7. Grim
GRIM
It starts with the flower.
The morning glory she gave me—absurdly blue, the color of a robin's egg—rests between the pages of a book I still have not finished.
I lift it carefully, mindful of its paper-thin petals.
Time has curled the edges and stolen some of its softness, but the color remains, stubborn as ever, refusing to surrender to the weeks.
I do not know why I kept it.
Objects have never held much meaning for me.
They are the things people leave behind when they no longer need them—watches, rings, photographs tucked into drawers, letters folded so many times the creases become part of the paper itself.
I have watched entire lives reduced to boxes carried out by strangers.
Yet I cannot bring myself to part with this flower.
Beneath that simple truth lies another.
I want to give her something in return.
The trouble is, I have very little to offer.
I could recite the name of every flower that has ever bloomed, but that seems a poor gift for a woman who has devoted her life to coaxing beauty from the earth.
Around Lavinia, I become painfully aware of my own limitations.
I am simply a tall man dressed in black, awkward in conversation and strangely unfamiliar with happiness.
Then I remember something she said weeks ago while pulling weeds from a cracked terracotta pot.
"Wildflowers are best when they sneak up on you. I'd give anything to see a March meadow go crazy just once, outside a catalog."
She had laughed afterward, as though it were only a passing thought.
I remembered anyway.
Winter is loosening its grip. Another week, perhaps less, and the hills beyond Blackthorn Bay will wake in color. If I leave now, I might find the meadow before anyone else discovers it.
The decision carries me to Belladonna Blooms before I have time to reconsider.
The bell above the door has been repaired. It rings so softly I almost miss it, little more than a polite acknowledgment of my arrival. Morning sunlight filters through the front windows, stirring dust into slow-moving constellations.
Lavinia stands behind the counter assembling a dozen ivory roses for a private order. A paper-thin cut marks the side of her thumb, bright with a bead of blood. She absently presses it to her lips without interrupting the arrangement.
"Hey, Grim."
She catches my reflection in a glass vase before she ever looks up.
"You look like a man on a mission."
I had not prepared for conversation.
"Can you leave the shop for a few hours?"
She straightens, amusement already finding its way into her smile.
"Should I be worried?"
"No."
A beat passes.
"Are you planning to rob a bank and need a lookout?"
"No," I answer, perhaps a little too quickly.
Her laughter fills the shop.
It is becoming one of my favorite sounds.
She lays the roses aside and wipes her hands on her apron.
"Well?"
I draw a slow breath.
"There's something I'd like to show you."
She studies me for only a moment before reaching behind her neck to untie the apron.
"Give me two minutes to grab a proper coat."
She disappears upstairs, then calls down,
"If it's a dead animal, I'm still coming."
"It isn't."
"Good."
A pause.
". . . Mostly."
She laughs again.
Outside, the morning sky is the pale gray of unpolished pewter, promising rain without quite committing to it. Her boots crunch softly beside mine as we leave Main Street behind.
For several blocks neither of us speaks.
Ordinarily, silence belongs only to me.
With Lavinia, it somehow belongs to both of us.
She never seems compelled to fill it.
The town slowly falls away behind us. Houses become fields. Pavement becomes gravel. The wind carries the scent of damp earth instead of chimney smoke.
I glance toward her.
She has matched her stride to mine without either of us acknowledging it. Loose strands of copper hair escape the band at the back of her neck, lifting in the breeze.
She catches me looking.
"Are you sure this isn't a murder plot?" she asks, lowering her voice dramatically.
"It would be considerably less complicated if it were."
She laughs so hard she has to steady herself against a fence post.
"I don't know whether that's comforting or deeply concerning."
"I'm still deciding."
"So am I."
We leave the last fence behind and step into open country.
The fields are only beginning to wake from winter. Brown grasses bow beneath the breeze, but here and there stubborn patches of green push through thawing earth. Meltwater gathers in shallow pools, reflecting the wide sky overhead.
