Lavender Frequencies

The rental car rattled up the gravel drive and Olivia Watkins leaned toward the windshield to read the hand-painted sign. Blue Vein Fields, it said, with a little sprig of lavender painted underneath by someone who clearly loved the plant more than painting.

Olivia Watkins was thirty-three years old, recently divorced, and had never once been to France before this week. She worked as a corporate trainer back in Ohio, which meant she spent her days teaching middle managers how to give feedback without crying, and her nights eating dinner over the sink. The trip had been Emma's idea. Emma Chalmers, thirty-four, married to Michael, had called her in March and said, "You need lavender and you need a passport stamp," and somehow that had turned into four plane tickets.

"We're not painting the guesthouse fax machine lavender," Olivia said, laughing, as they pulled into the farm drive.

Michael Samuelson, thirty-eight, owner of a small town RV repair shop back home, turned around from the passenger seat. "You say that now. You haven't seen the float plans yet."

"There's a float?"

"There's a parade. The town is a hundred and fifty years old this weekend. Emma found a forum post about it in February and built this entire trip around it."

Emma Chalmers had indeed built the entire trip around it. She was in the back seat with the rental paperwork and a printed itinerary in a folder, because that was Emma. "The festival opens tonight," she said. "Ceremony at seven, funnel cakes at seven thirty, fireworks whenever the mayor finishes talking."

In the far back seat, squeezed between two suitcases, sat Adam Dre. He was thirty-six, Black, a foley artist, which was a job Olivia had never heard of until Tuesday. He made sound effects for films. Footsteps, door creaks, punches, rain on windows. Michael had known him since Michael was twenty-two and they watched a terrible horror movie at a local film festival and argued about whether the blood sounds were realistic. They had been friends ever since.

Adam had been quiet most of the drive, watching the hills roll by. Now he leaned forward and said, "Is that the guesthouse? That's a real building. The listing photos made it look like a shed with ambitions."

"It has four bedrooms," Emma said. "I counted twice."

The farm owner, a woman named Colette who spoke careful English and laughed at everything, showed them around. The guesthouse had stone walls and a kitchen that smelled faintly of last week's bread, and a fax machine in the hallway that was older than any of them. Michael photographed the fax machine immediately.

"For the float," he explained.

"There's going to be a fax machine on a parade float."

"There's going to be an entire office on a parade float. The festival theme is 'the town through the ages.' We're doing the nineteen eighties. I already asked Colette if we can borrow a rotary phone."

Olivia decided right then that she was going to stop asking questions and just let the weekend happen to her. That was sort of the whole point of coming.

* * *

In the afternoon, before the ceremony, the four of them hiked up through the lavender rows. The rows ran up the hill in long purple stripes, and the air was warm and heavy with the smell of the plants, and bees worked the flowers without caring that people were walking past.

Adam walked beside Olivia, half a step behind, and kept stopping to touch things.

"What are you doing?" she asked, the third time he stopped.

"Listening." He had his hand flat against the wooden handle of a harvesting rake someone had left leaning against a post. "This rake, if you dragged it along that stone wall, would make a great scrape sound. Metal on stone with a little wood in it. I could use that for a sword being drawn."

"You make sword sounds with a rake?"

"Half my job is making things sound like other things. Scissors snipping is the classic one." He held up his hands. Olivia noticed them for the first time, really noticed them. Broad palms, short clean nails, a faded scar across one knuckle. "For a film two years ago, the director wanted a tailor scene. Close-up on scissors cutting fabric. But real scissors on real fabric sounds thin and cheap on a microphone. So I took a strip of denim, a pair of shears, and the skin of my own forearm."

"You cut your arm?"

"No, no. You pinch the fabric against your forearm and snip, very slow, so the blade catches the fabric right at the last second before it touches you. The skin underneath adds this softness, this little fleshy undertone. Sounds exactly like heavy wool being cut." He demonstrated the motion in the air, two fingers scissoring, and Olivia watched his hands longer than she meant to.

"That's kind of brilliant," she said. "And kind of insane."

"It's the job. Last month I spent an afternoon hitting a frozen cabbage with a mallet to get a head-in-snow sound. My neighbors think I'm unwell."

They kept walking. The rows hummed with bees. Olivia found herself drifting half a step slower so she could keep watching his hands when he gestured.

"So what brought you on this trip, honestly?" she asked. "You're the guest I knew nothing about."

"Michael invited me, technically. And I'd never seen France. And I finished a project in April and haven't started the next one, so I'm between sounds, so to speak." He glanced at her. "What about you? Emma said you were due an adventure."

Emma had said a lot of things, apparently. Olivia pushed a lavender stalk out of her path. "Emma talks too much."

"She also said you got divorced last year."

"Well. Yeah." Olivia blew out a breath. "Ten years married. Started when I was twenty-two, over by the time I was thirty-two. He's a decent man and we wanted completely different lives. It was quiet and civilized and it still knocked me flat." She kicked a pebble off the path. "Anyway. That's my baggage. You asked."

"I'm sorry. That sounds hard."

"It was hard. But I'm not made of glass. I keep telling people that and they keep handling me like I am." She looked up the hill at the purple rows. "I don't want to be the sad divorced friend on this trip. I want to feel brave. Not broken. Brave. There's a difference and I'm trying to find it."

Adam nodded slowly. "Brave, not broken. I like that."

They caught up with Emma and Michael at the top of the hill, where the whole valley opened up below them, the farm and the town and the little church tower. Nobody said anything for a while. It was that kind of view.

* * *

The opening ceremony was held in the town square, which had been strung with flags and filled with folding chairs. The mayor talked for forty minutes in French. Olivia understood maybe one word in ten. Afterward there was a lantern lighting and a band and, crucially, a funnel cake stand, because apparently small towns everywhere in the world deep-fry batter at their festivals and Olivia was grateful for it.

She and Adam ended up splitting one because Emma bought it and then handed it over and walked off with Michael toward the lantern stall, wearing the smug expression of a woman executing a plan.

"You realize she did that on purpose," Olivia said.

"Completely on purpose. Michael's in on it too. There's probably a group chat I'm not in." Adam held out the funnel cake. "Powdered sugar or death?"

She took a bite and got sugar on her chin and he pointed at it and she wiped it off with the wrong hand and got it on her sleeve. It went on like that, easy, until the cake was gone and her fingers were a mess.

"Can I ask you something honest?" she said. She wiped her hands on a napkin. "Are you single? Emma's been vague about it in a way that feels strategic."

"Single. Last hookup was about a year ago, nothing since. Few relationships in my twenties, none of them stuck. I've sort of been waiting to want something enough." He shrugged. "That sounds vague. I just mean I'm not carrying anyone around."

"Good. That's good to know." She folded the napkin into smaller and smaller squares. "So here's my situation. I'm thirty-three, I've been with exactly one man my whole adult life, and I'm done with careful. I don't want to jump into anything serious, but I want to try things. New things. And you seem like somebody who pays attention, which is rarer than it should be."

Adam set down the empty paper tray. "What kind of things?"

"Things we'd figure out together. I'm proposing an experiment. Just for the