had been away in that other life with Jonah. She had rarely thought about them then, and she hoped her mother and Mya were too wrapped up in their lives to think about her now. They'd both promised to be home for the birth, and Lucia could wait five more months. If only they'd check in once in a while . . . but now she sounded like her mother.

Lucia turned out the lights in the kitchen, and when she opened the front door, the wren dashed over the top of her head and went out to the porch. She locked up, a habit she couldn't let go from her days in the city. She stopped to watch the fading golden light of the sun pushing through the bright yellow leaves on the maple tree next to the house. A herd of deer came from behind the cabin and stopped at the bottom of the steps.

“Hi there,” Lucia said. They looked at her sideways and circled her. “Should I come with you?” she said to them. They continued moving to the side of the house and then back toward the fields. Lucia wasn't a great substitute for Mya, but lately the deer had been hanging around the cabin when she came over for work. She spent so much time at the factory working on the expansion of Lenore Incorporated's new line of organic goat's milk beauty products and mineral cosmetics, all formulated from local ingredients. The endeavor brought all of Quartz Hollow together and stabilized employment even more. She tried to have meetings with Brenda here once a week or so, and she always put out corn and carrots for the deer. Before Mya and Luke left for Sweden to volunteer as reindeer trackers, Lucia had promised to give attention to the deer Mya was leaving behind.

Tonight the herd just wanted some company. They walked slowly up the hill, and Lucia trailed them. Hiking felt good after a long day of conference calls. It was a two hundred e-mail kind of day, but the highlight was talking to Jennifer Katz after lunchtime. Oscar buzz circulated like a honeybee swarm around Jennifer's most recent film, in which she'd nailed the part of a mother who willingly gives up custody of her children because she wants to be a musician. Jennifer didn't want to have children, but after making this film, she said she sometimes looked for toys in her house and bought kids' things when she shopped, all of which she promised to send to Lucia. They never talked about Zoe. Or Mya. Just the Oscar and how Lucia's daughter would be born in the season of the awards.

Once Lucia crested the hill with the deer, they trotted quickly and paused at the edge of the woods. Lucia couldn't keep going. Her feet were swollen and tired, and it was too dark to go deep into the land with them. She half expected to find her dragonflies hovering there, but they'd been gone for months, and with winter nearing, the deer would soon stop coming around regularly. The fields were flat, the flowers picked. The shrubs were green and woody and waiting for spring.

Maintenance workers had aerated the land this past week and dug out a trench around the fields to fill with wooden beams to protect the plants from runoff. All Ben's idea. He was the director now. Soon they'd add organic matter and a thick layer of fallen leaves. The adjacent trees would provide what they needed. Lucia placed her hands on her belly and rubbed it. She imagined patting her daughter's head when Grace finally came into the world. The deer stood still, watching her, and she felt like she was missing something. She turned around, but nothing was out there with them, save the rustling leaves that had already fallen and the grass, turned pale for the season. Darkness would descend soon, once the sun fell beneath the tree line. It was time for Lucia to go home and have cast-iron roasted chicken and herbed risotto with Ben.

The deer remained like a still life against the trees in the distance, the mountains beyond patched where some trees had shed to their winter bareness. Lucia inhaled a deep breath of burning wood. The deer had revealed absolutely nothing, except what the season of her life looked like now: quiet but altered. She'd spent the summer learning what it meant to be pregnant and how to run a business: morning sickness and a job to do and learning from her mother how to manage employees, build their trust, and delegate duties to an assistant. She had so many names to learn. Conducting interviews with Willow had been easy, and she'd quickly memorized the contract, but she wouldn't begin movement on anything new until after Grace's birth. Willow and James would be here when Lucia took her first business trip to New York, and as long as her mother's health was good, she might come with her. During all of this training, she'd even moved into Ben's house, and together they'd prepared the nursery. Ben's mother, who finally agreed to move in with them, had died suddenly on the Friday the baby furniture was delivered, and the funeral took place a few days later. The transition into autumn had been an arduous one.

Lucia walked back to the cabin and reminded herself to grab the folder of account summaries for the upcoming year. She returned to the office, so much Willow's room still. Same furniture, same lamps, same rug, same books. Lucia liked to pretend she didn't have enough time to change it. Both Brenda and Robert assumed the familiarity brought Lucia comfort, and that was fine. Feeling her mother's presence in the room made being alone in the cabin much easier to tolerate. One immediate change, however, had been the clutter. Lucia couldn't work in it. She could now use the desk drawers to store important folders—like the one that she couldn't seem to find now. She opened each and every drawer and then repeated the process. During the more stressful parts of her day she'd made a habit of holding the dragonfly pendant and sailing it back and forth on the chain as if it were flying. The rhythm helped her to concentrate. The golden light thinned and warned of the setting sun. Lucia stopped moving the dragonfly and retraced her steps:
e-mails, meetings, phone calls, spreadsheets, business proposals.
All activities she'd completed at the desk.

But then Jennifer had called, and that wasn't about business. They had chatted, and Lucia always paced around the office when she spoke on the phone for pleasure. There on the towering corner bookcase was the cream folder she needed. She'd slipped it in between a couple of old books to keep it steady. The folder was stuck, so she removed the oversize book titled
Rain Forests
along with her folder, and an item slipped to the floor. Lucia opened her folder to see what she'd lost, but she'd clipped everything together.

She bent down to find a warped picture of Great-Grandmother Serena resting against her shoe: Serena's hair was in a messy pile on her head (Lucia's hair responded to humidity just like that), her sleeves cut off, her pregnant stomach bulging over her pants. Serena stood next to Great-Grandfather Alex as he hugged her. A large palm tree trunk towered in the background. Lucia flipped over the photograph and saw that Serena had scrawled,
Much in love, forever and always,
Borneo, 1927.
Serena had not yet discovered
Gardenia potentiae
. She had her entire life ahead of her. Lucia flipped it back over. That could've been Lucia in the rain forest, it looked so much like her.

She wondered if Willow had ever seen this picture before. Lucia opened her folder and clipped the picture on top of the business documents so she could show her mother when she and James visited. Lucia turned off all the lights in the cabin and lifted her purse and leather satchel from the kitchen table, then deposited it all into her Volvo station wagon, which was parked outside. She'd just begun heading down the driveway when her cell phone rang. She rarely stayed this late at the cabin and Ben was probably worried. She fumbled for the phone in her coat pocket. A restricted number.

“Hello?” she said.

“It's me.”

“Finally.” Lucia drove slowly down the gravel drive.

Mya sounded like she was smiling when she said, “I've got news.”

“Coming home?”

“We are,” Mya said. “How'd you know?”

“Lucky guess.”

Mya laughed.

“I still need a creative director.” Lucia turned right on Highway 221 to go home to Ben. “Got a big project ahead, if you're interested.”

As if she hadn't heard her, Mya said, “I can't wait to see you.”

“Me too. And Mom? Have you heard from her?”

“She'll be there before you know it.” Mya's voice was breaking up. All Lucia caught was “Coming for Thanksgiving.”

“Of course you are,” Lucia said. “Because you know I can't cook.”

“Lucia.”

“You're breaking up.”

“Can you hear me?”

“Now I can.”

“I've got another reason.”