Free Drizzle by Kathleen Van Cleve Page B

don’t understand something. But really, what’s the use? Does it change anything?” She pulls me alongside her as we walk out from under the tree. “Anyway, I trust the dragonflies. You should too.”
    “But—”
    “Polly,” Beatrice says calmly. “There’s nothing you can do here.”
    She taps me on my shoulder, and I start to walk away from her. She’s probably right. But I still can’t help turning around and peeking at the mist as I leave. The good news is that by the time I reach the Learning Garden, I can’t see it at all.
    “You two are going to put out the new pesticide in the Giant Rhubarb field,” Mom tells Basford and me after I arrive. “Ophelia brought over a new one. Says it won’t harm the plants or the bugs.” Mom walks over to a yellow star lily and plucks it. Another one instantly grows back. She sticks the flower in my hair and smiles. I take it off as soon as she turns around.
    Ophelia’s new pesticide turns out to be beer. Plain old ordinary beer.
    “Ophelia says all we have to do is pour it into little saucers and leave them in between every third plant. In a week, she promises they’ll be teeming in bugs! Happy, happy bugs!” Mom smiles as I hold out my saucer for her to fill. “Start in the Giant Rhubarb field,” she directs us.
    “Mom—” I protest. She knows that I don’t especially like working in the Giant Rhubarb field, since it’s so close to the Dark House. Mom shakes her head. “You do the north side. Basford can do the south side. You’ll be fine.”
    We finish pretty quickly. When we’re done, I stop by the lake to fill up my water bottle. I want to go back and talk to Harry. I don’t invite Basford to come along with me, but I don’t tell him not to come along with me either, so we end up walking across the entire farm together. At first, we don’t talk that much. But then we walk over the iron bridge to the west side of the farm, and I see him gazing at the water. I think that maybe he’s missing his home.
    “Are you sad you left Bermuda?” I ask.
    He shrugs. “Sometimes.”
    “I’ve never lived anywhere but here,” I tell him.
    Basford keeps looking at the lake. “Who would want to leave here?”
    The answer pops into my mind so fast it surprises me. “Aunt Edith.”
    He turns, interested.
    “She lived in New York until she had to move back here after Grandmom died. She was so busy she couldn’t even come to the funeral. She was in Russia and had to take cars and planes and even a donkey to get back. She was interviewing someone really important. Like a king. Or a sheikh.” I pause, thinking. “It may have even been a terrorist.”
    This makes me think of those six days before Aunt Edith showed up, when I was going totally out of my mind because of Grandmom’s death.
    “Grandmom was totally different from any old person you’ve ever known. She had cancer but wouldn’t get treatment because she said that if she couldn’t walk around the fields, there wasn’t any use to her being alive in the first place. Then she’d say that if the plants couldn’t help her, she didn’t want to be helped.”
    Basford squints in the sunlight. We’re off the bridge now, heading over to the chocolate rhubarb.
    “Remember I told you that Dad is a rhubarb scientist? That’s because of Grandmom. She thought rhubarb could cure anything if someone could only figure out how to get its magic from the plant into the person. That’s why my father is always working in his lab, trying for some big cure. He was so sad when Grandmom died. I mean, we all were, but he was really sick about it. I think he thought that if he were a better scientist, he could have found a cure and made her better.”
    Basford doesn’t say anything, and my head is now so filled with images of Grandmom and me that I’m quiet too. We’ve almost reached Harry’s field when Basford speaks.
    “My mom,” he says softly. “She had cancer too.”
    I’m so surprised, I forget to