Love on Lavender Lane

by Karis Walsh

  Kassidy had spent more time than she wanted to admit on Paige’s website, reading her bio, which was sparse and impersonal, and the rave reviews from satisfied clients. And, possibly, staring at the photo of her. She was dressed similarly to the way she had looked when she came to the farm yesterday, minus the mud splatters. Kassidy thought she looked much better a little messy and not as put together as she did on the website.

  “Are you listening to me?”

  “What? No. I mean yes. What did you say?”

  “I asked if you told her to get the hell off your property and go back to Portland.”

  Kassidy laughed at her sister’s imperious tone. She was soft-spoken and gentle with animals, but when it came to defending Kassidy, she could get carried away.

  “I’m going to hear her out, and if I think she can help my business, I’ll let her.” Until she said it out loud, Kassidy hadn’t realized that she was leaning toward working with Paige. Not because she was beautiful and seemed ready to fill a room with laughter, but because her portfolio was impeccable.

  Kassidy nodded at herself. Right. Just go on believing that.

  Kayla visibly took a deep breath, apparently gearing up for a lecture, but Kassidy didn’t have time to hear it.

  “Look, K, our past is not her fault. I’m not going to give up on a chance to improve my business just because I’m mad at Dad for not being a better father. Now, you go and get some sleep. I’ll call you and Kyle tonight. If you don’t hear from me, then she probably bludgeoned me with a shovel and buried me in the north field. The ground is softer there. Bye.”

  She ended the call before her sister could say anything else, and then she shut off her computer and phone. When one twin called, the other was sure to follow, and Kassidy didn’t feel like being tag-teamed by them. Paige would be here soon, and she wanted to have everything ready for her visit.

  She picked up a sheaf of papers and a black marker and went to sit at the kitchen table. Kipper wound around her legs several times before settling on the chair opposite her, where Paige had sat yesterday. Kassidy tried to focus on the paperwork in front of her, but she had too many memories pressing on her, triggered by her conversation with Kayla.

  The twins saw their dad in a much different light than she did, without all the complexity and mixed emotions. To them, he had always been distant and uninvolved, even when they had visitation days at his house. He had left when they were babies, but Kassidy had been six. It wasn’t as if she had a plethora of happy memories of the three of them as a family before the twins came, but at least her dad had shouldered some of the responsibilities that her mother was usually unable to undertake. They had eaten mostly takeout and had a housekeeper do most of the regular chores, and Kassidy had been free to be an unencumbered—albeit lonely—child. And the months before her mother gave birth to the twins, she had been nearly depression-free, in what Kassidy now recognized as a false euphoria brought on by hormones. But at the time, Kassidy had only known it as the brightest time of family togetherness she had ever experienced.

  Which made her mother’s relapse after the twins were born even more difficult to bear. Kassidy had adored them and couldn’t understand why they had been the catalyst that tore her family apart when they should have banded even closer together for the new babies. Her father hadn’t been able to handle the depression, not able to comprehend the depth of the illness Kassidy’s mom was experiencing, and he had responded by leaving. Sure, they had the money he sent, but Kassidy was promoted to household manager and surrogate mother before age seven.

  She’d never regret the relationship she had with Kayla and Kyle, and she refused to let her life be ruled by bitterness toward her parents, although some days it was easier than others to rise above it all. Paige’s abrupt arrival in her life, with her connections to Kassidy’s father, made for one of those less bearable times, when too many memories clambered to the surface even though they were better off left on the sludgy bottom of her mind.

  Kassidy managed to focus enough to finish marking up the papers right before she heard Paige’s car pull up in front of her house. Really, given the fees she charged her clients, she should have been able to purchase a new car after every job instead of driving the Tercel that looked about to shudder to its death. Kassidy couldn’t remember the last year they had even been manufactured. Maybe the irrepressible Dante made buying a fancier car seem like a foolish idea.

