The Rattled Bones(13)

CHAPTER FIVE


Lunch lasts longer than I realized. I board the Rilla Brae and pull up her anchor. I wave to Sam as he stands on the shore, and I can’t help but wonder if he really is camping on the island.

Doesn’t matter. None of my business.

I grab the key from the console and my eye catches orange. Sitting on the top of my GPS screen is a perfect bloom. A flower. Fat as an open rose. My fingers rub its citrus petals and feel how they are thick, bold. “How did you get here?” A smile spreads on my face, knowing Reed must have boarded my anchored boat, gifted this gorgeous flower. I raise it to my nose and it smells of spice. Pepper? I know this blossom. “Flame” something, a plant from a warmer climate. One of the plants Gram pulls up every autumn, tucks into storage in the cellar each winter. Did Gram give this flower to Reed? Was he reckless enough to pick it from her garden? I look for a note on the dash, but there’s only a small stone circle to hold the roundness of the bloom. I exchange the flower for one of the stones, rub the rock between my thumb and finger. It is deeply grooved where the water has spent centuries cascading over it, carving it. The rock brings the memory of my mother, plucking larger stones from the sea, weighing her skirt down.

I return the stone to its circle and shake off the fear that still haunts me after my mother’s last night at the shores of Fairtide.

I head home to find Gram coaxing her trumpet vines around the pergola posts on our deck. Their eager green stems are long and healthy. Soon they will bloom with sun-bright yellow flowers that will look exactly like mini trumpets, heralding the official arrival of summer. Gram wears long sleeves when she’s training these vines, because for all their beauty, they set a rash across her skin that she considers traitorous. I look around her feet, expecting to see a carpet of the flower I hold in my hand, but there’s no orange in the garden this time of year.

“Rilla! I expected ya back hours ago.” Gram plucks off her dirt-soaked gardening gloves, flattens them against each other before placing them onto her gardening stool. She walks to me, her eyes trained on the flower I’m carrying. “Where did ya get that?”

“Reed.”

She lifts the stemless bloom from my hand, twists it slowly to spin a look at its edges. “Where would Reed get a Flame Freesia?”

“You didn’t give it to him?”

Gram eyes the flower with a suspicious stare, as if she wants to ask it questions directly. “It’s not from my garden. Flames don’t bloom until August.”

“Maybe a florist shop, then?”

Grams harrumphs. “Reed at a florist?”

She’s right. I can’t picture Reed in a small store crammed with cut flowers. Reed’s too wild, and he likely picked the flower from the wild. “Want tea?”

“A cup would be great.” A bee lands on the Flame Freesia. Then another. Their buzz is electric as they disappear into the bloom’s orange heart.

In the kitchen, I set the kettle to heat and walk my fingers along the shallow shelves of bottled herbs. I choose skullcap and shimmy the cork from the tiny bottle’s neck. Its earthy fragrance wakes my senses.

Gram has her face turned to the high sun when I meet her on the back deck. The lone Flame Freesia sits on the table between our chairs. I don’t even have the tea set in front of her before she turns to me, gives me an approving look. “Interesting choice.” She reaches for her mug. Skullcap is named for its ability to put a cap on the mind that thinks too much. Also known to calm a person who is facing intense life changes. It’s possible I should have brewed an ocean of this stuff.

“Was it a good day buggin’?”

I nod. “Not my best, not my worst.”

“Can’t be ungrateful for a normal day.”

“Nope.” Except we both know today’s normal isn’t our normal.

We sit with our tea warming our hands, even though the day is already warm. But this ritual has always been my favorite, staring out at the sea for a few quiet minutes with Gram before the day bends into night.

“That flower. When did Reed give it to ya?”

The bees are gone now, the air a soft wind. “He left it in my boat.”

“Mmm-hmm. Today?”

I laugh. “Yes, today.” It’s zero surprise to see Gram obsess over a flower, but usually not one she already has growing in her garden.

“You’ll ask him where he got it, won’t ya?”

“Of course.” And then it dawns on me that maybe Gram is feeling pushed aside. Is it possible she could doubt how much I need her, appreciate her? “Thank you for the heather you left for me. I hung it in the wheelhouse so it can stay with me all season.”

“I’d give ya all the heather in the world if I could, Rilla.”

To keep me protected. To help my wishes come true.

“I’d do the same for you.” Maybe it’s superstition to think a flower can protect you, but I could have hung sprigs in Dad’s wheelhouse every day. Something. Why didn’t I ever think to do more to keep him safe?

“Can’t say it didn’t worry me when ya didn’t come home earlier.”

“I’m so sorry.” The words race out of my mouth because I know what it’s like to wait on the return of the boat. And wait. How could I do that to Gram? How could I be so selfish? “Gram, I wasn’t thinking. I should have radioed to tell you that I was safe, that I was on the island.”