Lily of the Valley (Flowering, #1.5) Read online

  Lily of the Valley

  Flowering, #1.5

  Sarah Daltry

  Lily of the Valley (Flowering #1.5)

  By Sarah Daltry

  Copyright 2013 Sarah Daltry

  All rights reserved.

  Cover Design by Braxton Cole

  Photo Copyright Bigstockphoto.com

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Visit Sarah online at http://www.sarahdaltry.com

  Printed/Published in the United States of America

  SDE Press

  September 26, 2013

  Also by Sarah Daltry

  Novels

  Forget Me Not (Flowering #1)

  Bitter Fruits (Eden’s Fall #1) (December 1, 2013)

  Scandal (November 8, 2013)

  Novellas

  The Quiver of a Kiss: The Seduction of Helen of Troy

  More than a Job

  Story Collections

  First Timers Volume 1

  First Timers Volume 2

  Smells Like Team Spirit Volume 1

  Standalone Short Stories

  Touch of Venus

  Into the Woods

  Anniversary Surprise

  Library Services

  Lube Job

  Her Brother’s Best Friend (Flowering #0.5 – also found in First Timers 2)

  Coming Soon

  Immortal Star (Eden’s Fall #2)

  Acknowledgements

  I make a big joke about this being harder than writing the book, but I have to admit it’s challenging. I want to thank everyone, but then I worry that I will forget someone. So, if I forgot you, it’s only because I am dumb and I’m probably writing this in the middle of the night!

  For starters, I want to thank my friends and family, especially those who know and keep my secrets! Cindy, Megan, Pete… thanks for not outing me.

  I’d also really like to thank all of my Facebook friends, because they’re always the ones who motivate me when I don’t feel like doing anything. If I’m wasting time, I can count on them to yell at me to get writing and I need that sometimes! I’d especially like to thank my street team, because you guys help me exist beyond my little Facebook page.

  Indie writers depend a great deal on bloggers and I want to acknowledge you all for taking the time to read my books, post promos, host giveaways, and just for being all around awesome. Again, there are a lot to name and I know I would inadvertently leave someone out, but if you’ve gotten the word out for me, I thank you!

  Thanks to all of the writers who create a safe and supportive place to vent and to brainstorm. We all have our ups and downs, but in the end, I couldn’t ask for a better group of people to experience this with!

  My editors and beta readers need to be mentioned, because without them, my book would still be sitting on my laptop, way too incoherent for the public eye.

  Finally, as always, I want to thank fans and readers, because you guys make this possible. Words and paper are meaningless without readers to give the story a home. Thank you for making room for my story.

  “I almost wish we were butterflies and liv’d but three summer days –

  three such days with you I could fill with more delight

  than fifty common years could ever contain.”

  - John Keats to Fanny Brawne, 1819

  This book is dedicated to my husband, for being my Lily and for giving me hope.

  That horizon is so much clearer having you in my life.

  Chapter 1

  Well, fuck. Three games, my Xbox controller, and a can of something – probably Spaghettio’s – crash down the stairs. The giant black garbage bag I used to carry everything is gaping open and I’m about to lose Black Ops II, which is completely unacceptable.

  An incoming freshman eyes me as I try to balance the leaking bag while holding the emergency door with my foot.

  “Little help?” I ask.

  Apparently not, because he runs into his room and slams the door. Maybe he didn’t hear me.

  Another kid and his family look at me and I can see the mother reconsidering sending her precious son to a school where kids live out of trash bags. Whatever. I manage to prop the door open, salvage my stuff, and make it to my room. All the while, the family continues to stare.

  “Thanks. You guys are the best,” I say, as I kick the now useless bag past my doorway.

  The mom rolls her eyes and they continue to help their kid redesign his 12” x 12” living space. For all their neatly packed boxes that they went out and bought, I saved money and time by throwing my entire collection of basic needs into three trash bags. Sure, it almost resulted in sauce and cheese raining down over the emergency stairwell, but that’s okay. Home, if that’s what you want to call it, is less than two hours away; I’m sure I would’ve survived.

  I leave my door open and watch families and their kids struggle to load refrigerators, electronics, hell even full-sized furniture through the tiny doorways. They don’t seem to realize that college isn’t on a different planet. Wal-Mart is right down the street.

  The last bag and the fugitive games are now in. I can “unpack” later. My grandmother already left, since I don’t like having her on campus. She drove my bags up and we said goodbye outside. I don’t know if that’s weird or a dick move. Probably both. But after two years of this, neither of us has it in us to pretend we’re a normal family and it’s better to avoid the traditional Kodak moments as much as possible. I’ll call her tonight to make sure she made it back okay and then I’ll put up a poster or something. But first, I need food.

  I consider going to the cafeteria. I got a prime parking spot and I don’t want to lose it just because socializing sucks so much, but once I’m out in the hall again, I can’t take it. My friend with the helping allergy has his door open now and is playing some shit pop music way too fucking loud. I’d last a total of eighteen minutes with these people. Maybe.

