“God, you would think that at some point you get over the havoc that your mother wreaks on your life,” Irene said.

“You’d think,” Kaden grunted.

Addison arched an eyebrow.

“I have not wreaked havoc on your life,” Irene said.

“No,” Addison agreed. “But you still owe me this, and you know there’s no way I’m going to convince Grams on my own.”

Irene threw up her hands. “Fine,” she said. “If it means I get you and Grams talking again so we can figure out what’s happening to the garden, then I’ll make it happen.”

Chapter 25

Maura

As a child, Maura Haywood spent every summer looking forward to the first day of the Yarrow festival. Back then, it was a celebration of the summer solstice, and the Haywoods treated it accordingly. Her family would sell baskets of fresh produce: Stalks of basil to keep the evil eye at bay. A head of broccoli to heal the body. A bunch of cilantro to mend the soul. Three tomatoes for passion in the bedroom. A cucumber to keep that passion from burning a relationship to the ground. The finishing touch—one piece of fruit from the shadow garden to amplify it all. People went to the festival and came home with prosperity, protection, and good luck.

It wasn’t until that first dark-corn mash had been distilled that bourbon had slipped its way into the festival, and the Bonners claimed the day for their own. Now, Maura only made the baskets to order, and the number of orders got smaller every year. She tied a ribbon and shot a look at the cup of tea steaming on her workshop table. Her leaves hadn’t held anything good on a festival morning since the summer her son, Nolan, died.

She doubted today would be any different, but Maura was a creature of habit.

How her daughter and granddaughter had managed to talk her into a dinner with the Bonners, she would never understand. Maura trusted Sylvia Bonner as much as she trusted a vine borer moth to skip over her pumpkin patch and choose another garden altogether, which is to say she didn’t trust the woman at all.

But Maura was a woman of principles. She couldn’t just ignore the leaves.

Unless those leaves ended up contradicting her granddaughter’s.

She drained the last bit of tea and flipped the cup onto her saucer.

“Well, hell,” she murmured. She’d wanted an easy way out of dinner, not a host of bad omens.

A snake—treachery and disloyalty. Hidden danger.

A mirror facing a comet—the use of truth as a weapon.

A dragon—great and sudden changes.

And right at the bottom of the cup, a ladybug perched on a fern.

She tapped her fingertips against the wood.

“Anything interesting in your leaves this morning?”