The Last Camellia: A Novel Read online

  A PLUME BOOK

  THE LAST CAMELLIA

  Jane Lee Photography

  SARAH JIO is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Blackberry Winter, The Bungalow, and The Violets of March, a Library Journal Best Book of 2011. She is also a journalist who has written for such publications as Glamour; Real Simple; Redbook; O, The Oprah Magazine; and many others. She lives in Seattle with her husband, three young sons, and a golden retriever named Paisley.

  The Last Camellia

  A NOVEL

  SARAH JIO

  A PLUME BOOK

  PLUME

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014, USA

  USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia | New Zealand | India | South Africa | China

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  For more information about the Penguin Group visit penguin.com

  First published by Plume, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2013

  Copyright © Sarah Jio, 2013

  All rights reserved. No part of this product may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Cover design: Jaya Miceli. Cover photographs: woman on path © Georgina White/Millennium Images, camellia © Getty Images.

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Jio, Sarah.

  The last camellia : a novel / Sarah Jio.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-1-101-61385-6

  1. Women botanists—England—Fiction. 2. Flowers—Fiction. 3. Mystery fiction. I. Title

  PS3610.16L37 2013

  813'.6—dc23

  2012049474

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Contents

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  Epigraph

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1: Addison

  CHAPTER 2: Flora

  CHAPTER 3: Addison

  CHAPTER 4: Flora

  CHAPTER 5: Addison

  CHAPTER 6: Flora

  CHAPTER 7: Addison

  CHAPTER 8: Flora

  CHAPTER 9: Addison

  CHAPTER 10: Flora

  CHAPTER 1: Addison

  CHAPTER 12: Flora

  CHAPTER 13: Addison

  CHAPTER 14: Flora

  CHAPTER 15: Addison

  CHAPTER 16: Flora

  CHAPTER 17: Addison

  CHAPTER 18: Flora

  CHAPTER 19: Addison

  CHAPTER 20: Flora

  CHAPTER 21: Addison

  CHAPTER 22: Flora

  CHAPTER 23: Addison

  CHAPTER 24: Flora

  CHAPTER 25: Addison

  CHAPTER 26: Flora

  CHAPTER 27: Addison

  CHAPTER 28: Flora

  CHAPTER 29: Addison

  CHAPTER 30: Flora

  CHAPTER 31: Addison

  Excerpt from THE VIOLETS OF MARCH

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  For my mother, Karen Mitchell, who introduced me to camellias and all the other beautiful and important flowers in the garden

  Author’s Note

  Camellias are one of those flowers that don’t get a lot of fanfare. They’re not as beloved as roses. People don’t get nostalgic about them the way they do about tulips or lilies. They don’t have the fragrance of gardenias or the showiness of dahlias. They don’t hold up very well in bouquets and, when in bloom, it isn’t long before their petals brown and fall to the ground. And yet, I’ve always found camellias to be stunning in their quiet, understated way.

  I don’t remember the first time I noticed a camellia. I remember them growing in my grandmother’s garden and blooming, one pink, one white, beside the entrance to my childhood home. Somehow, in my life, camellias were always there, gracefully swaying in the breeze.

  They’re old-fashioned flowers (trees, really). In Seattle, where I live, many of the homes built at the turn of the last century feature old camellias presiding over the front yards. In fact, when my husband and I bought our first home in Seattle—a 1902 Victorian—it came with a camellia. I still remember its enormous trunk and how it stood tall, with branches that reached up to our second-story bedroom window.

  While you’ll still find these gorgeous trees in modern-day gardens on occasion, camellias have stepped back to make room for more popular garden choices—rows of lavender, ornamental grasses, azaleas, and Japanese maples. Fashions change; garden preferences do too. And yet, I still have a soft spot for camellias.

  When I set out to write this novel, I had an image in my mind of a single camellia tree with big saucer-size blossoms and shiny, emerald leaves. And then the rest of the scene came into view: row after row of camellias. An orchard.

  I began to wonder if the camellia in this imaginary orchard could be a rare variety, perhaps even the last of its kind. And, as it turns out, a few very rare camellias do exist in real life—sequestered away in private gardens and public conservatories around the world, most notably in England.

  When I close my eyes now, months after completing this novel, I can still see the gardens of Livingston Manor. I have to admit, it makes me a little sad to know that this place doesn’t really exist, because I’d love more than anything to visit. I’d sit in the orchard and gaze out beyond the stone angel to the carriage house and admire the camellias.

  I hope this story brings you closer to your own beautiful, private garden, whether it’s right outside your door or tucked away in your heart.

  SJ

  My destiny is in your hands.

