aloud at that. “It’s a party in honor of the night-blooming cereus,” she explained. “It’s the flower on the deer-horn cactus. We call it the Queen of the Night. Tohono Chul has more than eighty plants that are set to bloom this year, and they all blossom at the same time. They open up around sunset and are gone by sunrise the next morning. Someone called just now to let me know that the bloom will be tomorrow night. Are you coming or not?”
Mildred sometimes reminded Abby of her older sister, Stephanie, who was at times a bit overbearing and more than a little outspoken. On this occasion, Abby had dutifully slipped into full little-sister mode.
“I suppose,” she had agreed reluctantly.
The next day she had tried her best to back out of the engagement, but Mildred wouldn’t hear of it. Around nine o’clock that evening, Abby had ridden over to Tohono Chul’s parking lot in Mildred’s aging Pontiac. Arriving in low spirits and with even lower expectations, Abby was surprised to find the parking lot jammed with cars and parking attendants. Along with hordes of other enthusiastic attendees, Abby and Mildred had walked into the park following footpaths that were lit with candles in small paper bags.
“They’re called luminarias,” Mildred explained. “They’re traditional Mexican.”
Abby was astonished when she saw the throngs of people who were there that night. She kept wondering what all the fuss was about—but only until she saw a night-blooming cereus in the flesh. Once she caught sight of that first lush white blossom, Abby Tennant fell in love.
She couldn’t fathom how such a magnificent white flower could burst forth from what appeared to be a skimpy stick of thorny cactus. She was astonished to find that many of the gorgeous blossoms were as big across as one of Abby’s eight-inch pie plates. They reminded her of her next-door neighbor’s prizewinning dahlias back home in Ohio, but these weren’t dahlias, and the heady perfume that drifted away from each flower on the hot summer air was subtle but elegantly sweet, reminiscent of orange blossoms, but not quite the same.
Abby was dumbstruck. “They’re so beautiful!” she had exclaimed.
“Aren’t they,” Mildred said, nodding in agreement. “And now you know why it’s called the Queen of the Night. By the time the sun comes up tomorrow, the blossoms will be gone.”
Abby Tennant’s first encounter with the night-blooming cereus marked the real beginning of her new life, although her name was still Abby Southard back then. She had been so enchanted by seeing the flowers that she had insisted on taking Mildred to lunch at the Tohono Chul Tea Room the very next week. In the confines of the small cool rooms of what had once been a ranch house, Abby began to see the things about Tucson that she had been missing before—the friendliness of the people, Mildred included, for one thing, and the many subtle beauties of the desert for another.
Abby had taken out her own membership at Tohono Chul only a week or so later. Walking the park’s many manicured paths, she gradually acclimated herself to the heat of her new home. She learned to mark the changing seasons by something other than changing leaves. In spring she saw the profusion of yellow flowers on the prickly pear and the fuchsia-colored blossoms of the barrel cactus. In early summer she came to love the bright yellow blooms standing out against the green branches of the springtime paloverde and the dusky pinks and lavenders on the brooding ironwood. She loved watching the birds, especially the brightly colored hummingbirds that hovered around the equally brightly colored flowers.
Somehow, in the process of exploring this desert oasis, Abby Tennant found peace and came to terms with her new home and her new life. By the time of the first snow-fall in Columbus that first year, she was no longer home-sick. When Christmas rolled around and her friends were complaining about the weather, Abby took herself back to the park and volunteered her services.
At first she knew so little that all she could do was work as a stocker and a cashier in the museum shop. Later, once she was better adjusted to the climate, she went through docent training so she could lead tours and speak knowledgeably about the native plants of her newly adopted home. Because of her enduring fascination with the night-blooming cereus, it was a natural progression of her volunteerism that she went from leading daytime tours to working on the annual Queen of the Night party.
Initially she served on the Queen of the Night Committee, but when the complexity of the event outstripped the committee’s groupthink capability, Abby had finally given up and taken charge. When she came on board, there had been a complicated phone-tree system for notifying workers and guests of the impending bloom. Under her direction, phone trees had given way to a more streamlined form of e-mail notices. But after five years of running the show, it was time to pass the reins to someone else, and Shirley Folgum was her handpicked successor.
“So how are things?” Abby asked when Shirley finally came on the line. “Did you hear back from the band?”
“I was talking to the manager when you called. They’ll be here for a sound check no later than five. I told them to come in by way of the loading dock.”
“And the caterer?”
“She’s having trouble locating servers.”
“Don’t worry. She’ll find them. This party is a big deal for her, and we pay her a bundle of money during the summer when there’s not much else going on. She’ll come through. She always does.
“What about the storyteller?” Abby asked.
Abby had come to love the enduring Tohono O’odham legend about the wise old grandmother whose bravery had given rise to the Queen of the Night. Including that story in the annual festivities was one of the ways Abby had put her own distinctive stamp on the party. She insisted that each year some guest of honor would come to the event and recount the story that had struck a chord in her heart. It seemed to Abby that in saving her grand-son, Wise Old Grandmother had saved Abby Tennant as well.
“That’s handled,” Shirley reported. “Dr. Walker and her mother are planning to have lunch in the Tea Room this afternoon before the party starts. Unfortunately, she’s due back at work in the ER at the hospital in Sells by midnight. That means the last scheduled storytelling event can’t be any later than nine.”
“Good,” Abby said. “Earlier is better than later.”
“Are you going to stop by for a last-minute checklist?” Shirley asked.
“No,” Abby said with a laugh. “I don’t think that’s necessary. It sounds as though you have everything under control.”
Tucson, Arizona
Saturday, June 6, 2009, 1:30 P.M.
93º Fahrenheit
Lani Dahd used her key to unlock the front door of her parents’ house. She stepped inside, with Gabe following close on her heel. He had been here before and was always astonished by the place.
For one thing, the house, built of river rock, was bigger than any of the houses he knew on the reservation. Although the people who lived here were Milgahn, Anglos, the place was full of a rich profusion of baskets—Tohono O’odham baskets. There were yucca and bear-grass baskets on every available surface—on walls and tables and the mantelpiece. Gabe had been told that many of them had been made by his great-aunt Rita.
“How did your parents get so many baskets?” Gabe had asked. “Are they rich?”
Lani Dahd thought about
