Chapter 4: The Language of Wilting
The late afternoon sun slanted across the fields, casting long, distorted shadows from the brittle lavender stalks. Elena walked slowly, deliberately, along the edge of a row, Liam's words echoing in her mind. *"Learn. Walk the fields. Really look."* It felt like trying to decipher a foreign, tragic text.
At first, all she saw was grey. Grey stems, grey flower heads, grey earth cracked like ancient pottery. The sheer scale of the loss was numbing. Acres of her mother's passion, her life's work, reduced to this desiccated memorial. The precious water from Old Bessie snaked sluggishly through the main ditch nearby, barely dampening the edges of the nearest rows. It felt like offering a thimble of water to a desert.
She stopped, forcing herself to kneel despite the protest of her stiff jeans. Ignoring the dust, she reached out, her fingers hovering over a particularly shriveled plant. *"Look for signs of life,"* Liam had said. Up close, the grey was more nuanced – tinged with brown, almost black in places. The stems weren't just dry; they felt hollow, brittle, snapping easily when she applied the slightest pressure. Dead. Undeniably dead. A wave of despair threatened, but she pushed it down, gritting her teeth. *Learn.*
She moved to the next plant. Similar, but… different. The stems weren't *quite* as brittle. She gently pushed aside the shriveled flower head. Deep within the woody base, tucked near the soil, was the faintest hint of green. Not vibrant, not healthy, but *there*. A sliver of life clinging on in the core. Hope, fragile as a spider's web.
"See it?"
Elena started, looking up. Liam stood a few feet away, his silhouette dark against the lowering sun. He hadn't made a sound. He nodded towards the plant she was examining.
"The green at the crown," she said, pointing. "It's still alive? Underneath?"
He crouched beside her, close enough that she caught the scent of sun-warmed cotton, earth, and a faint tang of machine oil. He didn't touch the plant, just studied it with his quiet intensity. "Yeah. Barely. The roots might still have some juice if the water gets deep enough fast enough. This heat bakes the surface roots first. It's the deep taproots that hold the real reserves." His finger traced an invisible line down towards the soil. "That little green bit? That's the plant's last stand. If that goes brown…" He didn't finish, but the implication was clear. Death.
He stood, gesturing for her to follow. They walked deeper into the field, away from the immediate reach of the irrigation ditch. The air felt hotter, drier here, the silence more profound. The lavender here was uniformly worse – shorter, greyer, more skeletal.
"This slope," Liam explained, his voice low, "faces west. Catches the full brunt of the afternoon sun. Dries out fastest. Soil's shallower here too, rockier underneath. Sarah always said this patch was temperamental." He stopped beside a row that looked particularly devastated. The plants were smaller, the grey tinged with an unhealthy-looking yellow-brown. "Hidcote," he said, almost to himself.
Elena's breath caught. *Hidcote.* The name from the invoice. Dr. Evans. $1,500. She knelt again, her heart pounding. These plants weren't just drought-stricken; they looked… sick. The stems weren't just brittle; they seemed almost twisted, stunted. The few remaining leaves, shriveled and brown, had odd, dark speckles she hadn't noticed on the other plants. And the smell… beneath the dry dust scent, there was a faint, unpleasant sourness, like something rotting beneath the surface.
"Liam," she said, her voice tight. "Look at these. They're different. Worse."
He crouched beside her, his expression shifting from observation to sharp concern. He carefully lifted a brittle stem. It snapped off easily, revealing the inside. Instead of the pale, woody core she'd seen earlier, or the faint green of life, this was discolored – a streaky, dark brown, almost black in the center. He rubbed the crumbled material between his fingers, sniffed it cautiously, and grimaced.
"Root rot," he muttered, dropping the fragment. "Or something like it. Bad." He examined the base of another plant, scraping gently at the soil with his thumbnail. The earth fell away, revealing roots that weren't the healthy white or light brown she might have expected, but a slimy, dark mess. "Not just drought killing these." He looked up at Elena, his earth-brown eyes serious. "This is disease. Phytophthora, maybe. Nasty stuff. Spreads through the soil, through water."
