Free The Lavender Hour by Anne Leclaire Page B

Death. There. I'd said it.
    “And that's the worst?”
    “Isn't that bad enough?”
    “I don't know.” Faye reached over and clasped my hand. “Is it worse than dying from cancer?”
    I stared at her, again wondered if Lily had broken her promise not to tell Faye about my illness. At the same time, perversely, I wished Faye did know, since I was finding it increasingly difficult to keep from her.
    “We don't get to choose our deaths, Jessie. But we can choose how to live.”
    “Okay, maybe it's totally selfish on my part, but I don't want anything to happen to her. I don't know what I'd do if she died.”
    Faye slipped her hand free from mind and reached up and adjusted the visor. “You'd go on.”
    “I don't know.” I couldn't imagine life without Lily.
    “You would,” Faye insisted. “We all do.”
    I assumed she was talking about her late husband and about all the deaths she had seen in her work with hospice, but Faye surprised me.
    “When I was a little younger than you,” she said, “I had a dog, an Irish setter named Rusty. He was the most important thing in the world to me.”
    I thought about Rocker and wondered if the Lab was the most important thing in the world to Luke.
    Faye fell silent, then took a long breath. “Sorry. Even now, after all these years, it's hard to remember.”
    “What happened?”
    “He got sick, and the vet said he had to be put down. He gave me a form to sign, and I managed to scrawl something. I didn't think I could bear to stay there in that room—I always believed I was weak that way, avoided funerals like the plague, but I didn't want Rusty with strangers. No one should have to die alone, not even a dog.”
    I thought of my daddy, slumped over the steering wheel, dead before the light changed to green, then willed my mind away. “That doesn't sound like you. The part about not being strong, I mean.”
    “Believe me, it was. Anyway, I knew I had to be there with Rusty. I had to. When I went in, he was too weak to lift his head off the table. He had just vomited, and I can still remember the horrific smell. I held him in my arms and talked to him until it was over.”
    “I couldn't have done that,” I said.
    “Yes, you could have, Jessie. We're stronger than we know. Each of us. We don't know what we're capable of until we are tested. Look at Lily. She believed she had to be the perfect wife, the ideal mother, and now she realizes she doesn't have to be perfect at all.”
    “Do you think that explains why she's let her hair go gray?”
    “Well, in all the years I've known Lily, I've never seen her without makeup. She even wore mascara when she was swimming.”
    I laughed, relieved to be off the subject of death. “It's true,” I said.
    “So she's changing and challenging herself. Can't you see what a good thing it is that she is daring to try something new?”
    “I guess,” I said. “I just wish she'd choose something less ambitious to start with than a transatlantic crossing.”
    “It sure is a bold choice, I'll say that,” Faye said.
    “Again with the understatement.”
    Faye swung the Toyota into a parking spot off the road. “Well, here we are.”
    I stared at the building we faced. You could drive right by the little stone mill and miss it entirely if you weren't paying attention. “This is it?” Faye had been building up my expectations for days. I expected something a bit more substantial.
    “Have a little respect for history,” Faye said. “This mill was built in 1873.”
    “And this is where the famous herring run is?”
    “Technically, they're alewives, not herring. But, yes, this is it. The run starts over there.” Faye pointed to the north side of the road, and before I had even unlatched my door, she was on her way. I caught up by the edge of the stream.
    T HE L AVENDER H OUR
    “It's early in the season,” Faye said, “but in a few weeks, the run will be thick with them.”
    I concentrated on the stream and, after a moment, caught