“What do you like to grow, Anita? Vegetables, flowers? My mother has a penchant for orchids.” Bruno asked. Paolo paled at the question, and I fought the urge to snap at him. He was acting so strange tonight.
“Yes, wife, tell Bruno what you grow.” Romeo’s hands landed on my shoulders.
I grow death.
“I like orchids too, although they’re too fussy for me.” If I was going to grow a plant with such an attitude, it would have to give me back something useful, like petals I could dry and grind into poison.
Romeo’s fingers dug into my skin, and he hummed under his breath. I looked up at him.
“She’s full of secret talents, this little gardener of mine.” Romeo’s eyes flashed. I stroked the gloves, shellshocked by the kind gesture. An uncomfortable warmth spread in my stomach, and I couldn’t stem it, no matter how I tried. I liked the gift, and I hated myself for it.
Maria opened the door to the dining room.
“I have some soup to start,” she crowed.
Romeo released his grip on my shoulders to push the cart for Maria. She fussed behind him, wringing her hands.
“Mr. Orazio, it’s fine. That’s my job.” She laughed, but her smile widened. I shifted my box of gloves to the side as Romeo placed a bowl in front of me, and the scent of vegetables and herbs wafted up my nostrils.
“This was a thoughtful gift. I didn’t know you had it in you,” I said out the side of my mouth while Paolo picked up his spoon and ate.
Romeo pinned me in the silken trap of his intense gaze. I shivered all over, hot and cold, all at once.
“We both have our secrets, but I love you all the more for yours, my wife.”
14
Age 16
I jerked awake, blinking through the muted moonlight trickling through the greenhouse window panes. I’d fallen asleep and, in my foolish slumber, missed the night bloom of thecatoatcactus. My nails were aching stubs from earlier, waiting for the buds to open. The translucent green had unfurled, but the veiny petals were already useless.
They had to be harvested fresh.
Thecatoatcactus bloomed once every six months, and the flowers only lasted hours. They carried the scent of rotting, designed to attract prey that would feast on them. Not knowing it was a death wish. As soon as the creature collected the pollen, they would find their nervous system hijacked. The toxins in the flowers would flood their body until they expired.
Decaying into the soil and becoming the cactus food source.
It was also known as the Lady of Death. And I’d missed the chance to harvest it. I ripped off the gloves I’d been wearing inpreparation and tossed them across the room. They clattered into a stack of pots, teetering haphazardly. I looked at father’s notes. He underlined the word fresh twice with a thick line.
He would never have fallen asleep. A gaping, dark hole swallowed my stomach. He would never have failed so pitifully. I was grateful for the darkness, heavy enough to muffle the solitary sob I couldn’t contain. For once, I wished I could cry, so the well of hurt might lessen inside of me.
He was gone. Left me swinging in the breeze with nothing to latch onto except the plants and his scrawled handwriting. The echo of his heartbeat throbbed in this place. There were still moments where I thought he was in the moving shadows. Those were the worst. The brief millisecond of euphoria. Shattered and destroyed when I turned and saw nothing.
After a moment of wallowing, I stood, my body aching from the hard stool. The gloves I stored in their proper home and made a note on my calendar.
I would try again. I would never give up.
Not until I became the new master of these plants.
Lanton Vani’s funeral was a somber affair.
My nose wrinkled, and I tried to smooth it out. Romeo was stiff beside me. His eyes snagged on Merissa more than once. She was a small, black, shrouded figure in the pew beside my father-in-law, Matteo Orazio. Perhaps the only man who lookeddevastated in this church. Lanton Vani left no family. He was a scourge that infected every person around him. I looked at his closed casket with a sharp sense of satisfaction. Romeo rested his hand over mine. The warmth was unwelcome, but I relaxed despite myself. Perhaps I was starved of touch. It was the only explanation. I couldn’t yank my hand out in public, but I slid him a cool look of surprise.
“There, there, wife,” he whispered into the shell of my ear. “I can see you’re disturbed, being so close to the gruesome business of death.”
I managed not to snort.
Just.
