He Swore Flowers Would Kill Him, Then Came Home Smelling of Roses novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: Two Bowls of Lavender

Clara feeds Rhett lavender in his stew twice. He eats it without a flinch, then fakes a cough and goes upstairs.

On Saturday I cooked for him again.

I made his favorite, beef stew, and I took my time over it.

Rhett came home at six and sniffed the air at the door.

"You're back to cooking," he said.

"I had a bad week," I said. "I'm sorry I let it show."

He smiled, relieved, and kissed my cheek.

He did not smell of roses. He smelled of the pack-house soap and nothing else.

I understood what that meant. He had washed before coming home, because I had been quiet for two days and he had grown careful.

Careful men have something to lose.

I set two bowls on the table and a basket of bread between them.

I had crushed the last of my dried lavender into a fine powder, and I had stirred a full teaspoon of it into his bowl.

The color of the stew hid it. The smell, with the beef and the pepper, hid it too, but not from me.

I could smell it. A wolf with a healthy nose would smell it too.

Rhett sat. He picked up his spoon.

My hands were cold in my lap.

"Eat," I said. "It's getting cold."

He took a mouthful, and I watched his throat move.

He took a second, and a third.

I counted breaths again, and by twenty he had not changed color.

His shoulders stayed loose. His hands stayed steady.

He ate the bowl down to the bottom and tore a piece of bread to wipe it.

"This is good," he said. "You always get it right."

"Do I?"

"You know how I like it."

I looked at him across the table. It was the same face, the same mouth I had kissed that morning in a bed I had trusted.

"Have another bowl," I said.

"I will."

I ladled it myself. I put in another full teaspoon, because I wanted to be sure.

He ate that one too.

He did not seem to taste a thing, because there was nothing wrong with him.

At the bottom of the second bowl he stopped, his spoon raised.

He looked at the stew, and then at me.

I held my face still.

Something moved behind his eyes. It was not pain, only a calculation.

Then Rhett coughed. It was a small, dry cough, and he put his fist to his chest.

"My throat's a little tight," he said.

"Is it?"

"Probably the pepper."

"Probably," I said.

I watched him lower the spoon and push the bowl a few inches away.

He gave a wince that was too small and too late to be a fit.

"I think I should lie down," he said. "I've got a headache coming."

"Of course you do."

He heard something in my voice, I think, because he looked up sharply.

I smiled at him, the old smile, and I put a hand on his shoulder.

"Go on up," I said. "I'll clear."

He went, and he went fast.

I stood at the table and listened to his boots on the stairs, then the bedroom door. I heard the bed take his weight.

I waited. Five minutes, ten.

No retching. No crash, no cry, no seizure.

He was lying up there with his phone, texting someone, with two bowls of lavender in his belly.

I washed the dishes slowly.

When I finished, I wiped the counter, and then I took a clean pot from the cupboard and filled it with water.

I put the rest of the stew into a jar and pushed the lid down hard.

If anyone had ever tested what he ate, I wanted the proof ready.

I went to the window above the sink and looked out at the dead square of dirt behind the house.

It had been my garden once. Thyme, rue, feverfew, rows of lavender so thick that bees followed me to the porch.

Now it was six years of hard ground, with a sagging fence.

I had stood in that same spot the day I buried the last bed.

Rhett had stood behind me and said, "Thank you. I know what this costs you."

I had cried. He had held me.

I put my palm flat on the cold glass.

My wolf stirred inside my chest, slow and heavy, for the first time that I could remember.

She had not whined in a week, and she had not slept either.

She was awake and watching, and she wanted that dirt turned over.

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