12. Flora
— ? —
Flora
My mother’s cottage is exactly what I need right now.
There’s no internet worth the name, just one flickering bar of service that comes and goes with the weather and which corner of the property you happen to be standing in.
There are no paparazzi, because nobody in this tiny Vermont town cares about celebrity gossip.
There are no strangers whispering about my failed marriage or about whether I was ever good enough for him in the first place.
Just chickens and vegetables and the quiet rhythm of a woman who has been finding peace in dirt and sunshine for longer than I’ve been alive.
Mom didn’t ask a single question when I showed up on her doorstep with a suitcase and mascara streaked down my face.
She just pulled me into a hug that smelled like lavender and fresh soil, led me to the guest room, and told me there was a plate in the oven whenever I could face it, which at that hour was a kindness and not a meal.
That was five days ago and I’ve barely left the property since.
I’ve been sleeping in my childhood bed, the same narrow one under the same window, in the room I’ve had since Mom bought this place when I was five and decided we were done moving.
The quilt is the same. There’s a water stain on the ceiling shaped like a rabbit that I used to talk to.
I’m twenty-five years old and married and I have been lying under that rabbit at four in the morning for three nights running, and the strangest part is that it’s working.
Something about being small in a small room in a house that predates every single thing that’s gone wrong in my life.
The phone stays in a drawer. Mara knows where I am and nobody else does, and Mara has instructions to lie about it.
“You’re murdering that basil,” Mom says from across the garden bed.
I look down at my hands. She’s right. I’ve been yanking at the plants instead of harvesting them properly, taking out my frustration on innocent herbs.
“Sorry.” I loosen my grip. “I’m just.”
“Furious?”
“Yes.”
“Heartbroken?”
“That too.”
“Good.” She sits back on her heels, wiping sweat from her forehead with the back of her gardening glove. “Means you haven’t gone numb yet. Numb is when you really have to start worrying.”
I stab the trowel into the soil. “He lied to me, Mom. For four days he knew and he said nothing.”
“Mmm.”
“And I had to find out from the internet. From strangers. Do you know what that feels like, to have the whole world know your husband kissed another woman before you do?”
“I can imagine.”
“No, you can’t.” The words come out sharper than I mean them to. “You and Dad had something real. Something solid. He never would have.”
“He failed you.” Mom’s voice is gentle but firm. “That’s not in question and it’s not going to be. The only question is whether you believe he can do better, and you don’t have to answer that today.”
“I don’t know what I believe anymore.”
She nods slowly and goes back to her weeding, and we work in silence for a while with nothing but birds and the distant clucking of the chickens in their coop.
This is what she does instead of advice.
She hands you a trowel and stands next to you for four hours and lets you arrive at things in your own time, and I spent my entire adolescence finding it maddening.
I’d come home wrecked about something and want to be told what to do, and she’d hand me a watering can.
It took me until about twenty-two to understand that she was never withholding the answer.
She just believed it was mine to find, and that she’d be robbing me by getting there first.
I don’t want to find it today. Today I want somebody to tell me whether my marriage is over, and my mother is going to hand me a trowel until the sun goes down.
Then I hear a car engine.
It’s wrong for this place, that sound. Mom doesn’t have close neighbors and the only vehicles that come down her dirt driveway are the mail truck and the occasional delivery. This one sounds different. Smaller.
I look up and see a yellow taxi pulling to a stop at the end of the drive.
The door opens and Aster steps out.
My heart stops, and then it starts again, pounding hard enough that I can feel it in my throat.
He looks terrible. Rumpled and exhausted, wearing clothes that look like he slept in them on a plane. There’s stubble on his jaw and shadows under his eyes and he’s carrying nothing but a small bag, like he packed in five minutes and ran out the door.
How did he even find this place? I never told him Mom’s address.
Mom rises slowly, brushing dirt from her knees. “Stay here,” she says quietly. “I’ll handle this.”
She walks across the yard to meet him at the edge of the garden. I stay frozen by the basil, watching.
“Aster.” Her voice carries across the distance, calm and measured. “How are you, my dear? You look awful.”
“I’m fine, Mrs. Green.” His voice is rough and hoarse. “Is Flora here?”
“Amora. You’ve known that for three years.
” A beat. “You’re fine, hm?” Mom tilts her head, studying him with that assessing gaze she uses when she’s deciding whether something is worth her time.
“Because based on what my daughter told me, you shouldn’t be fine.
If you are, you should turn around and go back where you came from.
She doesn’t need to hear what you have to say. ”
“No, Mrs. Green, I’m.” His voice cracks and he has to start again. “I’m so far from fine. I lost my wife. I can’t breathe properly, I haven’t slept in days, and I miss her so much I can barely function.”
My throat tightens.
“Please.” He sounds desperate now, raw in a way I’ve never heard from him before. “Please, Mrs. Green, just let me see her. I need to fix this. I need to at least try.”
Mom doesn’t respond for a long moment. The silence stretches out, heavy with judgment and assessment and something else I can’t quite name.
