Lovelock's Arc

Chapter 2 of 13

Lovelock parks outside the greenhouse in Prescott at eight in the morning. The windows are fogged with moisture. She opens the door and warm air hits her face, smelling like soil and green stems. A woman in coveralls looks up from a row of seedlings. Lovelock explains what she needs—cultivated roses with petals that hold deep pink color when dried. The woman nods and leads her past tables of herbs to a corner where pink blooms climb wooden stakes. She cuts three stems and hands them over. "Test these," she says. "If they work, I'll sell you a standing order." Lovelock asks about price and timing. The woman crosses her arms. "One condition. You stop using wild plants entirely. I don't supply people who strip the desert and then come here when it runs out." She points to a pink barrel sitting on a wooden table near the door, white fabric draped across it and a basket of fresh petals beside it. "That's my setup. Clean cultivation only. You want reliability, you commit to doing it right." Lovelock holds the stems and thinks about the wild roses behind her workshop, the ones that taught her this color in the first place. But they're dying, and the Sedona orders won't wait. She looks at the barrel, at the neat rows of cultivated plants, at the woman watching her with steady eyes. "Deal," she says. The woman writes down her number and tells her to call after she tests the petals. Lovelock walks back to her truck with the roses wrapped in damp paper. She's traded one source for another, but she's also traded a piece of how she learned to see color. The rope that snapped was wild. The new one she's braiding is controlled, bought, dependent on someone else's terms. She starts the engine and drives back toward Skull Valley, knowing the farm market she's building just got one step closer and one shade different from what she imagined.