Between the Perennial Blooms || Paul Lahote

Eighteen | Iris

"And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone."
—Madeline Miller | The Song of Achilles

• • •

To say Bailey was happy was an understatement of the highest degree. She could recall no other instance wherein she had felt as perpetually joyous as she did in that moment -wherein she felt as incandescently gay as she did at that exact period in time. For those few hours spent wandering the beach bluffs and eating her fill of French fries with Paul, all was right in the world. That is of course, until it wasn't.

Then everything seemed to fall apart all at once.

Once when Bailey was eleven, her Gran had warned her not to fall. "That ledge is too high!" She had scolded Bailey in a shrill tone that hid the underlying panic gripping her frail heart. "You'd best be sensible now, Bailey-Wren," she'd said, looking up at her from below the outcropping of rock Bailey had discovered on one of their annual three-day hikes through the rocky New Mexico terrain. "You keep those feet of yours planted right there on that ground because if you fall, you'll only get hurt." And Bailey had applied those words everywhere else they fit in life: when falling down, when falling out, when falling in love.

But as Bella stood on the edge of the La Push cliff-face with that eerie look in her eyes, all Bailey could think about was jumping. Does it still apply? She wished she could question her Gran. Will you still get hurt if you jump? She didn't much care, she realized. It didn't even matter that she couldn't swim. If Bella jumped, Bailey would jump along with her; and if Bella fell, Bailey would fall right in after her. Because all Bailey had ever wanted to do was save her sister.

Now she was just finally getting the chance to.

---

The morning had started out so wonderfully. Bailey awoke in the arms of her best friend, spent the next few hours holding hands with the boy she adored, and then returned to the Black household to watch a few episodes of BigWater Adventures with Billy. Then enter Bella -the girl who appeared in a flurry of glazed eyes and distraught features and bubbling emotions- and the once happy disposition of the day had just as suddenly transformed to one of a dark, irrefutable foreboding. Bailey's stomach coiled with unease and worry -worry for what was to come, worry that mirrored the feeling in her gut that night she had watched Jacob transform into a wolf of epic proportions. She knew something was wrong; knew something was going to happen. But she didn't know what; and by the time she would finally find out, it would already be too late. She would fall.

She would fall harder than she ever had before.

"Is Jacob here?" Bella blurted, staring Bailey down with a look in her eyes that she failed in being able to decipher. Her surprise at seeing her elder sister appear so suddenly at the Black's front door had rendered her all but speechless as it broke the calm atmosphere in the home and stole Bailey away from the blissful spell spending the morning with Paul had put her under. For a moment, all she could do was stare at Bella, but said moment proved to be a moment too long.

"Bailey!" Bella snapped, irritation and a hint of desperation evident on her twisted, alabaster features. "Is. Jacob. here?"

"N-no," Bailey stuttered, sharing a wide-eyed glance with Billy before she looked back to her sister. "He was already gone by the time I c-came back."