  —The meaning of the camellia flower, according to the Victorian language of flowers

  Prologue

  A cottage in the English countryside

  April 18, 1803

  The old woman’s hand trembled as she clutched her teacup. Out of breath, she hadn’t stopped to wash the dirt from under her nails. She hovered over the stove, waiting for the teakettle to whistle as she eyed the wound on her finger, still raw. She’d clumsily cut it on the edge of the garden shears, and it throbbed beneath the bloodstained bandage. She’d tend to it later. Now she needed to come to her senses.

  She poured water in the little white ceramic pot with the hairline crack along the edge and waited for the tea leaves to steep. Could it be? She’d seen a bloom, as clear as day. White with pink tips. The Middlebury Pink, she was certain of it. Her husband, rest his soul, had tended to the camellia for twenty years—sang to it in the spring, even covered its dark emerald leaves with a quilt when the frost came. Special, he’d called it. The woman hadn’t understood all the fuss over a scrawny tree, especially when the fields needed plowing and there were potatoes to be harvested.

  If he could only see it now. In bloom. What if someone from the village finds it? No, she couldn’t let that happen. It was her responsibility to make sure of that.

  Years ago, her husband spent sixpence on the tree, which was the
n just a sprout peeking out of a ceramic pot. The traveling salesman told him it had been propagated from a shoot at the base of the Middlebury Pink, the most beautiful camellia in all of England, and perhaps even the world. The only known cultivar, which produced the largest, most stunning blooms—white with pink tips—presided over the Queen’s rose garden inside the gates of the palace. Of course, the woman hadn’t believed the tale, not then, and she had scolded her husband for his foolishness in spending such a high price on what might be a weed, but in her heart, she did love to see him happy. And when he looked at the tree, he was happy. “I suppose it’s better than squandering money on drink,” she had said. “Besides, if it blooms, maybe we can sell the buds at the market.”

  But the tree didn’t bloom. Not the first year or the second, or the third or fourth. And by the tenth year, the old woman had given up hope entirely. She grew bitter when her husband whispered to the tree in the mornings. He said he had read about the technique in a garden manual, but when she found him spritzing the tree with a mixture of water and her best vegetable soap, she didn’t care that he said it would ward off pests; her patience had worn thin. Sometimes she wished for a bolt of lightning to strike the tree, split it in two, so her husband could stop fawning over it the way he did. She thought, more than once, about taking an ax to its slim trunk and letting the blade slice through the green wood. It would feel good to take out her anger on the tree. But she refrained. And after the man died, the tree remained in the garden. Years passed, and the grass grew high around its trunk. The ivy wrapped its tendrils around the branches. The old woman paid no attention to the camellia until that morning, when a fleck of pink caught her eye. The single saucer-size blossom was more magnificent than she could ever have imagined. More beautiful than any rose she’d ever seen, it swayed in the morning breeze with such an air of royalty, the old woman had felt the urge to curtsey in its presence.

  She took another sip of tea. The timing was uncanny. Just days ago, a royal decree had been issued notifying the kingdom that a rare camellia in the Queen’s garden had been decimated in a windstorm. Greatly saddened, the Queen had learned that a former palace gardener had propagated a seedling from the tree and sold it to a farmer in the countryside. She had ordered her footmen to search the country for her beloved tree’s descendant and to arrest the person who had harbored it all those years.

  The woman stared ahead. She turned to the window when she heard horses’ hooves in the distance. Moments later, a knock sounded at the door, sending ripples through her tea. She smoothed the wisps of gray hair that had fallen loose from her bun, took a deep breath, and opened the door.

  “Good day,” said a smartly dressed man. His tone was polite but urgent. “Upon orders from Her Majesty, we are searching the country for a certain valuable variety of camellia.” The woman eyed the man’s clothing—plain, common. He was an impostor; even she could tell. Her husband had warned her of the lot—flower thieves. Of course, it all fit. If they could get to the camellia before the Queen’s footmen, they could command a fortune for it. The man held a page in his hand, rolled up into a tight scroll. Unfurling it with great care, he pointed to the blossom painted on the page, white with pink tips.

  The woman’s heart beat so loudly, she could hear nothing else.

  “Do you know of its whereabouts?” the man asked. Without waiting for her reply, he turned to search the garden for himself.

  The man walked along the garden path, past the rows of vegetables and herbs, trampling the carrot greens that had just pushed through the recently thawed soil. He stood looking ahead where the tulips had reared their heads through the black earth. He knelt down to pluck a bud, still green and immature, examining it carefully. “If you see the tree,” he said, twirling the tulip in his hand, before tossing it behind him, “send word to me in town. The name’s Harrington.”

  The old woman nodded compliantly. The man gestured toward the north. Just over the hill was Livingston Manor. The lady of the house had been kind to them, offering to let them stay in the old cottage by the carriage house so long as they tended the kitchen garden. “Better not mention my visit to anyone at the manor,” the man said.

