The Rose Necklace

Chapter 7

Chapter 7

"Lilly? Come help me with these baskets. My back is tired."

"Coming!" Lilly called back. Ivy stood on the stoop of her little cottage, stretching her aching back. She would need to rub salve on it tonight. It didn't help that Ivy's mind was so worried; none of her plans were working out how they were supposed to.

Lilly appeared then, shocking Ivy out of her musings. Ivy was so distracted that she almost didn't notice Lilly's expression. The girl appeared to be horribly upset, and more than a little angry.

"You'll never guess who visited today," Lilly said, her voice heavy with anger and betrayal.

"Who?" Ivy asked, though she had a feeling she knew the answer.

"Adam. After nearly seven years he finally showed up. And with the strangest story; it seems that he thinks I yelled at him to never come back, but I happen to have no recollection of the event. You wouldn't, by any chance, know anything about this, would you?" Lilly was glaring at Ivy, accusation clear in her eyes and her tone.

Ivy tried to brush Lilly off. "I was simply doing what I thought best for you. You will understand someday."

"So you gave me a potion to make me tell the boy I love to go away and never come back? How could you?"

"Calm down. It has been a long day, and I'm exhausted. The last thing I want right now is to deal with your petty accusations-"

"Oh, petty are they?"

"Yes," Ivy interjected before Lilly could continue. "Particularly when you consider the fact that I have spent my entire day looking for an herb to help you and your lilies. Perhaps what I did was wrong, but that error was made a long time ago. I've learned since then. I also didn't know that Aster had just died; I would have never done it if I had known. Forgive me, but I did what I thought best."

Lilly looked properly reproached, her training to be a proper lady finally kicking in. "I apologize as well; this was hardly the proper way to go about things. I let my anger get the better of me. Come inside and I'll make you some tea."

Lilly was the perfect lady the entire evening, helping Ivy carry her baskets inside, serving her tea with dinner, getting the proper salve for Ivy's back. All of it served to make Ivy feel even guiltier.

This was the flaw in her "perfect" plan, a flaw she had never anticipated: Ivy had come to love Lilly. She could no longer justify stealing the girl's life for her own purposes; she even felt bad about the potion that had felt so necessary seven years ago. Looking back, Ivy couldn't believe all of the horrid things she had done. At the time, she had been able to rationalize them all, but now she saw the atrocities for what they were. How could she continue to do things like this?

But how could she stop? She was so far into her plan that there was really no turning back now, not without the right potion. But she couldn't figure out what the last ingredient was! She almost had the potion correct, but it was missing something vital, and without that element, it was useless. But how does one go about bottling true love? If only Ivy knew the answer.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Lilly excused herself early that night, eager to get away from Ivy. She was still a bit mad at her, but the real reason she wanted to get away was that it was getting difficult to ignore the voice. It wouldn't shut up no matter how hard Lilly worked to shut it out. Lilly worried about what the next day, her sixteenth birthday, would bring. Both Ivy and Lilly had realized long ago that it would be the deadline, though for what Lilly never could figure out. But it worried her nonetheless, thinking about the lone lily in her once beautiful garden.