Lavinia slips over a strand of barbed wire with effortless grace.
I am less graceful.
She notices.
"I expected Death to be better at fences."
"I usually avoid them."
"I'll add that to the list."
"What list?"
"The surprisingly ordinary things Grim struggles with."
"I'm afraid to ask."
"So far we've got chocolate, borrowing vases, returning vases, cats, and fences."
"I've done reasonably well with the cat."
"The jury's still out."
I find, quite unexpectedly, that I am smiling.
The meadow opens before us.
Color spills across the hillside in scattered waves—blue, violet, yellow, and white—untamed blooms stretching toward the horizon exactly as she once described them.
I stop walking.
"You said you wanted to see wildflowers."
The words sound embarrassingly simple once spoken aloud.
Lavinia stares at the hillside.
Then she looks at me.
Her expression softens into something so open and delighted that, for one impossible moment, I forget every careful reason I had for keeping my distance.
"You remembered?"
I want to say, I couldn't forget.
The words never come. Instead, I watch her forge ahead, boots splashing through the muddy furrows as she kneels beside a cluster of bloodroot and hepatica blooming shamelessly along the edge of a drainage ditch.
"Oh, look at you," she coos, delight warming every word. "You beautiful little bastards. Nobody told you it's still February, did they?"
She ignores the mud soaking through her jeans, her hands almost reverent as she snips a single blossom. Turning back to me, she holds it out with a smile, and I take it just as carefully as she offers it.
"They're perfect," she says, looking across the meadow. "Where did you find this place?"
"I watched," I answer.
She looks at me expectantly.
"For years."
That earns me one of her sideways smiles, the kind that says you're impossible, but she's far too delighted by the meadow to press me for another explanation.
We keep walking, climbing higher as the ground grows drier beneath our boots and the first real signs of spring spread across the hillside.
Lavinia names flowers under her breath as we pass them—golden ragwort, spring beauty, wild hyacinth—greeting each one like an old friend.
Every few steps she tucks another stem into her pocket or twists another blossom into the loose strands of her hair until she looks less like someone visiting the meadow than someone who has always belonged here.
When we reach the crest of the hill, the clouds finally part.
Sunlight pours into the valley below, washing the hillside in impossible color. Blues, violets, whites, and soft yellows spill across the landscape in every direction, untouched and gloriously wild.
She stops so suddenly I nearly walk into her.
"Oh . . ."
The word escapes on little more than a breath.
"You found it," she whispers.
Then she laughs.
"You actually found spring before everyone else."
She hurries down the slope, dropping to her knees among the flowers, turning slow circles as though she can't decide where to look first. There isn't a trace of self-consciousness in her, only uncomplicated wonder, and I discover that watching her enjoy the meadow is every bit as satisfying as finding it.
She glances over her shoulder.
"Well? Aren't you coming?"
"I thought I was."
"You've been promoted from observer."
Before I can respond, she plucks a daisy and walks straight toward me.
"Hold still."
I obey.
She reaches up and carefully tucks the flower behind my ear before stepping back to admire her work with obvious satisfaction.
"There."
She folds her arms.
"Now you look less like a funeral and more like someone I'd actually invite to a picnic."
"I don't believe I've ever had a picnic."
She blinks.
"Seriously?"
I nod.
Without another word, she slips her backpack from one shoulder, drops onto the grass, and begins rummaging through it.
"Well," she declares, producing a thoroughly squashed peanut butter sandwich wrapped in wax paper, "we're fixing that."
She tears it neatly in half before handing me my portion.
"I'm afraid presentation isn't my strongest skill."
"I had noticed."
She laughs.
"I'm a florist, not a chef."
The sandwich is sweet, entirely ordinary, and somehow unlike anything I've ever tasted.
She watches my face with barely concealed anticipation.
"Well?"
"I understand the appeal."
Her smile brightens.
"I knew you would."
