Chapter Ten
Tuberose: A flowering plant in the asparagus family with a tall stem of white blossoms whose heady, sensual scent evokes dangerous love
At night, even on good days, days like the one I’ve just had, my mind returns me to that afternoon with Jack, when we were eighteen and so in love.
I remember that as he walked toward me through my garden, it seemed to me that his face was that of a lost boy, but his eyes held the melancholy depth of someone much older.
Was there, I wondered, a scent among my flowers that might ease his mind?
Every memory that I had returned to had strengthened my sense of self, inspiring me to make decisions that changed my life for the better. Was there a flower that might do the same for Jack, steadying him?
In that moment, my mother’s voice swelled in my mind, warning me to be careful. Every action, I heard her say, has a consequence. I thought of how sparingly, how cautiously, she used her own gift.
But what harm could a memory possibly do?
The scent of tuberose flowers grew thick in the air, traveling toward me in a warm, silky wave. The scent encircled Jack, too, and I felt a thrill in my core as I understood that it was meant for him.
I pushed my mother’s warning from my thoughts.
“Jack,” I said, touching his arm. “These flowers are for you.”
Jack looked down at the small tuberose blossoms, white as pearls, and then back at me. The tenderness in his eyes made my heart ache. “Thank you,” he said softly, and wrapped his arms around me. “They’re beautiful.”
The scent of tuberose encircling us was sensual and intoxicating, a wash of gold in the air.
When Jack kissed me, I forgot entirely where I was for a long moment, losing myself to the feeling of his lips on mine.
But the scent crept back in, heady and insistent, whispering to me.
My chest swelled with the belief, the certainty, that I had grown something with my own hands that would help Jack. I pulled away from him, smiling.
“You have to smell them,” I said. I bent down and breathed in the scent of the fragrant blossoms. “Like this.”
He tilted his head, laughing a little, but his brow furrowed when he realized I was serious. “Okay,” he said, reaching out to take hold of my hand. “Sure.” And then he leaned over and breathed in.
I watched as his face grew still, his gaze unseeing. For a moment, he was completely motionless, as though he was stuck somewhere far away. Then his hand dropped from mine, and I felt a sudden chill of foreboding.
As his expression regained focus, there were tears in his eyes. He blinked and the tears fell, one and then another.
I reached out and put a hand on his arm. “Jack—”
“What was that?” he whispered, stunned. “What just happened?”
I had never told anyone but my family about my gift, had never shared myself fully in that way with anyone else. But I loved Jack, and I knew he loved me. I trusted him, and so I told him the truth.
“The flowers that I grow… their scents can return you to the past, to a memory you’ve forgotten.”
For a moment, Jack just stared at me. I watched as an agony I did not understand slowly darkened his face.
“What are talking about, Lucy? You’re… you’re crazy!
” he said at last, his voice rising. “A memory? No. No! That… that wasn’t real,” he stammered furiously, but he looked at me like he knew it was real, and that I was responsible for what he had seen.
What had he seen?
“Jack, please,” I whispered, stepping toward him.
What had I done? Why hadn’t I listened to my mother?
Jack looked at me as though I were the one who had transformed—I had become someone he didn’t know, a stranger, a witch.
He stumbled backward, away from me, as though repelled, crushing my flowers below his sneakers.
I felt myself flinch. The sensitive, lost Jack I knew was replaced by someone consumed by anger and fear.
“You’re crazy!” he shouted again and again. “Stay away from me!”
I had never heard him shout before. His words sank into me, sharp as thorns.
“Wait,” I said, reaching for him again. “Please—”
But he turned and stormed away, leaving a path of ruined flowers in his wake.
It would turn out to be the last time I ever spoke to him.
He would not return my calls. At school, he ignored me.
He looked like he was not sleeping; there were dark circles under his eyes, and his skin took on a sallow tint.
I knew that he drank occasionally, but now it seemed that every time I passed him in the hallway, the acrid scent of alcohol followed him like a shadow.
And then, one week after I told him to breathe in the scent of the tuberose flowers in my garden, Jack Harris drank himself blind and drove his car into a tree.