  Thus, my destination ends up being work. I’m not scheduled for a few days – I was told to take some time to “adjust,” as if this isn’t my third year at school and as if anything needs adjusting. However, I need food and I like being at work. It’s one of the few pleasant distractions I have. Since I’m already out and I’m heading in that direction, I drive to one of the other local places I know too well.

  The parking lot is nearly empty, because visiting hours are almost over – and because it’s a Monday. No one comes to a prison during the week. Most people do their obligatory visits on the weekends.

  Sitting on my bike, I debate. I have no reason to go in; I shouldn’t even be here. I don’t know why I came. Some nights, I just do this. I drive here, sit in the parking lot, and tell myself just to grow up and face it. I almost always leave without going in, but something makes me try over and over again. Maybe it’s just knowing it’s here, that I didn’t drive past without even considering stopping, that makes me pretend something will be different.

  Hell, I know I’m supposed to make an effort, but the darkening sky and the ugly gray of the building just look so… uncomfortable. A barbed wire fence runs along the perimeter of the building and the lot. Six years and it’s never stopped being unnerving.


  I gaze at the sky; it looks like it might rain. Maybe I should head to the café in case the weather gets bad.

  Stop making excuses, I tell myself, but I listen to myself as much as I listen to everyone else. Not at all.

  Still, I almost make it off the bike, almost decide to say fuck it and go in, until I notice one of the other cars in the parking lot. It’s my grandmother’s. I shouldn’t be irritated that she came here once I shooed her off campus, but I am. She could have asked if I wanted to come.

  The thought is out, but it’s a stupid thought. She visits every weekend – and I pretty much never go with her. I’ve only been here twice all summer. So seeing her car here shouldn’t upset me, because I wasn’t going to come. Regardless, though, I’m pissed.

  Fuck everyone, I think, and I pull away from the prison, focused on getting as much distance between myself and the place as possible.

  Riding makes me feel so much better. The prison, my home, campus – they’re all behind me and there is nothing but the road ahead. It’s still technically summer and it’s that time of night that doesn’t have a name. Pre-evening, when the sun is already past the horizon, but the echo of the day lingers. The sky is an endless stretch of fading salmon and I can almost believe that beyond the horizon is something worth riding toward.

  I love school, but I hate everything else about college. I love my grandmother, but being home makes me want to hurt myself. I love nothing about the prison. It’s a fucking prison. But riding? I love it. There is no qualifier for this. No one interferes and there is no direction to go but forward. It’s the only time the past can be outrun.

  Work isn’t far from the prison; I feel like my entire life is all within this small area. Home, school, work, prison – there are at most a couple hours between any of them. I thought I was getting away, but I didn’t get far. Someday, though. Someday, I will leave it all behind.

  The café is fairly empty tonight even though it’s dinnertime. Generally, it’s always empty except for weekend brunch or in the middle of the night. Being the only open dining option for college students at 3 am after a party is an amazing way to earn business. I prefer the times like right now, though. No one raises their eyebrows when they see me. The few customers are mainly truckers passing through. As messed up as my own story is, I get the impression many of them have seen the same kind of darkness. There’s a weird comfort in commiserating in our lonely brokenness.

  Sandee’s on tonight. She’s the only person here who knows my story. Most know I live with my grandmother because I started working here at 16 and someone had to sign paperwork for me. However, Sandee knows why.

  Tonight, she looks tired, which makes me think Liz called out again. When Liz’s boyfriend Keith is in town, she suddenly grows severely ill. And then he’s back out on the road, and she miraculously recovers. The guy’s an asshole but we keep our mouths shut. Liz is forty and she works part time as a waitress; no one needs to make her life worse than it already is.

  The customers all have their meals and Sandee leans across the counter, folding silverware. While we’re on the clock, we’re technically not supposed to rest, but we’ve all developed our tricks. Mine is searching the walk-in. You’d be amazed at how long a person can believably look for salad dressing.

  “Hey,” she says, as I sit at the counter. “Didn’t expect to see you so soon. Weren’t you moving in today?”

  “I was hungry.”

  “Don’t they have food up at that fancy college of yours?”

  “Nothing that compares to Mal’s ham on rye.”

  “You know better than anyone that his ham on rye monstrosity will kill you. I don’t know what he puts into that thing, but it’s like begging for a heart attack.”

  “Good. Quick and tasty death.” I give her my biggest grin.

  She rolls her eyes. “Besides, Mal’s off tonight. We’ve got Carl and I wouldn’t touch anything he makes.”

  “There’s got to be something he can’t screw up.”

  Sandee shakes her head. “Good luck finding it.”

  I twirl on the barstool like I’m seven. It makes her laugh, which is nice. “Working a double?”

  She nods. “Liz is feeling under the weather.”

  “She’s under something, that’s for sure. I didn’t know Keith’s nickname was ‘the weather.’”

  “Oh, stop it. You’re too young to know about such things.”

