Perfect Strangers

He doesn’t say it because he just realized Maria and I are within earshot. He freezes in guilt, but the word still hangs there in the air.

He tiptoes down the hall toward the master bedroom, closing the door quietly behind him.

Maria glares in the direction he went. “If you want, Maria will smother him in his sleep with a pillow.” She looks back at me, her eyes blazing hellfire. “He is very puny. It won’t be much trouble at all.”

God, I love this woman.

But I don’t want her getting arrested for homicide, so, very deliberately, I blink twice.

She sighs. “Psh. Anyway, Maria is also very proud of you for your accomplishment.” She pats my arm. “Next you will write a murder mystery about a paralyzed woman who uses mind control to convince her caregiver to bludgeon her worthless philandering husband to death, eh? Yes. This will be another bestseller.”

She turns to leave, but turns back. “Oh—Maria bought something for you today at the nursery. You’re always looking at that poster, so hopefully you’ll like it. It’s in the car.” She heads out the front door, leaving the phone on the kitchen counter.

The poster in question is the one of the lavender fields of Provence that Kelly brought to my room in the psych ward. I took it home with me and made her put it up where I could look at it every day. It’s taped to the wall across from my hospital bed. The long purple rows of lavender glimmer mysteriously in the gathering gloom.

“There exists a field, beyond all notions of right and wrong. I will meet you there.”

I’ve remembered those words so many times. Remembered the tender look in James’s eyes when he spoke them, remembered the sound of his voice, so rich and full of love.

But until this moment, I’ve never thought of the words as a clue.

“There exists a field, beyond all notions of right and wrong. I will meet you there.”

I will meet you there.

I will meet you…there.

In the lavender fields of Provence.

I know it’s not a malfunction of my ventilator that’s suddenly making it difficult to breathe.

Maria returns from outside with a large bundle in her arms. She kicks the front door closed with her foot then marches to my bedside with a wide grin on her face. “Tada! A lavender bush. What do you think of that?”

It’s a large plant with a profusion of showy purple buds, their stems long and silvery, the plastic container wrapped in hideous neon green cellophane. The unmistakable scent of lavender envelops me in the most beautiful, sensual cloud.

I close my eyes and let the delicate aroma fill my lungs, my heart bursting with joy because it knows, oh it knows that finally finally finally the waiting is over.

“There exists a field, beyond all notions of right and wrong. I will meet you there.”

I’ve been looking in all the wrong places. I’ve been searching for a trigger, when what I should’ve been trying to find is a much simpler thing.

The only thing that can open a locked door.

A key.

Scent is the key that unlocks our deepest memories. A single whiff of a certain perfume or freshly baked bread or even the type of mold that grew in the basement in our childhood home can transport us through time and space so we return there, to the secret place in our memory, inaccessible except through the magic of smell.

Sweet, dusky, and distinct, the fragrance of the lavender buds overwhelms me.

My nerve endings tingle. My blood rushes hot through my veins.

“There exists a field, beyond all notions of right and wrong. I will meet you there.”

Maria places the bush on the table beside my bed, admires the extravagance of the flowers for a moment, their petals arranged in perfect spirals along the thin bud, then props her hands on her hips.

“Almost as good as edelweiss.” Smiling, she turns to look at me. “Do you like it?”

I blink, once, long and slow.

“Good,” she says, drawing the bedsheets up my thin chest. “Now I will get my dinner, and then I’ll finish reading you that book Kelly left. I love that author, what’s his name? Nicholas Parks. Barks? Yes, he’s a very romantical writer. My favorite is the one where the old lady has Alzheimer’s, the husband reads to her the story of their life, and then they die together on her bed in the old folks’ home. Ah, my heart!”

She clutches her ample bosom, sighs dramatically, then waves a hand at her own silliness. “Too bad these things don’t happen in real life.”

I wish I had a voice, because I’d tell her Oh, but they do, Maria. They absolutely do.

Out in the yard in the glimmering rain, beneath the spreading branches of the mulberry tree, James stands waiting.

He’s smiling. Even through the gentle evening mist, I see how brightly his eyes burn for me. That beautiful, blazing true blue.

Maria bustles off to the kitchen to start her dinner. I hear the hum of the microwave, the gentle drum of the rain on the roof.

My gaze locked with James’s, I rise from the bed.

I walk to the patio doors, slide them open, and step outside. The cement is rough and cool under my bare feet. The fragrant evening air clings to my skin and hair. The edges of my gown drag over the wet grass as I walk, the beads of moisture gathering into a circle of deep blue at the hem, a blue darker than the fabric itself.

I stop an arm’s reach from James and gaze at him in love and wonder. Raindrops crown his dark hair, sprinkle his wide shoulders, slide in leisurely paths down the gorgeous planes of his bare chest.

I say drily, “I should’ve known you wouldn’t be wearing a shirt.”