The doorbell’s chime was a discordant note in the warm symphony of the kitchen. My mother paused, her knife hovering over a mound of finely shredded ginger. “Ah? Who is coming now?”
A cold, intuitive dread tightened in my stomach. I moved into the hallway just as she opened the door.
A delivery man stood there, holding a colossal crystal vase. It was an ostentatious explosion of flowers: stiff, funereal white lilies, waxy gardenias, and in the center, a dozen lush, deep crimson peonies. My heart lurched violently. Peonies. My allergy. A fact Evan had either forgotten or, more likely, remembered with cruel, precise intent.
“For Maya Chen,” the delivery man announced, his tone bored.
My mother’s cheerful expression from the kitchen vanished. She accepted the heavy vase, her small frame t