  Kassidy tucked the papers into a cabinet drawer and went out to meet Paige, ignoring the lighthearted jump in her heartbeat at the sight of her. She was here for business purposes only, and if she didn’t impress Kassidy with her suggestions, she would be sent back to Portland. Pushed along by the twins and their cattle prods if she wouldn’t go willingly. Paige was laughing when she got out of the car, and for all Kassidy’s determination to be unaffected by her, she responded to Paige’s happiness in a completely unprofessional and trembling kind of way.

  “I know I put those back right-side up yesterday,” Paige said, shaking her head and grinning at Kassidy. “You went out and changed them, didn’t you?”

  Kassidy returned her smile and shut the front door behind her. She had gone down to the road yesterday afternoon and replanted the bushes Dante had mangled so their roots were waving in the air. The prank was uncharacteristic of her, and she had surprised herself when she actually followed through after coming up with the idea. She had known Paige would be amused by the joke, and that had been enough to convince her to do it. She’d bring the bushes in tonight and take cuttings from them since Dante’s exploits—or perhaps Paige’s attempts to fix them—had resulted in too much root damage for the plants to survive.

  “The first thing I’ll teach you today is what parts of the plant go below ground. We farmers call them roots.”

  “Very funny. We need to make sure your lavender business does well because you wouldn’t make a living as a stand-up comic.” Paige went around to the passenger side of the car and got Dante out, complete with collar and retractable leash. He promptly dragged Paige onto the porch so he could greet Kassidy.

  “He must have twenty feet of leash to play with. Will you be able to reel him in fast enough if he starts digging?”

  “Let’s hope so, but if not, I’ll buy you another present. Here’s one for yesterday.” Paige handed her a bag from Everett and Brian’s store. “I hope it’s the right kind for you. Everett described them, and I thought this sounded most like something you’d use.”

  Kassidy opened it and saw the cloudy gray-green of her favorite olive oil. “This is perfect, thank you. The bottle I used to finish the flatbread we had for lunch yesterday is almost empty.”

  They were quiet for a moment, and Kassidy desperately searched for a way to get past the warm feeling she had because of the gift and get back to seeing Paige as a business partner, or coworker, or consultant. Whatever reminded Kassidy that Paige was only here temporarily—possibly only for the day, but at most for a few weeks. Fortunately, Dante spotted a wren flitting through the garden hedge, and Paige’s attention was fully turned toward controlling him. Kassidy put the bag on the patio table and followed Paige.

  “If you can manage to wrangle him in this direction, we can start with the drying shed,” Kassidy said, gesturing down the gravel path toward a large yellow barn. Once they were walking, Dante settled down and stayed between the rows. The lavender plants came up to the very edge of the trails, filling most of the available acreage on this part of the farm.

  “Do you need to have this much space between rows?” Paige asked, stopping to look at the field to her left, spreading behind the house and up the gentle hill.

  “Yes. The plants need room between them for drainage and room to grow. If they’re overcrowded, they might be stunted or develop a fungus.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Was your amazing piece of advice going to be to move all the plants closer together? Because it wouldn’t be good for the plants and certainly wouldn’t be time or cost effect
ive for me.”

  “Yeesh. Do you really think I’m going to suggest you uproot your entire crop and move it a few inches to the right? I have to ask a lot of questions, and some of them might seem basic or intuitive to you, but just answer and let me do my job.”

  Kassidy looked at Paige, who had her hands on her hips. If she was trying to look stern, however, the effect was ruined by the way she was swaying back and forth as Dante tugged on his leash. Kassidy uncrossed her arms.

  “We look like we’re about to brawl in the lavender fields.”

  Paige grinned and relaxed her stance, as well. “I had my share of mucking about in your fields yesterday. Once we’re done with the initial observations, I’m hoping to do the rest of my consulting from a distance, as far away from the dirt as I can get.”

  “Not too far away, I hope,” Kassidy said before she could stop the words. She cleared her throat and searched for a way to change the tone of what she had just said. “I mean, this isn’t some big, impersonal corporation that you can study online.”

  Paige’s grin widened. “So you’re saying you want me to take a more personal, hands-on approach to this job?”