“Come inside,” she finally says. “I’ll make tea.”
I should stay in the garden. I should let Mom handle him and send him away and protect me from having to face any of this.
Instead I find myself walking toward the cottage, following them inside.
The kitchen is small and warm, full of the smell of herbs drying on the windowsill and something simmering on the stove. Mom puts the kettle on and starts pulling cups out of the cabinet.
“Sit,” she tells both of us.
We sit across from each other at the old wooden table, a distance of maybe three feet that feels like an ocean.
Aster is staring at me like I’m water and he’s been crawling through a desert for days.
I make myself look back and catalog the damage.
The redness in his eyes. The pallor of his skin.
The way his hands shake slightly against the tabletop.
Good, let him suffer, except that it doesn’t feel good at all, it just feels sad.
“Flora,” he starts.
“Don’t.” I cut him off. “I don’t want to hear it.”
“I know. But I need to say it anyway.” He takes a breath, steadying himself. “Dylan told me not to talk about the kiss. He said you already know about the kiss. So I’m not going to.”
“Good.”
“A year.” His hands are flat on the table. “I know what I did with it. I’m not going to recite it at you across your mother’s table like a man who’s rehearsed. I’ll say it when you can stand to hear it, and I’ll say all of it.”
“You did.”
Mom sets cups of tea in front of us and neither of us reaches for them.
“The papers came,” Aster continues. “And I’m not going to sign them, Flora.”
“Aster.”
“I’m not giving up on us. Not because you’re angry, not because I hurt you, not because some article called our marriage troubled and a bunch of strangers decided you deserved better.
” He leans forward across the table. “You do deserve better. You deserve a husband who comes home. Who sees you. Who puts you first. And I’m going to be that husband, even if it takes me the rest of my life to prove it. ”
“Pretty words.” My voice comes out flat. “You’ve always been good with those.”
“Then let me show you instead of telling you.”
Mom clears her throat.
We both turn to look at her. She’s standing by the stove stirring her tea, looking completely unconcerned with the emotional devastation happening in her kitchen.
“My shed needs building,” she says.
I blink at her. “What?”
“The garden shed.” She says it like it’s a perfectly normal thing to bring up in the middle of an emotional crisis. “I’ve been meaning to put one up for months. Haven’t gotten around to it.” She looks at Aster. “Are you any good with your hands?”
He looks stunned. “I’m not, no. I’ve never built anything in my life.”
“Perfect time to learn. You can stay in the guest cabin out back. Build my shed. And while you’re here, you can prove to my daughter that you’re worth keeping around.”
“Mom.” I’m on my feet before I realize I’ve moved. “You can’t just decide that.”
“I can do whatever I want. It’s my property.” She gives me a look that brooks no argument at all. “You wanted space. You have it. He’ll be in the cabin, not the house. And if you want him to leave, you can tell him yourself. I’m not doing your dirty work for you.”
I stare at her, speechless, and then at Aster, who looks equally stunned but with something else underneath it, hope, fragile and desperate.
“I’ll do it,” he says. “Whatever you need. However long it takes.”
“You?” I hear myself say, and my voice is sharp with disbelief. “Building? I have never seen you touch even a nail before.”
“Then I’ll learn.” He meets my eyes. “I’ll do anything, Flora. Anything to stay close enough to fight for you.”
I should tell him to leave. Right now, this second, before this gets any more complicated than it already is. I should call a taxi and send him back to his world of lights and cameras and women who want to kiss him in hallways.
But I can’t make myself say the words.
“The lumber’s in the barn,” I say instead. “Mom ordered it months ago.”
Mom smiles into her teacup.
Aster nods and stands, leaving his untouched tea on the table. “Thank you, Amora. I won’t let you down.”
“It’s not me you need to worry about disappointing.”
He looks at me one more time and I have to turn away from the naked hope in his expression. I hear his footsteps cross the kitchen, hear the screen door open and close, hear his feet on the porch steps heading toward the barn.
When I’m sure he’s gone, I round on my mother.
“What are you doing?” I hiss. “You’re supposed to be on my side.”
She’s at the sink now, rinsing vegetables, completely unruffled by my anger. “I am on your side.”
“Then why are you letting him stay? Why are you giving him a project and a cabin and hope?”
“Because I’m not going to let you run away from this without making a real decision.” She turns to face me, drying her hands on a towel. “You can send him away, Flora. Anytime you want. I won’t stop you. But you haven’t yet.”
“I just found out he was here five minutes ago.”
“And in those five minutes, you followed him inside. You sat at the table. You told him where the lumber is.” She reaches out and pats my cheek, infuriatingly gentle about it.
“You’re not ready to let go. And until you figure out whether that’s love or habit, maybe having him where you can see him isn’t the worst idea. ”
I want to argue with her. I want to tell her she’s wrong, that I know exactly what I feel, that I’m done with Aster Golding and his broken promises.
But I can’t find the words to make it true.
I leave her at the sink and go up to my room, and I don’t let myself look out the window toward the barn.