Page 29 of Forget Me Not
“You ever taste that?”
I twist around, surprised to find Liam standing behind me. He’s smiling wide, catching me in this private moment. I hadn’t even heard him walk up.
“Honeysuckle,” he elaborates, gesturing to the plant in my hand when I don’t respond. “It’s good.”
“No,” I say at last. “Can’t say that I have.”
He scoffs, though it’s a teasing sound. I can tell by his growing grin, the way he takes a step closer with his chin tucked low.
“And you call yourself a Southern girl.”
“Do I?” I ask, watching as he walks even closer, toward the plant I was just touching. A giant green shrub with little white flowers sprayed across the surface. I had been drawn to the smell of it, the subtle sweetness, and I watch as he plucks one of the flowers and brings it up to his lips. “I don’t recall saying that.”
“You grew up around here, right?” he asks, sucking the stem.
“I did,” I agree, remembering how I blurted that out during my first night here. A desperate attempt to break the mounting silence.
“Which part?”
“Claxton,” I say, trying to figure out how to change the subject before he can connect too many dots. I have no idea if Liam has heard of Natalie Campbell, a former Galloway worker who disappeared,but the fact that she was my sister seems like something I should have disclosed back when he was asking about my past.
“Though I wouldn’t call myself Southern anymore,” I add. “This is my first time back in years.”
“Well, you know what they say.”
“What do they say?”
“You can take the girl out of the South…”
He smiles again, trailing off, and I can’t help but smile back. Relieved the name of my hometown didn’t ring any bells.
“Here, try it,” he says, grabbing another. “Use your fingers to squeeze the stem.”
I follow his lead, snapping a flower of my own and squeezing the tip at the bottom of the bloom. Then I pull the stem out, a little bead of nectar erupting from the opening before touching it to my tongue, the bubble bursting with a honied gush.
“It’s good, right?”
“It is good,” I say, savoring the sweetness before picking another.
“You can do all kinds of things with honeysuckle,” he continues, watching as I scrape the flower with my teeth. “Put ’em in salads, boil ’em in tea. Those little blue berries are edible, too.”
I look at the berries peppering the shrub, oblong like blueberries stretched into a tube. Then I pick one from the stem before popping it into my mouth, suddenly more comfortable with Liam here.
“Just don’t go blindly eating stuff around here,” he adds. “Not if you don’t know what it is.”
“Mitchell said I could eat whatever I want,” I counter, teasing him back. Of course I know better than to eat random things growing out in the wild but Liam keeps talking, not reading my tone.
“Yeah, over there,” he says, gesturing to the produce. “All of that is edible. But some of the other stuff around here is toxic.”
“Like what?” I ask, glancing down at the shrub like it just sprang teeth.
“Mostly out there, out by the water,” he says, turning to face the marsh behind us as I remember what I saw this morning, that still little body blowing in the breeze. “Marshland grows all kinds of things.”
“So you’re telling me not to make my dinner with the poison ivy I saw by the guesthouse,” I say, smirking.
“Yes, that’s right. Try to avoid that.”
“Got it.” I smile. “Thanks for the tip.”