She settles back on her elbows, content now that I've been properly introduced to picnics, while I finish the sandwich and wonder why something so simple feels unexpectedly significant.
After a while, she turns her head toward me.
"You're not what I expected."
I wait.
"You act like you're made of gloom." She smiles gently. "But I don't think that's really it."
"No?"
"I think you've just been alone for a very long time."
I don't answer because there is nothing to dispute.
"I'm not very good at . . ." I gesture vaguely toward the meadow, the sky, the afternoon stretching comfortably around us. ". . . this."
She follows my hand before looking back at me.
"Being alive?"
I nod.
She shrugs with the easy confidence of someone who has made peace with uncertainty.
"I don't think anybody is. We all just keep practicing."
If only she knew how long I have been trying.
For several quiet minutes she weaves dandelions, violets, and clover into a crown, her fingers moving with practiced ease. When she's finished, she lifts it with quiet ceremony.
"Oh no," I say.
"Oh yes."
Before I can protest, she settles the crown gently onto my head.
"There."
She leans back to admire her work.
"King of the Wildflowers."
"I believe you've misunderstood how monarchies work."
"I make my own rules."
"I've noticed."
"You wear them well."
I reach up awkwardly toward the flowers.
"You should have it."
She shakes her head.
"No."
Her smile softens.
"You earned it."
We linger until the wind begins to bite through our coats. At last she rises, brushing grass from her knees before looking back at me with a grin.
"Race you to the fence."
She's already halfway down the hill before I realize she's serious.
I let her gain a head start, then follow, lengthening my stride as she laughs her way through the meadow. I catch her only a few yards before the fence, slowing as we reach the wire together.
I offer my hand.
She takes it without hesitation.
Her fingers are warm despite the cold, and for a long moment neither of us seems inclined to let go.
"I'm really glad you asked me," she says quietly. "I'm usually the one doing the inviting."
"So am I."
She laughs.
"I suppose you are."
We walk back toward town hand in hand until the first rooftops come into view. Only then does she glance up at me and burst into laughter.
"What?"
She points toward my head.
"The crown."
I reach up, discovering I'd completely forgotten it was there.
"People are going to see you."
I look at her.
"Let them."
Her laughter follows us all the way back to Belladonna Blooms.
Inside, she insists on making hot cocoa, gasping dramatically when I admit I've never tasted it. She thrusts the steaming mug into my hands as though correcting a grave injustice, then watches expectantly while I take the first sip.
"Well?"
"It's . . . remarkably good."
"I know."
She smiles with all the satisfaction of someone introducing a friend to a favorite book.
For a little while we simply stand together in the warm little shop while rain taps gently against the windows.
Then she looks up.
"So, Grim . . . what happens next?"
The question catches me off guard.
Not because I don't know where we might go.
Because I know exactly where this is leading.
"Have you ever skipped stones at Graymere?" I ask.
Her face brightens.
"Only every Sunday between the ages of seven and twelve."
She grins.
"Let's fix that."
Graymere is swollen with snowmelt, its banks soft beneath our boots. She spends the next half hour teaching me something I've watched countless children do without ever attempting myself. She skips circles around me, laughing every time another stone dances across the water.
I lose spectacularly.
She knows I let her win.
Kindly, she pretends not to mention it.
By the time the afternoon gives way to evening, the air has turned sharp again. She steps closer almost absentmindedly, seeking warmth, and I become painfully aware of how little distance remains between us.
Her eyes search mine.
She doesn't rush.
She doesn't ask.
She simply waits.
It would be so easy to close the distance.
So easy to kiss her.
Instead, I step back.
Only one pace.
"It's getting late," I say quietly.
The disappointment crosses her face so quickly she almost hides it before I can see it.
"Right," she says with a small smile. "Of course."
I want to tell her it isn't her—that it's the centuries I carry, the certainty of how this ends. That I have held too many souls not to know what it costs to love what must one day leave.
But the words refuse to come.
How do you tell a woman who loves life that Death has fallen in love with her?