  “No hands required,” Kassidy said, holding up her own as if to ward off Paige’s advances, even though she hadn’t moved. “And no flirting.”

  “Oh, I thought you were the one flirting with me when you begged me not to leave.”

  “That’s not what I…” Kassidy stopped. She seemed to have lost this round and she decided to give up and change the subject. The thought of consulting with Paige via email—or not at all—should have been a welcome one, but she had a feeling Paige’s humor would be stripped away if she had a chance to censor herself in professional emails.

  Kassidy gestured for them to move forward again, even as her mind moved backward to recapture the thread of their conversation before her uncomfortable comment about Paige going away. What had Paige been saying? Something about asking stupid questions? “I’ll try to answer your questions without sarcasm, no matter how inane they sound. I wouldn’t want to impede the artiste’s process.”

  Paige bumped Kassidy with her shoulder as they walked. “I’m certainly not an artist, nor am I the prima donna in this relationship.” She waggled her finger between herself and Kassidy. “Now what’s the black stuff between the rows? Do you keep the baby plants under it?”

  Kassidy glanced at Paige but couldn’t tell if she was joking or not. She decided to assume Paige had never stepped foot off the city pavement before and truly had no idea what happened on a farm.

  “It’s landscape fabric. A weed barrier, so I don’t have to mow or pull weeds between rows.”

  “Is it expensive?”

  Kassidy hesitated, ready to flail her arms in the air and tell Paige she would be crazy to suggest Kassidy cut corners by not using the fabric. With no small effort, she kept her voice and her hands calm. “Yes, especially for the good stuff. The cheaper barriers are thin and let quite a few weeds grow through. But I save significant time by not having to do much upkeep to those areas. Plus, it’s easier to harvest and care for the plants when the rows are clean and accessible.”

  Paige nodded. “See? That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

  “It was torture,” Kassidy said, opening the door to the drying shed. Her first instinct was to shut Paige down at every hint of advice, before she could intrude on Kassidy’s territory and try to change her methods, and Paige must have seen the struggle she had gone through before answering the question civilly. At least the antagonism she felt when defending her farm’s practices made the thought of a long-distance consulting arrangement seem more palatable. “I’m going to have an ulcer by the time we’re through with this tour.”

  She walked through the nearly empty room, letting the lingering scent of lavender—intensified in the enclosed space—soothe her. Most of the shed was crossed by low beams where she hung bundles of lavender and let them dry. She had sold most of the stock the year before but still had quite a few bundles left on the wooden tables. She had been experimenting with crafts, and she watched Paige wander around the room, poking at lavender wreaths and wall hangings.

  Paige held up a cylindrical collection of lavender stems, interspersed with only an occasional brilliant blue flower and tied with a raffia bow.

  “This is pretty,” Paige said, rolling her eyes as if Kassidy needed help interpreting her sarcastic tone. “Did the rest of it die?”

  Kassidy laughed. It did resemble a pile of leftover sticks. “You use it as kindling. The smell is lovely, especially when exposed to the heat of a fire.”

  Paige sniffed at it and nodded, silently agreeing with Kassidy. Most of the other craft projects were self-explanatory, and Paige looked through them without comment. Kassidy was torn between interrupting her perusal to ask her what opinions she was forming about Kassidy and her business, and remaining silent while she took pleasure in watching Paige explore. Kassidy chose silence, even though she was supposed to be picking Paige’s brain professionally today, not standing there feeling squirmy inside at the sight of Paige’s graceful fingers as they brushed over a frond of lavender or her intense hazel eyes that seemed to notice everything.

  Like now, when Paige looked at her and noticed her staring. She felt her cheeks flush and hastily turned back to the lavender.

  “I don’t sell these finished products, but I was experimenting with different drying techniques and cultivars. I started out with only a quarter acre of the varieties I used for these crafts last year and doubled it this year. I sell the dried bundles to florists and a local hobby shop.”

  “Did the sales go well?”