  “I’m twenty, Sandee. And I know plenty.”

  She gets quiet and pushes the silverware aside. “I’m worried about you, honey. It’s your first night back at school. You should be spending it with kids your own age.”

  “You know how I feel about socializing,” I reply.

  “I do, but usually you fake it for the first few days of the semester. What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know,” I confess. “I just couldn’t deal. For two years, it didn’t get to me. Okay, well, not as much, but seeing all those kids, mom and dad smiling and hugging and everyone just so ... normal? It bugged me today.”

  She rests her hand over mine. “Normal is a state of mind. No one’s as picture perfect as they look. Some just cover the cracks better.”

  “Yeah,” I say but I don’t look at her. I know all about faking it.

  I feel so undeserving of the way Sandee treats me; it’s become especially true recently. I was picking up my check one night when she came in to get hers and she had her son with her. The way she looked at him broke my heart. No one has ever looked at me that way.

  “Coffee?” She moves her hand, giving me space. I nod. It’s late for coffee, meaning it’s probably been burning for hours, but there’s something familiar about being here. It’s one of the only things I know that’s familiar in a good way.

  “I added something special for you, Jack.”

  She’d get in a lot of trouble if anyone knew that she sneaks whiskey into my coffee on nights like this. Luckily, no one here actually cares. I let the burn of the scorched coffee as well as the alcohol soothe what’s aching to burst from me.

  Sandee drops off the checks at the few tables occupied by customers and then returns to sit next to me. She’s breaking a lot of rules tonight, but no one seems to notice.

  “Honey, I’m worried about you.”

  “You said that.”

  “Are you okay?”

  How do I answer that? Each year, I get more hopeless than the one before. Here is this woman, ten years older than I am but with the same haunted look, trying to piece me back together. From most people, this kind of concern would make me react with rage, with bitterness. But Sandee has been there, I can tell. She hasn’t told me her story, but I really don’t need to hear it. I met her son, I know she’s been having trouble with the school system because they refuse to address his mild autism, and I know it’s just the two of them and their cats. I don’t ask where her son’s dad is, and she doesn’t volunteer the information. Instead, we cling to companionship the only way we know how – with a little desperation and a lot of booze.

  “I’m fine. I told you.”

  “Did you go see your Mom today?”

  I nod. Before moving in, I made my regular visit to the cemetery. Nothing there ever changes. It’s both a relief and a constant reminder. Even my grandmother stopped going a while ago, but I can’t. I can’t just not go.

  “You don’t have to say it,” I tell Sandee. “I know she’s not there.”

  At one point, during my father’s trial, when I refused to take his side on the stand, he nearly kicked me across the lawyer’s office. “Your mother was a fucking junkie, and you meant shit to her. Asking to go up there every weekend, leaving flowers on her grave? You’re wasting your time. She’s dead and good riddance to her. There’s nothing in that grave because, even if there is a soul, that bitch didn’t have one.” The lawyers later came to work out guardianship one afternoon when I was home and shook their heads when they saw me. Was it guilt they felt? Irritation? Something else? I don’t
know, but fuck them. That’s what I know now.

  “You do what you need to do. She’s there if you want her to be there.”

  “You know, they spelled her fucking name wrong. Right there on the tombstone. E-V-E-L-Y-N. It was Eveline, with an I-N-E. And no one bothered to fix it. I remember being led to a plastic folding chair out on the cemetery lawn, the gaping hole my last physical memory of my mother, and looking up. That fucking Y. By the time we noticed, it was done and they said it would cost us several hundred dollars to change it. Like it was our fault.”

  “Shit. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “It doesn’t matter. They couldn’t really change it, even if they’d put up a new one. They did it and you can’t fix something that deeply ingrained, can you? It’s been dug in too far. That Y is not going anywhere, no matter if I cry, punch something, or just give up.”

  “Things can always be fixed.” Sandee’s a regular source of inspiration, but her optimism wears me down right now. I don’t get how some things can be fixed.

  Whenever I think of my family, either then or now, all I feel is rage. Rage at my mother for turning out like she did, rage at my father for his actions, rage at the way the world shits on your dreams, and rage sometimes at myself. For existing.

  “Hey, can I get some chicken strips? And honey mustard. None of that fake ass barbecue crap.”

  Sandee shakes her head, realizing I’m shutting down the serious, and goes to the kitchen to place the order. I don’t know why she doesn’t yell it. There’s almost no one left and the few who are are in the process of leaving. Still, the moment of solitude has a beautiful sting to it.

  I’m not even hungry anymore; I just ordered something to change the subject. When Sandee comes back ten minutes later with my order, having left me alone to brood or whatever it is she imagines I do, I don’t want to look at the chicken strips. But the look on her face tells me that she’ll be devastated if I don’t, as if these undercooked slabs of meat will heal me in all my broken places. I know it’s the mother in her, but that phrase remains alien to me. However, I force myself to eat the chicken.