Mr. Frederics has to know? I hide my surprise by staring at the crystals dripping from the chandelier.
“He would never know that you received the elixir, unless of course you wish us to tell him.” Aunt Bryony leans back, absentmindedly twisting the gold band around her finger.
“Why would I do that?”
“To put your actions in the right context.”
“Right. D-do most people in my situation choose to undo it?”
“It’s only happened twice, and in both cases, the parties elected not to be PUF’ed. As Lord Tennyson observed, ’tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.”
The strumming stops. Alice passes her gaze over all of us, her face faraway. Then she starts up with her uke again.
Aunt Bryony rises. “Take as long as you need to decide. We’ll see ourselves out.”
I linger, looking for my feet in the fluffy Sherpa carpets. “Court.” His gaze snaps to me, but I can barely meet his eyes. “It could work on you, too.”
He scoffs, a sharp exhale of breath, and shakes his head.
I back away, a smaller, more wilted version of myself. “Again, I’m really sorry.” Head down, I follow my aunt. Once the carpets end, our footsteps clack noticeably on the home stretch of tiles to the front door.
As we reach the front door of the great hacienda, the ukulele stops midsong, and the notes hang in the air.
“Stop,” says Alice, pushing off against Court’s knee to standing.
“I’ll do it.”
“Mom.” Court lets out a frustrated groan. “Are you sure?”
Alice pads to us, shoulders straight and head lifted. “Yes. I have already loved and lost. I’d rather not do it a second time.”
Court moves reluctantly behind his mother.
“As for Franklin, if there’s someone else he loves, I don’t want to interfere.”
Aunt Bryony opens the cooler. The bud transformed into a papery white bloom with three petals, bursting with golden marmalade hues. “Your mother would be proud of you,” she whispers in my ear.
Alice squeezes her eyes shut and bares her wrist, as if this were a blood transfusion and not a simple swipe of the skin.
Court, who has ceased making eye contact with me, watches my fingers pluck a petal to injure the plant. I slide the torn petal across Alice’s skin. She sighs, a breathy hmm. The PUF will reverse my erroneous fixing, but I cannot put things back the way they were.
For anyone.
THIRTY-TWO
“‘WHY DO THE PLANTS SMELL LIKE US?’ YOU ASK.
WHY NOT? WE DRINK THE SAME WATER,
WE BREATHE THE SAME AIR. WE SHARE A HISTORY ON THIS EARTH.”
—Ruza, Aromateur, 1818
BACK IN AUNT Bryony’s rental car, we glide to the fountain. Thankfully nobody has pinched my bike. “What if Mr. Frederics really does like Alice? Is there an exception to the no-rekindling rule?”
The emergency brake makes a ripping sound as she steps on it. “No, we can’t fix her again. It would be unfair.”
A vision of an old and feeble Mr. Frederics seated in front of a TV tray flashes in my mind. He stares at a pink bakery box, sun-bleached white after decades of decorating the mantel.
“You’re a worrier, like your mother. Here’s a secret for you.” She leans closer to me. “We’re not as powerful as we think.” Her amber eyes glitter. “Sometimes things happen that have nothing to do with our flowers, and the best we can do is the best we can do.”
I hop out of the car to fetch my bike.
She rolls down her window. “Meet you back at home.”
Home.
Afternoon sunshine makes the garden glow by the time I drop my bike in our courtyard. The light catches the droplets from our water misters and turns them into fireworks. I shuffle into the kitchen, where Aunt Bryony’s dropping vegetables into a pot of heating water.
She smiles at me. “You’re back just in time. Sit down.”
I pour myself onto a chair.
“What possessed her to paint all the cupboards blue? It’s damn depressing.”
“They’ve always been blue.” Like her clothes. Like her.
“Not always. They used to be buttercup yellow.” She plucks the seven spices from the cabinet used to make Seven-Spice Soup. I watch her moving about the kitchen with ease. She knows where everything is.
“Your mother still keeps them all separate, I see. She could save a lot of time by putting all seven in the same bottle, but no shortcuts for your mother.” She taps one of the containers with her fingernail. “Still even using the same rusty tins.”
A bubble of defensiveness rises up, even though I know she means no offense. “We need to live frugally.”
She hooks an eyebrow. “Please. She could sell these for a hundred times what we bought them for. The vintage look is very popular right now. The more banged up, the better.”
“Maybe she doesn’t know.”
She shakes her head. “Dahli did always have trouble letting things go.”