The Scent of Apple Tea

2. Heather

Heather

2

Heather walked the pathway around the perimeter of their front yard. She wondered, idly, why they still had a quarter-acre lawn. Why hadn’t they put it to better use? A little field of lavender might look nice there. She inhaled large breaths of nature and fresh warm August air.

She enjoyed the serenity of the front. The back bustled with the frenzy of weeding and harvesting. In front were remnants of fairy houses and vignettes she and her mother had made when Heather was a child.

Thirty years.

Thirty years they’d been in this house. On this land. No wonder her mother was so attached. Though, wasn’t it funny that while her mother felt more and more cemented to this place, Heather was so ready to leave she felt like a wound up Jack-in-the-box waitingwaitingwaiting for the lid to pop. She loved her home, but adventure was serenading her, though not in a loving way. It felt more pressured—as if she were running out of time. The pea gravel crunched and rolled under her feet. She sniffed.

After her circuitous walk, Heather’s outlook improved. She sat down at her desk with a ubiquitous cup of tea and began the end-of-month accounting.

After an hour, the invoices and online banking forms blurred. She was so bored she wanted to bang her head on the computer screen.

The trouble was she just didn’t feel inspired to do that last hour of accounting work. Scotland came to mind again.

She typed Scotland into the Google search bar on her browser’s homepage. VisitScotland.com was the first link to seduce her mouse’s cursor. After only five minutes of skimming the tours under the Travel tab, she homed in on the most interesting one: the Highlands and Whiskey tour. “Authentic Scotland,” the website boasted.

A ten-night stay. A tour of a whiskey distillery and the Highlands—where her ancestors were from. The more she browsed the tourism webpage, the more excited she got. At the end of her “accounting” hour, she had downloaded three mobile apps on her iPhone, perused the “Practical Information for Travelers” section on the website, and devoured the pages on “The Highlands” and “The Kingdom of Fife.”

She refused to research the cost of the trip.

Yet.

This vacation was something she really wanted to do with her mother. Heather didn’t know why it was so important to her. It just was. Maybe it didn’t matter why. Heather’s head began to hurt and she felt a familiar and sinister morsel of fatigue edge toward her consciousness.

Startled, she hurried to the back door. She rushed through the sweet potato harvest, panic rising, and barely made it to the pantry with the potatoes before the fatigue hit.

Fatigue was too sedate of a word.

The Wave.

That’s what it was. A tsunami of exhaustion. Maybe that was what bears felt before collapsing into hibernation. Except when Heather felt the Wave, she felt scared. Afraid that somehow, if she lost consciousness, she’d never wake up.

The hot shower she’d planned for after the garden chores would need to wait. She couldn’t stand up any longer.

Heather stepped out of her shoes and stumbled to the bed. Leaving her clothes on, she fumbled with the blanket and managed to get under it, rolling to her side. She closed her eyes and surrendered to stillness. She wasn’t especially sleepy, but her body felt as if it were filled with heavy sand. Moving was not a possibility. Tears leaked out and dripped over the bridge of her nose.

This had happened before—twice—but never as fast. Heather wondered how long the Wave would last. The first time, it went on for only a day. She’d attributed it to depression. It was right after she’d broken up with Kyle, earlier in the year, and when her mother had first pushed her to take over the farm management and the retail herbal business.

The second time, the Wave lasted a whole week. She’d had the flu a few days prior, so thought it was just a particularly stubborn case that she wasn’t bouncing back from.

But now, in her bed, in the middle of the afternoon, she realized that it wasn’t depression; it wasn’t the flu. Something was not right. Normal people didn’t collapse after digging up sweet potatoes and surfing the Internet for travel plans. She sniffled and wanted to wipe her face but couldn’t.

“Heather?”

Kathryn called through the house. “Heather? Are you in here? You left the back door open.”

Heather heard footsteps and mumbling. “The flies will be terrible,” Kathryn said. “Heather?”

Kathryn walked into the bedroom. Surprise and then concern dripped from her mouth, her words. “What’s happened? What’s wrong?” She sat on the edge of the bed and adjusted the coverlet away from Heather’s face. She smoothed Heather’s hair back and wiped the tears from her face.

“What is it?” Kathryn asked quietly.

“The Waves are here, Mama,” Heather whispered.

“The waves? What are you talking about?”

“Tired.”

“You’re tired?”

Heather could hear that her mother was trying to understand.

The tired was wrong.

“Waves of tired. Like last time.” Heather forced out the phrases, breathing hard between each one. Fear crept up her spine.

Kathryn stroked her daughter’s forehead.

“Does anything hurt?” She uncovered Heather and started massaging her arm, her hand.

Heather tried to shake her head.

Kathryn rubbed Heather’s body with slow, firm, reassuring strokes, moving to her back and neck. She covered Heather with the blanket again, smoothed her hair back once more and kissed her forehead.

“Maybe it’s time to see a doctor.”

Alarm rippled through Heather and she blinked rapidly. But …

Mama was right.

At least Heather would know if something was really wrong.