Any moment they’ll come running. The smell of burned Layla’s Sacrifice is strong enough to awaken any aromateur.
As I wait, I prepare tea. I haven’t felt so calm in weeks. Mother and Aunt Bryony just need a chance to work out their problems. It’s like the old key to our workshop—with the right amount of jiggling, I feel sure their problems can be worked out.
Aunt Bryony arrives first. She waves the silk sleeves of her pajamas. “What happened here?” She crosses to the table and squints at the sacrificial terrarium. “You burned Layla?”
Mother bursts into the workshop next. Her blue flannel pants stick out from under her terry-cloth robe. A wavy line from her sleep mask runs across her forehead. “What the blazes is going on?”
“Please, make yourself comfortable.” Into the two cups, I pour perfectly steeped Ceylon. “Honey? Cream?”
Mother doesn’t sit. “What are you doing?”
Aunt Bryony pushes her teacup and saucer at me. “I’ll take both.”
Mother wilts Aunt Bryony with her gaze. “Mim, tell me what you are doing NOW.”
I serve my elders, placing Mother’s teacup on the workshop table next to where she stands, brittle, holding her arms and observing me.
Aunt Bryony slurps her tea.
I cross back to the blue door. Dawn peeks through when I open it. “Aunt Bryony said William locked you in here once to sort out your differences. Please don’t use the skylight.”
“Mim.” Mother starts toward me. “This is not funny.”
I shut the door behind me. As I jam in the key, I feel Mother trying to pull the door back open. She’s faster than I thought.
Quickly, I twist the key, and for a panic-stricken moment, I wonder if it will fail me.
But this time, the lock clicks easily into place.
“Mim!” Mother wails.
“I have a plane to catch in two hours,” Aunt Bryony calls loudly.
“Well then, you’d better get talking,” I call back. I wait patiently outside the door.
“You go climb out the window,” Aunt Bryony says in a fainter voice.
“I most certainly will not do that. You do it.”
“I’d get stuck. You weigh less. You’ll make it. I’ll push.”
“No.”
After a pause, Aunt Bryony calls through the door. “Are you bribable?”
“No.”
“Come on, honey. How about a new car?”
“She doesn’t know how to drive,” snaps Mother.
“No? What kind of teenager lives in California and doesn’t know how to drive?”
“She’s only fifteen.”
“And next year she’ll be sixteen. Better start teaching her now.”
“Now you’re the expert on raising teenagers.” I can already see the dent between Mother’s eyebrows deepen. Probably Aunt Bryony has the same groove.
“It doesn’t take an expert to realize when a young lady is growing up. You never even told her about Edward and the No Mister.”
Silence. I stick my ear to the door. When no one speaks further, I say, “What’s the No Mister?”
“It’s ‘No, Mr.’ Get it?” says Aunt Bryony.
I choke on my own spit. They have a nickname for BBG, too.
“Your mother hit him with No Mister seven times before she believed me.”
“I will explain, if you don’t mind.” Mother spends a moment clearing her throat. “Well, Mim, you’re a young lady now. Boys will be calling for you.”
My cheeks warm. “I’m not six.”
“Up the Grating, Dahli.”
Mother grunts in indignation and footsteps thud, as if my aunt pushed her aside. Aunt Bryony takes over. “Mimsy, you’re more lovable than you think. If you need to remist, our aromateur’s pollen is not the reason someone likes you.”
“Meaning—?”
“Your boo is into you.”
Mother snorts loudly.
I stare at the wood grain of the door, slow to make sense of what she’s saying. Court liked me for me, not because of being infected by aromateur’s pollen. The ground seems to pitch, and I put my hands on the rough door to steady myself.
“Does falling in love have a scent?”
“Theoretically—” Mother begins just as Aunt Bryony says, “Butterscotch pudding.”
I stare through the peeling blue paint. Court told me I smelled like butterscotch pudding when we first met.
“You can’t detect it because all aromateurs smell like butterscotch pudding,” my aunt continues. “Work with love, and eventually it gets into the bloodstream. Our olfaction adapts to no longer notice it.”
“But I can smell my other heart notes.”
“Not all of them. Some are too small to be detectable by our brains, well, your brains, though your noses know.”
“And makes your brain so special?” comes Mother’s incredulous voice.
“I’m telling you, a good dunk in salt water does wonders. You should try it.”
“So, what do I do about someone who is, er, into me?” I ask quietly.
No one speaks and I’m not sure if anyone heard me.
But then Mother’s voice replies, “You’ll have to let him get over you the old-fashioned way.”
“Or not,” adds Aunt Bryony brightly.
I rest my forehead against the door. Court already got over me the old-fashioned way, if by old-fashioned Mother meant “hopped the bullet train to recovery.”
“Mim, you better open this door before we kill each other.”