Summer Light: A Novel by Luanne Rice Page B

her things for a long time to come. Walking beside her, he wondered whether she could read his mind. Maybe clairvoyance—or whatever she wanted to call it—ran in her family.
    “Here are our off-season roses,” May said, standing among the pots. “We have a beautiful garden outside, but it doesn’t bloom till June. My grandmother was a great gardener. She experimented with different varieties, and we all have our favorites.” Crouching down, she took shears and snipped off a very full and perfect bud.
    “ ‘We all’?” Martin asked.
    “My grandmother, mother, great-aunt, Kylie, and I.”
    “Whose favorite is that one?”
    “Kylie’s,” May said.
    He nodded, but she wasn’t looking. He watched her peel the petals from the rose one by one. She laid them on a rough wood table, and then she took two small silver trays from a pile on a high shelf. Uncorking a blue bottle, she poured a small amount of oil onto one tray. Martin smelled the oil, and it made him think of being lost in a deep forest. It reminded him of being a child, of hiking dense mountain trails, of mulched leaves, new grass, life, and death. The bones around his eye sockets ached and the arthritis in his ankle throbbed, and he could hear May breathing.
    She worked in the dark, in the purple glow of the grow-lights and the sparkle of starlight coming through the glass hothouse roof. He took a step closer, standing nearer to her body, but she gave a sharp look over her shoulder.
    “Pardon,” he said.
    “I have to concentrate,” she said. “I want my hands to be steady.”
    Using an instrument that looked like ivory forceps, May lifted each rose petal, carefully rolled it in the oil, then set it on the second silver tray to dry. Martin’s mother was a good photographer, and watching May reminded Martin of the darkroom, how his mother would use tongs to move the negatives from the vat to the drying rack.
    A clock chimed ten, and Martin checked his watch: In nine hours, he would be on a plane to Edmonton. The Porsche would get him to Boston in less than two hours, but he should already be home, if not in bed then watching training tapes of the Oilers. What was he doing in this woman’s greenhouse, watching her dip rose petals in oil? What did any of this have to do with hockey, with the Stanley Cup?
    “What do they do?” he asked. “You said you give them to people for luck. How do they work?”
    “They just do,” she said, continuing the ritual.
    “It’s late,” he said, feeling increasingly nervous, wondering what he’d gotten himself into. “I believe they work, they did already, but—”
    “But how?” she asked.
    “Yes. That’s what I want to know. I should get going. I have a plane to catch—”
    May opened a creaky drawer and removed a small leather pouch. In it she inserted the white rose petals, along with a small ball of fur, claws, and a tiny backbone. “Owl throw-up,” she said, grinning as she used his phrase.
    “Merci.” His heart was racing, as if he were already late.
    “How it works…” she said. “Well, it’s simple. My grandmother grew this rose, I picked it, and it’s Kylie’s favorite. The owl pellet is to remind you that life is very short, that you must shoot for the stars every chance you get. The leather pouch is…more masculine than lace. So the guys won’t laugh at you.” She smiled, and Martin tried to laugh.
    They stood close together, the grow-lights under the tables casting shadows upward into their faces. Martin’s heart was pounding, and he forgot about the roses, the greenhouse, tomorrow’s game, the guys on his team. He took May into his arms, and kissed her hard. He saw stars as he held her body close, feeling her respond as she kissed him back.
    “What were you saying?” he asked after a long time, when she stood holding him tight and gazing up with eyes that made him feel he was melting at his core. He felt like a teenager, someone who hadn’t kissed a thousand women, who had