Page 120 of Persephone's Curse
Henry, always above us.
“Clara, it’s so…”
But I couldn’t get the words out.
And that’s when I noticed us, the four of us, in the bottom left corner of the canvas, just our hands, peeking through the branches of the jasmine bush, one of us holding a flower, two of us holding hands, one of us wearing a dainty gold wristwatch…
The five of us, as we had always been.
Girl, girl, girl, girl, ghost.
Later, we stood in front of the jasmine bushes, just like in Clara’s new painting.
Maybe had gone home and Mom and Dad and Aunt Bea were inside, and it was just the four of us, now, just the Farthing girls, and the smell of jasmine all around us and the bones of a boy we had loved below us and a perfect, chilly blue sky above us.
A perfect, chilly blue sky with one almost imperceptible blemish.
We might have been standing in one of Persephone’s footsteps even now, in a place she had stood hundreds of years ago, in a place she had knelt down, to strike her shovel against the earth, to plant the jasmine bushes that exploded every spring, announcing her return.
I reached out to touch one of the flowers and it fell off in my hand, a tiny blessing, a tiny hello from a goddess aunt who had really thrown us all for a loop, who had blessed us all, in a way, but also cursed us all in a way, too.
“I wish I could talk to her,” Clara said, reaching out to touch theflower in my palm. “Just talk to her. I have so many questions. I have a list of questions. Should I go get it?”
“Not just yet,” Evelyn said. “Let’s enjoy this moment. Just for a little bit. It’s really been such a beautiful day.”
Clara let her hand fall and I closed my own fingers in a gentle fist around the flower.
Later, I would put it on my bedside table so I could fall asleep with the smell of jasmine, with the smell of Henry. A talisman for good dreams, I hoped.
We were all quiet now, all reading each other’s thoughts, dipping into each other’s memories, the shared knowledge of sisters that would forever connect us.
I looked around at them all and smiled and said, “How lucky are we, kids?” and Bernadette laughed, and Clara snorted, and Evelyn took my free hand.
And we were.
I knew that now.
We really, really were.
