Bloom

GET A TASTE!

Clara found the lily on the fourth morning. The temperature had dropped to three degrees below freezing overnight, and a thin sheet of ice covered the glass on the north side of the greenhouse. She knew she had checked the central flower bed before going to sleep. There had been nothing there but black soil, dead roots, and an overturned terracotta pot. Yet at sunrise, a white lily stood in the middle of it. It was not beautiful, at least not with the flawless beauty of a florist’s display. The edges of its petals had yellowed like an old letter soaked in water. Its stem bent to one side, and tiny beads of moisture covered the leaves. Still in her pajamas, Clara crouched before it and touched the earth. The soil was wet. It had not rained overnight, and the roof had not leaked. She pushed her fingers deeper and felt something hard in the cold earth. At first she thought it was a stone. When she dug it free, she found a silver hair clip set with a blue glass bead gone dark with age. She knew it. When Rose was twelve, she wore two identical clips every day. She once lost one and cried the entire afternoon. Their father said it must have fallen into the lake. Their mother said it was cheap and they could buy another pair. Only Clara knew why Rose cried. They had fought in the greenhouse that morning, and Clara had torn the clip from her sister’s hair herself. She sat in the dirt and suddenly heard the beat of wings. A butterfly landed on the lily, its wings gray-white with four black marks at the edges. Clara’s body recognized it before her mind did. Parnassius mnemosyne. Their father called it the memory butterfly. The last recorded sighting in the county had been nineteen years earlier—the year Rose died. Clara did not move. Neither did the butterfly, as if they were waiting for one another. Then it opened its wings, rose from the petals, circled Clara once, and flew toward the far end of the greenhouse. Wooden crates were stacked there, boxes their father had forbidden anyone to touch while he was alive. Clara followed and watched the butterfly settle on the top lid. The lock was rusted. She struck it three times with her garden shears before it broke. There were no tools or seeds inside, only dozens of letters tied with a faded blue ribbon. The top envelope bore her name. The handwriting was Rose’s. Clara stared at it for a full minute without breathing. The date in the top corner was August 14, 2007—six days after Rose’s body was found beside the lake. At last Clara turned it over. A tiny line had been written on the back, as if the writer had changed her mind at the final second.