Ashes and Bones: An Emma Fielding Mystery - By Dana Cameron Page 0,3
were still good for each other. I had my health, friends, happiness, and hell, we even had enough money to begin renovating said house with actual professionals.
All of which was great, but it made me really, really nervous.
Striving can be a great way of keeping life in order, but what happens when you get what you’ve been working for all your life? What do you do then? If you are single-minded, or even just determined, this can be quite unnerving.
I could arrange for new excavation and research projects, I could design new classes, take part in other professional duties, but it’s all a little too familiar now; and even if it isn’t familiar, there wouldn’t be the same thrill of anxiety that accompanies fresh endeavors because I know I have the skills to tackle them.
It left me wondering: What was next, existentially speaking?
We pulled up into the crowded hotel parking lot, just in time for mai tai hour, which by mutual agreement, was at least an hour earlier than at home. Usually a bourbon or beer girl myself, I now found myself addicted to a complicated rum drink with a pink orchid floating on top. While I knew that these flowers were nothing out of the ordinary here—they seemed to be like forsythia in the yards here—I still, in my little New England heart, couldn’t believe that people put orchids on drinks. That was the coolest, most decadent thing ever.
The rum didn’t hurt either.
I climbed up the stairs, ready to wash off, and change for dinner. This was a trick for me; even at my most casual, I still hadn’t been able to shed my Connecticut upbringing and decidedly Atlantic attitude. Everywhere I went, even in chinos or a skirt, I felt overdressed. Brian, raised in San Diego, had a lot easier time finding the right mode: shorts, aloha or polo shirt, sandals. I fiddled, finding my key card, with Brian crowding behind me chanting the gimme-a-mai-tai song, and we burst into the room giggling. I pulled up short when I saw the long white box on the bed.
“Hey, what’s that?” I said, rushing over to look at it. “Flowers?”
Brian looked as surprised as I. “Don’t ask me. What’s it say?”
He also had a better poker face than I did. “As if you didn’t know. It has my name on it, silly.”
Brian was still not smiling. “Seriously, Em, it’s not from me.”
“Then who?” I opened the card.
He held his hands up. “Gonna have to read the card, porkchop.”
“‘Miss me yet?’” I looked up, confused. “Huh?”
“There’s no name?”
“No.” I got the box open and paused. In a land where flowers were abundant, fleshy, exotically improbable, and elegant, these stood out as all too familiar, gorgeous, but in a rustic sort of way. A New England sort of way. And in a tiny focal point, in front of the bouquet of asters, lupines, daisies, and bachelor’s buttons, was a knot of lilies of the valley.
Chapter 2
WHAT THE HELL?” I STARTED TO TREMBLE.
Brian leaned over me, trying to read, his hand on my shoulder. “Em, chill. It’s just flowers. There’s no signature on the card?”
I shrugged his hand off. “No. I told you, no.”
He looked at me, and I could see in that instant that look in his eyes, not often seen, that indicated he thought I’d checked out. That my opinion was not to be completely trusted because of hormones, or fatigue, or depression, or personal involvement, or whatever. Everyone’s significant other has that look, tinged with annoyance or frustration or dismissal. But it was my own personal vision of hell: not being taken seriously by the one person in the world who should trust me entirely.
And I was too tired to argue it now, so soon after our earlier discussion. As much as I knew I was right, in spite of whatever evidence. I shrugged. “Weird, huh?”
I’d backed off too soon; Brian looked suspicious.
“I’m going to have a look through it anyway, see if there’s anything else that might tell me where it’s from. And I’ll call the desk. Maybe they know what’s going on.”
“Sure, that sounds like a reasonable plan. I’m going to grab the shower; I’m starting to smell pretty ripe.”
I couldn’t tell whether Brian was just dodging the issue—now he was backing off too quickly. “Go ahead.” At least if he was in the shower, I could paw through the flowers to my heart’s content, with no weird looks following me.