Chapter 7

Inside, the greenhouse smelled of loam and dry wood and dust, a smell like his childhood memories of his aunt's potting bench. But it was not the potting bench he found first.

Rows of tables lined the interior, and on them — under them, along the window sills, in every space that could hold anything — stood orchids.

Hundreds of orchids.

Some in plastic pots, some in terra cotta, some in baskets hanging from the rafters, some in cracked ceramic cups that had been there so long the roots had grown out through the drainage holes and attached themselves to the tables. They were all green and alive, sublimely healthy, each leaf glossy, each root plump and firm, moisture beads glistening on the bark chips of their pots.

Hollis stood in the doorway and stared.

He'd been inside this greenhouse a handful of times as a child, but never like this — never when all the lights were on, never when the glass was clean enough to see through. It had been dim then, full of shadows and mysterious shapes. He remembered his aunt telling him to be careful among the tables, but he'd been young, and the shapes had been strange.

Now the shapes resolved themselves into cultivars he recognized and ones he didn't: Cattleyas with flowers like purple ruffles, Phalaenopsis with arching stems of white and pink, a Cymbidium in full heavy bloom the color of pale green apples, and at the center of it all, on a table of its own, under a single skylight that let the sun fall directly onto its leaves, a plant so extraordinary that Hollis felt his breath catch.

The orchid was enormous. Its leaves were long and dark green, nearly a yard in length, and its stem rose from the center taller than his chest, bearing a cluster of blossoms each the size of a fist. The petals were a deep, unusual gold, veined with orange like veining in an autumn leaf, and the scent filled the whole greenhouse.

Hollis walked toward it slowly, not daring to breathe too hard.