  “Yes, sir,” the woman said hastily. She stood still, watching as he returned to his horse. When she could no longer hear the click-clack on the road, she followed the garden path past the pear tree near the fence until she came to the camellia bearing its one, glorious bloom.

  No, she thought to herself, touching the delicate blossom. The Queen could search every garden in the land, and the flower thieves could examine every petal, but she would make sure they never found this one.

  CHAPTER 1

  Addison

  New York City

  June 1, 2000

  The phone rang from the kitchen, insistent, taunting. It might as well have been a stick of dynamite on the granite countertop. If I didn’t pick it up after three rings, the answering machine would turn on. I cannot let the answering machine turn on.

  “Are you getting that?” my husband, Rex, said from the couch, looking up from his notebook. He had an adorable fascination with old-school appliances. Typewriters, record players, and an answering machine circa 1987. But at that moment, I longed for voice mail. If only we had voice mail.

  “I’ll get it!” I said, jumping up from the breakfast table and stubbing my toe on the leg of the chair. I winced. One ring. Two.

  The hair on my arms stood on end. What if it was him? He had started calling two weeks ago, and every time the phone rang, I felt the familiar terror. Calm. Deep breath. Maybe it was one of my clients. That horrible Mrs. Atwell, the one who’d made me redo her rose garden three times. Or the IRS. Let it be the IRS. Anyone would be more welcome than the person I feared waited on the other end of the line.

  If I turned off the machine, he’d call again. Like a shark sensing blood in the water, he’d keep circling until he got what he wanted. I had to answer it. “Hello?” I said airily into the receiver.

  Rex looked up, smiled at me, then returned to his notebook.

  “Hello again, Addison.” His voice made me shiver. I couldn’t see him, of course, but I knew his face—the patchy stubble that grew around his chin, that amused look in his eyes. “You know, I don’t care for your new name. Amanda suited you much better.”

  I remained silent, quickly opening the French doors and stepping outside onto the patio that overlooked a tiny patch of garden—rare for the city, but all ours. A bird chirped happily from the little camellia tree Rex and I had planted last year on our first wedding anniversary. I hated that he was trespassing on my private sanctuary.

  “Listen,” I whispered. “I told you to stop calling me.” I looked up at the apartment building behind our townhouse, wondering if he could see me from one of the windows above.

  “Amanda, Amanda,” he said, amused.

  “Stop calling me that.”

  “Oh, I forgot,” he continued. “You’re all fancy now. I read about your wedding in the paper.” He clicked his tongue scoldingly. “Quite the fairy-tale ending for a girl who—”

  “Please,” I said. I couldn’t bear the sound of his voice, the way it made me think of the past. “Why can’t you leave me alone?” I begged.

  “You mean, you don’t miss me? Think of all the good times we had together. You remember the way we used to—”

  “Stop,” I said, cringing.

  “Oh, I see how it is,” he said. “All stuck-up now that you married the King of England. You think you’re really something. Well, let me ask you this: Does your husband know who you really are? Does he know what you’ve done?”

  I felt sick, woozy. “Please, please leave me alone,” I pleaded, feeling my throat tightening as I swallowed.

  He laughed to himself. “But I can’t,” he said. “No. You see, I spent ten years of my life in prison. That’s a long time to think about things. And I thought a lot
about you, Amanda. Almost every day.”

  I shuddered. With him behind bars, I’d felt a false sense of security. His incarceration, for two felony counts of money laundering and a lesser charge of statutory rape, had felt like a thick, warm blanket wrapped around me. And now that he was out, the blanket had been ripped off. I felt exposed, frightened.

  “Here’s the thing, baby,” he continued. “I’m sitting on a very valuable piece of information. I mean, you can’t blame me for wanting the same cushy life you have.”

  “I’m going to hang up now,” I said, my finger hovering over the End Call button.

  “This can all end well,” he said. “You know what I want.”

  “I already told you I don’t have that kind of money.”

  “You may not,” he said, “but your husband’s family does.”

  “No, don’t bring them into this.”

  “Well,” he said, “then I have no other choice.” I heard the chime of an ice cream truck on the other end of the line. I remembered chasing after those trucks as a little girl, wide-eyed, hopeful. I don’t know why; I never had a dollar for an ice cream sandwich, and yet they lured me still.

  I pulled the phone from my ear and listened as the same notes sounded, a block away, perhaps. The melody struck terror in me. The truck was close. Too close.

  “Where are you?” I asked, suddenly panicked.

  “Why? You want to see me?” he said, amused. I could picture the menacing grin on his face.

  My chin quivered. “Please, leave me alone,” I pleaded. “Can’t you just leave me alone?”

  “It could have been so easy,” he said. “But you’ve tried my patience. If I don’t have the money by the end of the week, I’ll have no other choice but to tell your husband everything. And when I say ‘everything,’ I mean everything.”

  “No,” I cried. “Please!”