Page 41 of Edge of Ruin
We hadn’t bothered to shower, just pulled on our clothing. Vivi seemed urgent about the planting, as if something bad would happen if we lost any time, and I had seen no reason not to indulge her.
I kept ogling, marveling. It was official. My brain was slop. I had never even dreamed of sex like that.
After we got past the scary stuff, of course. My free hand clenched at the thought of her evil ex. How a man could hurt any woman was beyond me, let alone one like Vivi. So beautiful and scrappy and strong.
She’d probably scared the shit out of the cowardly bastard. Given him a huge inferiority complex so that the dickhead felt compelled to use the one advantage he had: his greater size. That was a classic. The standard playbook of asshole men.
Not that it was an excuse. He would pay. I intended to see to the matter personally.
Vivi stared up at the trees, the rays of sunlight slanting through them. I gazed hungrily at the perfect curve of her arched neck, the angle of her jaw.
Then we stepped out of the pine thicket, into another world.
The floor of the little valley was covered with spires, buds, blossoms of wildly contrasting colors. Edna yelped and readied herself to plunge into a bank of Kniphofia.
Vivi caught her collar and held her fast. “No way, girl. You stay right here. Sit!”
A branch snapped in the forest, and Edna twisted out of Vivi’s grasp and bounded off into the woods to investigate.
“Come out into the field,” I offered. “I’ll show you around.”
I led her out into the field, between the beds, and pointed. “These are Kniphofia, otherwise known as red hot pokers. The Lilium auratum on the other side are almost ready. Down there are Oriental poppies, and Anthoxanthum odoratum, which is a type of ornamental grass. There’s some Centaurea cyanus and Stachys byzantina on that rise over there. Bachelor’s buttons and lamb’s ears, in common English. And see those white and blue ones? Campanula aurita. Bellflowers. And columbine, at the far end.”
She looked enchanted. “Who taught you to grow flowers?”
I hesitated, and then just owned up. “My uncle Freddy,” I admitted. “I lived with him for a while. Until I was fourteen. He was heavy into organic gardening.”
“He grew flowers, too?”
“You could say that,” I answered.
She lifted an eyebrow. “What do you mean? He did or he didn’t.”
“Uncle Freddy specialized in cannabis. Various strains of specialty marijuana. Very profitable for him, for a while. It was a different era.”
“Oh.” Vivi looked startled, but not unduly so.
“The principles are the same,” I said. “He loved plants. He knew how to give them what they needed.”
“Oh,” she said again.
“I prefer flowers myself,” I went on. “More color. Less stress.”
“Is your uncle still ... um, never mind.”
“It’s okay. I doubt if he’s still in business. It’s a very different game, now that it’s legal. And he had to leave the country one night twenty-some years ago. Haven’t seen him since. Don’t even know if he’s still alive. He’d be over seventy by now.” I kept my gaze averted and stroked a Campanula aurita bud. They were getting ready to bloom at any minute. I always liked that moment of suspense, leading up to the big explosion.
“That was when you were fourteen, you say?”
“I’m thirty-seven now,” I said. “That would make it twenty-three years ago.”
“Were you there when he left? Was it a drug bust?”
My discomfort surged up. “Yeah.”
“How awful,” she said. “What happened to you afterward?”
I walked into an aisle between two rows of fluttering poppies, turning my back to her. “Nothing happened to me,” I said.