  Kassidy nodded. “The market is limited around here, but I sold what I had. The crafts are labor-intensive, but the drying process is simple.”

  Paige came over and handed Dante’s leash to Kassidy. “I need to write,” she said, with a distracted inflection in her voice. As soon as Kassidy had control of Dante, Paige produced a small notebook from her pocket and began writing furiously, stopping now and again to stare into space before starting again. Kassidy didn’t think she had given Paige enough information to produce such copious notes. Maybe they weren’t all about the farm, and Paige was writing a shopping list or short story.

  Or a novel. Eventually, though, Paige waved in her direction. “You said something about cultivars. Different kinds of lavender? Explain it to me.”

  “Oh, um, okay.” Kassidy took a moment to collect her thoughts because she had been transfixed watching Paige work. Kassidy had expected her to be detached and cool, looking at the farm and then barking out some glaringly obvious suggestions. Paige seemed to be absorbing the passion of the place, somehow, until she seemed to be the one who was obsessed with lavender, and Kassidy was a bystander.

  “I grow about fifty varieties of lavender on the farm. Most of them are Lavandula angustifolia varieties because they grow well in the microclimate of this farm and they have a nice sweetness to them. They’re good for perfumes, cooking, fresh arrangements, and crafts. I sell most of the harvest to perfume manufacturers, and they distill the oil. I also have some varieties that have a stronger scent, with hints of camphor. Those are good for hair-care products, soaps, that sort of thing. I distill them on my own, but only on a small scale, and I sell the oils to locals who make those types of products.”

  Kassidy’s lecture came to a halt. She was mesmerized by the transformation in Paige as she absorbed the information and it flowed onto the notepaper. Kassidy edged closer and tried to look at the notes, but the writing was too sloppy for her to decipher.

  Paige circled her hand in the air, gesturing for Kassidy to continue. “What’s different about these new crafty plants?”

  “Some types of lavender are great for drying because they hold their color well and have interesting shapes. The new ones I added aren’t great producers of essential oils, but they’re beautiful in fresh and dried arrangements.”

  Paige stopped writing abruptly and
looked at Kassidy with a sheepish smile that couldn’t quite hide the thrill of learning something new she had talked about during their lunch the day before. “If I’d thought about it at all before I came here, which I never did, I would have thought there was only one kind of lavender. I can see the hints of different colors in your fields, but I didn’t realize the varieties had different qualities.”

  “There are almost five hundred varieties,” Kassidy said, wrestling Dante toward the back door of the shed and away from the half-empty bag of potting soil he had discovered in the corner. “Angustifolias, lavandins, stoechas. Some are generalists, and some are specialists, just like people.”

  “And it’s up to the lavender keeper to find the perfect use for each one.”

  Kassidy grinned. She wasn’t sure how Paige had discovered her nickname, but she liked hearing it from Paige’s mouth. She made a determined effort to get her attention off whatever else Paige’s mouth might be able to do to her and opened the door, getting back to her tour.

  Chapter Seven

  Paige trailed after Kassidy as they covered the eight acres of Lavender Lane Farm. Dante trotted obediently at Kassidy’s heels—the traitor—while Paige filled the pages of her notebook with ideas for the farm, topics she wanted to research later, and phonetically transcribed names of the many cultivars. Kassidy knew each one, of course, pointing at barely flowering bushes and rattling off Latin names, countries of origin, and uses for the plant without hesitating or needing to consult some sort of farm schematic.

  The day had started as a series of general impressions for Paige. The spring morning was reasonably warm, but the clouds had been slowly drifting in from the north and looked as if they might bring rain later on. Paige had worn regular weekend clothes instead of her typical business outfit, since she didn’t need to spend her entire consulting fee on dry cleaning when most of what she was doing here consisted of mucking around the farm. After the first hour, she was glad to have on the thick Reed College hoodie and sturdy hiking boots. The paths were exposed to the wind on the slopes of the farm, and even though they were well-maintained and reasonably flat, Paige noticed the effects of the steady inclines and declines in her thighs as they moved from field to field.