Page 2 of A Journey For Jasmine

“I heard,” Ivy said, sniffling, twenty minutes later. Jasmine had been walking around and touching the flowers. There were so many jasmines in the garden and she found it funny. You’d think she’d be at peace here more, but she wasn’t. Just with the flowers, but it didn’t matter what country they were in.

She turned to look at her ten-year-old sister. The girls were all named after flowers and maybe that was why they stuck together and gave their mother fits. Who knows? It probably had more to do with the fact everyone was fed up with the life.

“I’m sick of it,” she said.

Ivy had tears in her eyes. “I hate flying. I don’t want to fly again.”

Jasmine forgot about that. She was so stuck in her own misery that she didn’t remember Ivy was afraid of heights and airplanes. Not that her parents seemed to care because they were all going to find themselves on another one in a few weeks. She didn’t even ask where they were moving to. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway.

She opened her arms and Ivy came running to hug her. “It’s going to be fine. You can sit by me.”

“I don’t want to be on one of those small planes again that shakes.”

She sighed. They spent a lot of time on them to get to these remote places. “You can close your eyes and listen to a movie like we always do. It could be worse. You could be like Dahlia and get sick half the time.”

“I heard that,” Dahlia said. She shifted and saw Dahlia in the doorway looking pissed off. The oldest girl of the group was by far the moodiest. “This bites.”

“Glad to know I’m not alone,” Jasmine said.

“Chase is sucking up to Mom saying he can’t wait for another adventure. Mark is laughing at us,” Dahlia said, “but he only has one more year of this and then he gets to go to college. This is probably his last move.”

“God,” she said. “Lucky him.”

Not that she had any clue how that would work out either or where her brother would go during breaks. It wasn’t her concern. She just wanted to get past this and figure out where their next step was going to be.

She was so over packing too, but it’s not like any of them had a lot of possessions. They lived minimalistic lives. Lives of a nomad in her mind.

“I can’t wait until it’s my turn to be done with this,” Dahlia said.

“Me neither.”

“Then you’re all going to leave me with Chase,” Ivy said, wailing.

“You might get lucky,” she said. “Mom and Dad might get tired of it by then.”

Dahlia snorted. “You always say what is on your mind, but you know as well as I do, it’s not going to happen.”

“Nope,” Jasmine said. “Looks like it’s another change. I guess the best we can hope for is Mom is done having kids.”

Dahlia laughed and Ivy just cried harder. Someone had to joke about it because it was the only way she felt she could get through.

1

Most Important

Fifteen Years Later

“Lily,”Jasmine said. She’d just come out of the workshop where she’d been putting arrangements together for the Memorial Day party that Blossoms was catering this weekend. “Just the woman I was looking to see.”

Lily Bloom-Wolfe stopped in her tracks and turned. She had a little bit more than three months before her first child was born. A boy and she was looking lovely with a small baby bump that was just begging to come out.

Jasmine knew; she’d seen her mother pregnant a few times. Pictures from when she was with her older siblings and all the poor women and babies her father delivered over the years.

Things that Jasmine wished she could forget. The poor, the sick, the needy.

Yes, her father did good work. Her mother did too teaching English to the natives. But it wasn’t a great life to grow up in.

She’d seen things she didn’t care to remember and it was hard to push them from her mind.

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