Daisies for Innocence Read Online Free PDF Page A

dinner of chicken salad and blueberries, I retired to the back porch with a glass of hard cider and my laptop. I placed orders for bulk supplies of sea salt, goat’s milk powder, and eight ounces each of sandalwood and ginger essential oils.
    Then I put the technology aside in favor of the burgeoning sunset, settling deeper into the porch swing with a light blanket across my lap and Dash keeping watch by my feet. Fuchsia and purple bruised the clouds above, and as they faded to the monochromatic slate blue of dusk, a six-point buck stepped out from a stand of trees three hundred feet away. He stood there alone, sans his usual harem of does, staring at me as if I were something for a deer to stare at. I met the velvet brown gaze for the longest time, it seemed.
    Elliana
sighed the wind through the trees.
Elliana,
the breeze-ruffled grass called.
    Not really, of course. Because that would be silly, thinking the wind was calling my name. But even after I’d gone inside a little after nine, I couldn’t shake the feeling that it had.
    I retrieved Gamma’s garden journal from one of the shelves tucked under the staircase. It was larger than what most people would think of a journal as being, thick, with well-worn pages beginning to fray at the corners. I sank onto the love seat and slowly flipped through the book, drinking in the comfort it always provided. She’d made notations in blocks and swirls and geometric shapes,tucked in bits of poems and flower lore, obscure recipes, suggestions for cultivation, and preferred habitats. Here was a drawing of a tiny golden-crowned kinglet, there the starburst of a thistle, and throughout it all, insects and butterflies. I paused at a whole page dripping with precise renderings of ladybugs.
    Elliana, do you see them gathering on the fence as the thunderheads rear up above? Soon there will be thousands. We have been blessed with sheltering a loveliness of ladybugs from the storm.
    Her voice faded from memory, and I ran my finger lightly over the words she’d written around the margins of another page:
    Hyacinth for jealousy.
    Ivy for fidelity.
    Larkspur for fickleness.
    Nasturtium for victory in battle.
    The language of flowers, around for thousands of years and spanning every continent, but reinvigorated in Victorian times. Gamma had been an expert and had passed her love of this unique horticultural dialect on to me. With a sigh, I closed the worn and dirt-stained volume.
    Despite the pleasant afternoon and evening, I felt slightly jittery and distracted. My thoughts kept returning to Josie’s revelation that she was dating Harris. I didn’t pine for him, that was certain, but I couldn’t help wondering if things might still become awkward at the shop. And more important, I couldn’t help wondering if my ex would break her heart. Josie was good people, and a veryindependent woman. I didn’t think of her as particularly naive, either.
    I didn’t take sleeping pills, but I had the ingredients for a relaxing tea. In my narrow kitchen, I mixed dried valerian root with chamomile flowers and peppermint leaf I’d grown and dried the previous summer. I drank the brew as I stood over the kitchen sink, rinsed out the cup, and followed Dash up the carpeted staircase that wound to my sleeping loft.
    Forty minutes later, I was still wide awake. I sat up. On the bed beside me, Dash came to his feet, eagerly watching to see what I had in mind.
    “How about a walk?”
    He woofed and jumped to the floor. I dressed in jeans, trail runners, and a warm hoody. I grabbed a flashlight, and a few minutes later we stepped off the back porch and headed for the path that led along the edge of Raven Creek and the nearby park. The moon was nearing full, and I found I could see perfectly well without added light. Dash kept to my left heel, as well trained as any show dog. Once in the park, we fast-walked a loop on the quarter-mile fitness trail and headed back.
    “If this doesn’t work I see a long night