He nodded. I didn't see any doubt in his expression, but my heart still pounded, my brain whirring to prove that I hadn't imagined it. No, that I hadn't hallucinated it.
"Poppies," I said. "There are poppies in the rock garden. I saw them right before I found the body."
I hurried around the garage with Gabriel limping after me.
There were no poppies in the rock garden.
"I took a picture to make sure I wasn't imagining them," I said. "There were clearly--"
My photo showed the garden. With rocks. And ivy. And moss. And no poppies.
"They were there," I said. "I swear--"
"Am I questioning that?"
"No, but--"
"Then stop panicking."
"I'm not--"
"You are. You found a body, and you called me, and now it's gone, and you're panicking because you can't prove it was there. I don't doubt you saw something. We'll figure out what it was."
--
As I led Gabriel to the sitting room, his gaze flitted around, discreetly checking out the antiques, any one of which would pay the annual rent on my new apartment.
"Yes, this is what I walked away from," I said. "I know how you feel about that."
"I said nothing."
"But you're thinking something."
"Only that it's a very nice house."
Gabriel knows what it's like to be poor, having been raised by a drug-addicted pickpocket mother who'd disappeared when he was fifteen, leaving him to survive on his own. A street kid who put himself through law school. So no, he was not impressed by the debutante who walked away from her Kenilworth mansion to work in a diner in Cainsville.
"Did you collect your things?" he asked.
"I did, including my laptop, so you can have your old one back. Don't worry, though, I'll pay rent for the full week."
I smiled, but he only nodded. I walked to the love seat. My dad's spot, where we used to sit together. As I sank into it, I began to relax.
Gabriel stopped beside my mother's chair, a spindly antique.
"That is not going to hold you," I said.
"Does it hold anyone?"
"Barely. Lovely to look at, but hellishly uncomfortable to sit on."
He surveyed the others. They all seemed made for people about six inches shorter than Gabriel.
I stood. "Take this."
"No, I--"
"Sit. Put your leg up. You're supposed to keep it elevated."