The Language of Flowers

Twenty-five years alone, and Grant had reconnected with Elizabeth. Stunned, I’d driven immediately to the flower farm, ditching my car on the road and—having long before thrown away the key—climbing over Grant’s locked gate. But instead of knocking on the water tower’s door, I’d retreated into the rose garden. My daughter’s shy smile played behind my eyelids; her joy, swirling like the soapy water in the basin, filled me. She was with Elizabeth, and she was happy. The ease of their interaction made me think her home was permanently on the vineyard, and the thought caused me to feel Grant’s loneliness as acutely as I’d experienced my daughter’s joy.

An hour passed. Still swooning from the unexpected glimpse of my baby girl, I heard Grant’s boots approach from behind me. My heart echoed as it had in the flower market the first time we met, and I pulled my knees to my chest as if to muffle the sound. Grant lined his boots up with my own and sat down next to me, his shoulders touching mine. He tucked something behind my ear, and I withdrew it. A white rose. I held it up to the sun, and its shadow fell upon us. We sat in silence for a long time.

Finally, I slid away and turned to him. It had been more than a year since I’d seen Grant, and he seemed to have aged more than the time should have allowed. Thin lines etched across his serious brow, but his strong soil scent was as I remembered. I inched myself back until our shoulders touched again.

“What’s she like?” I asked.

“Beautiful,” he said. His voice was quiet, thoughtful. “Shy at first, usually. But when she’s ready, when she reaches for you and holds both your ears with her fat little hands, there’s nothing like it in the world.” He paused for a moment, pulling a petal from the rose I held and holding it to his lips. “She loves flowers, too, picks them, smells them, will eat them if you don’t watch her closely enough.”

“Really?” I asked. “Loves them like we do?”

Grant nodded. “You should see the way she smiles when I rattle off the names of the orchids in the greenhouse: oncidium, dendrobium, bulbophyllum, and epidendrum, tickling her face with each blossom. I wouldn’t be surprised if ‘Orchidaceae’ was her first word.”

I pictured her round face, cheeks flushed from the heat of the greenhouse, pressed into Grant’s chest to avoid the tickling flowers.

“I’m trying to teach her the science behind the plants, too,” Grant said. The smile that stretched his lips was full of memory. “But so far it’s not going so well. She falls asleep when I start to ramble on about the history of the Betulaceae family or the way moss grows without roots.”

Moss grows without roots. His words took my breath away. Throughout a lifetime studying the biology of plants, this simple fact had eluded me, and it seemed now to be the one fact I needed, desperately, to have known.

“What’s her name?” I asked.

“Hazel.” Reconciliation. Grant pulled at a stubborn root of crabgrass, avoiding my eyes. “I thought, someday, she’d bring you back to me.”

She had, in this moment, brought us back together. The root of the crabgrass popped loose. Grant followed the dry shoot to the point of its next engagement with the earth.

“Are you mad?” I asked.

Grant didn’t answer for a long time. Another root broke free, and he pulled up the entire plant, twisting the long strand of grass around his thick index finger. “I should be.”

He was quiet again, looking out over his property. “I’ve rehearsed my anger a hundred times since discovering Hazel. You deserve to hear me out.”

“I know I do,” I said. “Go ahead.” I looked at him, but he didn’t meet my gaze. He would not deliver the words he’d practiced. Though he had every right to be, he wasn’t angry, and didn’t want to make me suffer. It wasn’t in him.

After a time, Grant shook his head, exhaling. “You did what you had to do,” he said. “And I did what I had to do.”

I understood his words to mean that I was right when I’d guessed my daughter lived on the vineyard; Grant had given her to Elizabeth.

“Dinner?” Grant asked suddenly, turning back to me.

“Are you cooking?” I asked.

He nodded, and I stood up.

I started toward the water tower, but Grant took my hand and led me to the front porch of the main house. I let him guide me, noticing for the first time that the house had been repainted and the windows replaced.

The dining room table was set, the long, polished wood exposed except for two placemats on one end, folded cloth napkins, polished silver, and thin white china plates with indistinguishable blue flowers ringing the edge. I sat down, and Grant poured water into a crystal glass from a pitcher before disappearing through the swinging door that led to the kitchen. He came back with a whole roasted chicken on a silver platter.

“You cook this much for yourself?” I asked.

“Sometimes,” he said. “When I can’t get you out of my head. But today I cooked it for you. When I saw you jump the fence, I turned on the oven.”