The implications slammed into Elena. This wasn't just nature being cruel. This was an attack. An invisible enemy in the very ground her mother loved. *Diagnostic testing*. Dr. Evans. Had her mother known? Suspected?
"Can it be stopped?" Elena asked, her voice barely a whisper, staring at the blackened root fragment.
Liam sighed, a heavy sound. "Hard. Very hard. You have to remove infected plants, try to sterilize the soil around them… prevent it spreading. But with the fields this stressed from drought…" He shook his head, a gesture of profound discouragement. "It's like trying to put out a fire with the wind blowing harder." He stood, surveying the patch of sickly Hidcote with a grim expression. "Sarah was worried about this section specifically, last fall. Said the Hidcote wasn't thriving like usual. Guess she was right to be."
The confirmation felt like a physical blow. Her mother *had* known. She'd sought help. Dr. Evans. And she'd died before she could pay the invoice, before she could fight this new battle. The weight of the unpaid bill felt trivial compared to the devastation spreading through the soil.
Elena stood, brushing dirt from her knees, her gaze fixed on the blighted plants. The despair was still there, a cold knot in her stomach, but it was being overtaken by something else – a fierce, protective anger. This wasn't just drought. This was theft. Theft of her mother's legacy, her struggle. Someone had tried to help. Dr. Evans.
"We need to know," she said, her voice stronger now, edged with steel. She looked at Liam. "Exactly what this is. How far it's spread. What we can do."
Liam met her gaze, a flicker of surprise, then respect, in his eyes. "We do. But it'll cost. Lab tests. Treatments, if any exist that work fast enough…"
"I found an invoice," Elena confessed, the words tumbling out. "From a Dr. Alistair Evans. For consultation and diagnostic testing on the Hidcote. Dated just before… before she passed. It was unpaid."
Understanding dawned on Liam's face. "Evans. Yeah. He's a plant pathologist. Good one, from what I hear. Based over in Helena. Expensive, but sharp." He rubbed his jaw, thinking. "Sarah must have been desperate to call him in. She hated spending on anything but seeds and feed."
"She knew," Elena whispered, looking back at the diseased plants. "She was fighting this too. Alone." The image of her vibrant mother, facing not just drought but this insidious rot, battling silently while Elena was oblivious in Chicago, was almost too much to bear. But it also ignited a fierce resolve. She wouldn't let her mother's fight be in vain.
"Can you…" Elena hesitated, then plunged on. "Can you help me figure out where this disease is? How bad it is? Before I call Dr. Evans? I need to understand what I'm asking him."
Liam studied her for a long moment, the dying light catching the planes of his face. The quiet competence was back, mixed with a new determination that mirrored her own. He nodded once, decisively. "We start tomorrow at first light. Before the sun bakes everything. We'll mark the infected plants, dig up a few samples carefully, see how far it's reached." He gestured towards the farmhouse, its windows now reflecting the fiery hues of sunset. "Get some rest, Elena. Eat. This…" He looked back at the blighted Hidcote, his expression grim. "This is going to be a long fight. Harder than Old Bessie."
He turned and began walking back towards the barn, his stride purposeful. Elena stood alone in the fading light, surrounded by the whispering grey sea of lavender. The scent of dust and impending rain was heavy in the air. Below her feet, unseen, an enemy moved through the soil. But she wasn't alone anymore. She had Liam's knowledge, his steady presence. And she had the name of her mother's ally: Dr. Alistair Evans.
The lavender fields were dying, yes. But as the first cool breath of evening touched her skin, carrying the distant scent of the healthy plants near the ditch, Elena Hayes squared her shoulders. She finally understood the true depth of her inheritance. It wasn't just land and debt. It was her mother's unfinished battle. And she was ready to take up the fight.