Free All You Need Is Love by Emily Franklin

she’s thoughtful and careful about her words.
    “Of course I am, why?” I furrow my brow and try to block the sun by using my hand like a visor.
    “I don’t mean it as an insult,” Harriet qualifies.
    “No — I know. It’s just like that’s the ultimate sin or sign of prep dissention, right? Not going to college when prep school was created to prep-are you for the rigors of university life.” I take the flower out from behind my ear and absent-mindedly start plucking the petals.
    “People are afraid to stray from their life plans — maybe they think if they take a step off the path they won’t find their way back, you know?”
    I pause, considering what she said. “You’re a smart person, Harriet.”
    She tilts her head, smiling. “Thanks. I’ll leave you to your wisteria wandering.”
    “Not wisteria — lily of the valley.”
    “Try five stalls back over to the left,” she says and walks away.
    I mull over what she said — not that I won’t go to college. I have every intention of enrolling and enjoying myself and learning and all that. But what about pausing — or not so much pausing since that implies stagnating — but taking a break from all the crazy pressures and classes? Maybe I would benefit from a year off, like so many people do in England. They even have a term there — year out. She’s on her year out, they’d say about me. But you can’t just sit there on your year out, you have to travel or volunteer or get a job which leads me back to what do I want to do?
    At the stall, I find just enough lilies to make a bouquet for Mable. I hold the flowers gently, like they are her bruised and cold hand, and head to the hospital.
    Mable’s whole face lights up when she sees me. “You found them! My favorites!” She takes the flowers from me and sticks them in the pink plastic water pitcher that rests on the rolling cart near her bed.
    “The last ones,” I say. Today is a special day since Mable is well enough to sit at the chair by the large window in her room. The view is the Boston skyline, and we sit admiring the sunny day, enjoying just being together until I remember my mental note. “Hey — what memory am I blanking on with lily of the valley?”
    Mable frowns. “I’m not sure,” she says.
    “Yes you are,” I say and lean across the small round table so I’m closer to her. “When I was little. There was a book or a song — way underneath useless factoids in my head I have a special attachment to these flowers. Not just because they’re your favorite.”
    Mable turns away from me and stares out the window again. I wonder if she’s wishing she were well enough to be out there or if she’s looking at a certain landmark — Fenway Park, the flashing Citgo sign — and remembering something she doesn’t want to share. “I don’t know what you mean. I can’t remember, either,” she says but her tone is one I know well. It’s the tone she uses only when I ask about my missing mother, or my parents pre-me. Early days. The mystery of it all. Usually she warns me away from these topics, but this time, I’m undeterred.
    “Mable, come on,” I say.
    “Oh, Love…” she sighs and adjusts in her seat.
    I go and crouch next to her, my hands on her knees. “Some day, I’m going to know. All of it. Or if not all of the past, then most of it.”
    “Some day isn’t now,” Mable says quietly.
    “I think it is,” I say.
    “I want to go back to my bed,” Mable says. “Call the nurse.”
    I obey her command and pull the help cord by her bed and ask for help. While Mable sits in the chair, sunlight streaming in the glass, the rays illuminate her, making her glow. I sit on her bed, staring at the watercolor of Arabella’s flat. The painting is titled “Arabella (and Love’s) Flat, February”.
    “It was a song,” Mable says finally. I don’t even look at her in case she stops talking. “White choral bells upon a slender stalk lilies of the valley deck my garden