Home > Watch Over Me(9)

Watch Over Me(9)
Author: Nina LaCour

   “And was her hair very short?”

   “Yes, that was her.”

   “And were the fake flowers daisies, by any chance?”

   “Yeah. Yeah I think they were.”

   He poured coffee beans into a hand grinder and turned the handle.

   “Her name was Lorna,” he said. “She lived in the house across the street for years. But she died last May.”

 

* * *

 

   ___

   The next time I saw her it was daytime and my mother was there. I had been reading but had grown hungry. I closed my book and stood and there she was, empty-handed this time, in the nightgown still.

   My mother and Blake were sitting at the table together, looking over his architectural plans.

   “Look,” I said to them. They both stood and craned their necks.

   “Poor—” my mother started.

   “Mila. Poor Mila,” Blake said. “Apparently she’s being haunted. All I see is a street corner. Isn’t that all you see, Miriam?”

   My mother looked at Blake and then back to where my ghost was standing.

   “Only a street corner,” my mother said.

   Blake pulled something out of his pocket. A small box. “I found something for you,” he told her. She opened the lid.

   “Oh, they’re beautiful! Mila, come see.”

   A pair of silver earrings. They looked heavy and old.

   “I had to talk the lady at the shop into selling them to me.” He took one from the box. “Let’s see how they look on you.”

   My mother blushed. “It’s been so long since I’ve worn any. I’m afraid the piercings might have closed up.”

   “We’ll give it a try,” Blake said, pressing the post to her earlobe. “Almost,” he said. “Just needs a push.”

   I watched my mother wince and then smile, tears shining in her eyes.

   “Next one,” he said, and did it again. He wiped her blood from his hand. “Look at that, Miriam,” he said. “You’re a vision.”

   And then he turned to me. “Poor Mila,” he said. “She feels left out.” He scanned the surroundings before reaching to the ground. He closed his fist around a cluster of California poppies and pulled them from the earth. He handed them to me, dirty roots and all.

   “Your consolation prize,” he said.

 

 

I was in the dark again, on the farm again. Once my heart had steadied and I had caught my breath, I turned toward my cabin. For years, I’d done all I could to live a normal life, to forget the things that had happened, to leave the memories buried where they belonged—out of consciousness, obscured by neglect, unable to hurt me.

   Why this now?

   Here was the crunch of my shoes on the gravel, I reminded myself. Here was the lantern’s light. One step and then another and soon I would be safe.

   But as I turned the lock to my cabin door, I saw something below me, lying on the straw doormat.

   California poppies, bound together with a blade of grass.

 

 

press it close

 

 

I ENJOYED THE DAYS THAT FOLLOWED—the feeling of working hard, learning to harvest, the soreness in my legs from all the crouching and kneeling. The farm’s blackberry thickets and ocean views, whirring sprinklers, clusters of yarrow, and sweet peas climbing free over the fences. Soft grass under my feet.

   Midweek, in the strawberry rows, a small gray cat took a liking to me, rubbed her strong little head against my legs.

   “Meet Tulip,” Julia said. “Every farm needs its cats to keep away the gophers.”

   On Thursday, Terry showed me how to nestle the summer squash into crates and the strawberry flats into boxes. Before night fell he sent me into the flower tunnel, Julia’s domain. Rows and rows of flowers, in every color—muted and vibrant, subtle and showy—reached up from the earth. My breath caught at the beauty of it all. I had never seen flowers like these. Tiny green petals with bloodred centers. Blossoms of bright yellow and gold. Under the white, tentlike walls, Julia’s hair glowed even whiter than usual. She held pruning shears in her gloved hands.

   “I’m sorry, my loves,” she said, and then she snipped the stems of the most beautiful flowers I had ever seen. All of them the colors of bruises. Anemones, she’d later tell me.

   Night after night, when darkness fell, my heart quickened. But no new memories surfaced, nothing awaited me outside my door. The ghosts kept their distance and my relief was tinged with disappointment, as strange as that was to me. And again, I lay still under the skylight, awake and trembling. They were only memories, I told myself. I slept fitfully and was glad when morning came.

 

* * *

 

   ____________

   I crossed the field, nervous and eager, on the early evening of my first dinner shift. The sooner I learned how everything worked, the sooner I could feel truly a part of the rest of them. During the school day, when Lee had been doing some writing, I’d caught myself staring into the middle distance, imagining myself striding into the kitchen as though I belonged in it, cutting bread the way Liz did.

   But now, I let myself in quietly through the mudroom door and peeked around the corner to see if anyone was there. Liz looked up from the kitchen table and waved, and I felt foolish to have hesitated. I wasn’t even inside, and already my confidence was shaken.

   Still, I knew how to cook. Maybe not the way they did, but enough to get by. I would not be so nervous over nothing, I resolved. And I stepped in.

   “Come see what we’re making,” Liz said, so I joined her at the table.

   She told me how Terry left instructions on the table for us, marked cookbook pages for the recipes he’d chosen. “Sometimes he leaves us cards with recipes,” she said, showing me an index card, stained and water-buckled from use. “This one’s for tonight.”

   I took it from her. Carrot soup.

   “We make a lot of soup,” she said. “Soup is easy. And see the basket on the counter over there?” On the counter by the sink was a tin bucket of carrots and celery, and next to it a basket full of heads of lettuce, radishes, and onions. “That’s for the salad. Fresh from the garden.”

   “Amazing.”

   She shrugged. “You get used to it. So, it’s simple tonight. It usually is when Terry leaves us in charge. When he feels like cooking one of his feasts, he joins us and bosses us around. But then he lets us take all the credit. You ready?”

   “Yes.”

   Side by side at the counter, we worked. I peeled the just-harvested carrots for soup while Liz sliced radishes and onions for salad. We didn’t talk at first, and I wondered if she was disinterested in me, if being assigned to cook with me instead of Billy was a disappointment. I cleared my throat. “So, you’ve been here a year?” I asked her.

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