Page 56 of The Manor of Dreams

“They’re doing really well this spring. They like being in partial shadow, I think. Bà didn’t think they’d survive with how dry it’s been.”

Ada reached out and brushed the leaves. “Well, they’re beautiful.”

“I had something to prove.” Sophie gently disentangled the leaves and guided one of the flowers into Ada’s palm. Their fingers brushed and Ada was stilled by the tenderness of the gesture, but Sophie had already moved on. Now she bounded closer to the fountain, to the roses. The pale pink buds hung suspended in the breeze, arching from their elongated stems and ethereal in the moonlight. “And theseareliking the sun.” She glanced at Ada. “What?”

“They look like they’re telling you a secret.”

“What would they be saying?” She tilted a bud toward her, holding it like a receiver. Her eyes widened as she feigned hearing a secret. “There is someveryjuicy gossip going on.”

Ada laughed. “I’m serious.” She cupped a rose toward her, one that had already burst into bloom, so full that the fragrant petals seemed to unfurl and settle in her palm. “You know people used to send messages with flowers?”

“Really?”

“They told us that in English class. During the Jane Eyre unit. Remember?”

“Didn’t pay attention like you did, I guess.” Ada blushed, but Sophie smiled at her. “What? I’ve seen the notes you take in class.” Lucille always teased Ada for taking perfect notes but never raising her handin class. Sophie loved looking at Ada’s notes, though. When they sat together in English, Sophie was always admiring how pretty her handwriting was and how everything was cataloged carefully by date and time. Those comments still made Ada glow inside.

Sophie asked, “Do you know what this one means?”

Ada shook her head. “I don’t know the secret language of flowers,” she confessed. “I just know it exists.”

“Oh. Then we could make our own. What do you think?”

She tilted her head and gave Ada an inquisitive look. And from that spring day on, Ada couldn’t stop noticing: the lightest of freckles across the bridge of Sophie’s nose, her curious, impudent smile, her animated expression, the soft skin of her cheek, the way the flowers seemed to reach for her in the moonlight. The way everything around her seemed to come alive.

Ada watched her sister begin to plot her summer party with her typical obsessive fervor. She’d always been so straitlaced, turning down the few invitations that came her way in favor of studying. But now it was the summer before senior year, and suddenly Lucille had a list of things she was determined to do in the year before college, one of which was throwing a party. Far be it for Lucille to half-ass a party. Their parents’ upcoming Cannes trip, combined with Edith and Josiah’s trip to Northern California to help Elaine move, would create the perfect opportunity. On the days when Sophie worked her job at the library, Ada would go with Lucille into Glendale to pick out new records. Rennie celebrated her fourteenth birthday in the second to last weekend of May, and they all stayed up eating strawberries and cream cake, her favorite. That night, high on sugar and sparkling juice, Lucille finally clued Rennie into the party, and she nearly leapt from the bed in excitement.

“You can invite your friends,” Lucille said. “But none of them can drink.”

“Okay!”

“I’m serious about this.”

Rennie nodded solemnly. “Swear.”

The next day Edith and Josiah drove up to Northern California to help Sophie’s sister, Elaine, move off the Berkeley campus and into an apartment in San Francisco. Then Ma and Dad headed to Cannes for ten days. The Yin-Lowell sisters and Sophie were all alone in the house together. Lucille spent the afternoon in the living room, calling everyone she knew. Later that night, she came by Ada’s room while Ada was in her pajamas reading a superhero comic. “I called seventy people and told them to bring their friends. Do you think that’s enough?”

Ada sat straight up. “Can our housefitseventy people?”

Lucille paced. “I’m sure. I feel like they’re not all going to show up.”

Ada said dryly, “Then you just have a tiny, cozy gathering with fifty people, I guess.”

“Invite your friends from Chem.”

Ada turned a page. “They don’t party.”

Lucille plopped onto the edge of the bed. “I feel like you really don’t care about this.”

Ada set her comic down. “It’syourparty. I don’t even know why you’re doing this in our house. We’ll be in college in a year.”

“I want to be in college having already hosted a party. And what’s the point of having a big house if you don’t use it? Our parents are gone.”

“Ma will still find out.”

“Not if Rennie doesn’t snitch. Which she swore not to.”

Ada shrugged and returned to her comic. Lucille lingered at the foot of her bed, and then said sharply, “What’s with you lately?”

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