The Night Strangers - Chris Bohjalian [171]
“I think she’s an extraordinary gardener because you and Clary and Sage are very good teachers.”
Verbena sips her wine, and her eyes are shining. She is wearing a black velour sweater tonight that clings to her and a string of pearls. She couldn’t, it seems to you, be more beautiful.
“And your little girl?” Anise continues, pulling her hand back and folding her arms across her chest. She raises her eyebrows a little impishly and smirks.
Indeed, you wonder about your little girl, though she is no longer little. She is majoring in plant biology and minoring in anthropology. She grew up, it seems, in that greenhouse beside your home, and the communal one at the Messners’. Nevertheless, in your opinion that was more about nurture than nature—it was proximity, not genes. Had you remained in Pennsylvania, there is no reason to believe that your daughter would have wound up an aspiring botanist and herbalist. Still, the evening is too pleasant to waste energy debating whether her interest in plants was genetically inevitable or a self-fulfilling career path once you landed here in northern New Hampshire.
“Well, she also had some exceptional teachers,” you answer simply and sip your wine. The goblet has the crest of the coven (there really is no other word for it, though they insist they are nothing but botanists of a sort), and your eyes pause on it for a brief moment. Really, what would you and your wife and your daughter have done if it had not been for these remarkable people? You contemplate this almost unthinkable what-if, as you do periodically: How much does Verbena recall about that night? Supposedly very little. The women have seen to that. Memorium. Delirium. Their magical tinctures. The car was totaled in the rainstorm. They told you it’s a miracle that Verbena survived when your daughter was killed and Reseda was all but decapitated. Celandine was the first on the scene.
“I’d say she had miraculous teachers,” Sage purrs, saying something that sounds prosaic but you know in reality is really very profound. Then she turns to Clary and says, “Do you need any help getting supper on the table?”
Clary rises from the sofa with the serpentine arms and nods. “You’re positively psychic,” she says, smiling at her friend, and bustles into the kitchen. Verbena—so placid at midlife, so free from anxiety, it’s as if in addition to discovering a fountain of youth in this northern New England backwater she has also found here the secret to calmness and serenity—stands up and joins the women, kissing you on the cheek as she passes. She is wearing black lace ballet flats, and you are struck by the erotic elegance of even her small feet. Have you ever been more in love? No. Clearly not.
Anise follows the women, leaving you alone with Peyton and John.
“You’re a lucky, lucky man, Chip,” Peyton says.
“I think we all are,” John adds agreeably.
“When does Cali come home from school for the summer?” Peyton asks.
“Oh, that’s still a month away. The Friday before Memorial Day weekend most likely.”
“Does she still have those seizures?”
“Rarely. But every once in a while, yes.”
Peyton nods and glances at John, but John doesn’t look up from his Syrah. He seems lost in thought.
“She spending the summer here in New Hampshire?”
“I wish. Nope, she is only here through the end of June. Then she’s off to the Southwest for just about six weeks. Desert plants, mostly.”
“There’s a lot to study there,” Peyton says.
“Indeed. She’ll be in Santa Fe, Sedona, Bisbee, Las Cruces—though not necessarily in that order.