“It’d be a pleasure. Besides, I’ve nothing else to do today, and it’d be good to explore the town a bit since I’ve been gone.” I smiled to really sell the point, and he must’ve been really strapped for help, because he handed me the address written in Dad’s loopy script and a single arrangement of daylilies, and thanked me profusely.
It really wasn’t that big a deal, and I reallydidn’thave anything else to do today. I didn’t want to go to Bar None, because it wasSaturday in the late afternoon, and I was sure it was already getting a bit crowded. And while I loved Mairmont, I didn’t want to see many of the people in there. I didn’t know who from my graduating class left the town or stayed—and most of them, unlike Dana and John, hadn’t been very nice.
I’d been lucky to have not run into them thus far, but considering that I’d only been here about twenty-four hours... I knew my luck was shit, and it’d run out sooner rather than later.
As I left the florist, I tried to ignore my untimely shadow, and Ben wasreallyhard to ignore. Especially because he was pretending tonotfollow me, and that just made it creepier.
“I see you, you know,” I said when I reached the end of the block. I looked over my shoulder, and he quickly whirled on his heels and pretended to go the other way. “Seriously?”
He winced and turned back to face me. “Sorry. I was... I just saw you and I...”
“You’ve been following me since the bed-and-breakfast.”
He wilted. “I have no excuse.”
“Admitting there is a problem is the first step to recovery, good job.”
“I’m not sure what else to do.” He put his hands in his pockets, his shoulders hunched. He looked a bit more unraveled than he had this morning, his hair floppy and his eyes tired. “Or where else to go.”
There was nowhere else. It was me and then... whatever came after.Ifanything came after. My family was the spiritual but not religious sort. We all had our different ideas of what happened—whether we returned to the world, or became part of the wind, or just... if we just stopped.
And anyway, whatever I could’ve said wouldn’t have helped him.
He was, on all accounts, dead. Rose had verified it. And at leastI knew I wasn’t going crazy—he really was here. For the moment, however long it took.
And I was his last stop.
I hugged the arrangement tighter. “Well, you can come with me,” I offered.
“Can I?” He perked, like a golden retriever who’d finally been asked to go for walkies.
“Yeah. We can get to the bottom of this thrilling mystery together,” I said, referring to the arrangement. “Why would my dad send flowers to a stranger’s house?”
“Maybe he knew them from somewhere?” Ben guessed.
“Hedidhave poker games. Maybe it’s one of his buddies from that?” But I doubted he’d send them daylilies. He’d send them orchids or corpse flowers or—somethinga bit more his brand. Daylilies weren’t his style at all.
My frown deepened as I thought, prompting Ben to propose, “We’ll see when we get there, I suppose.”
“I hate surprises,” I agreed with a sigh.
Foxglove Lane was one of those quiet streets adjacent to the main drag where you could just see yourself buying a house behind a white picket fence and growing old in it. The houses were all different colors of Charleston-type designs, with porches that faced the west and narrow builds. When I was eight or nine, I went to a birthday party for someone who lived on Foxglove Lane. Adair Bowman, maybe? It was a slumber party and they broke out the Ouija board and I sat back and had absolutely nothing to do with it.
One, because Ouija boards were mass-market trash made by a toy company to sell the occult to the middle class.
Two, because even though Ouija boards were mass-market trash made by a toy company to sell the occult to the middle class, I still refused to poke the bear.
Adair called me a scaredy-cat. I definitely was. But I also slept perfectly well that night while the rest of the kids had nightmares about old General Bartholomew from the cemetery coming to haunt their dreams.
The house in question was halfway down the lane, far past Adair’s old family home—though I think they moved the year after I’d solved the infamous murder. It was smaller than the others, but very well loved. The front lawn was quaint, with trimmed azaleas around the house and a colorful flower bed, newly planted for spring.
I climbed the brick steps to the front door and rang the doorbell.
It took a moment, but an old lady finally answered. She was hunched over, wrapped in a fluffy pink housecoat and darned slippers, and had the most beautiful wide brown eyes. “Oh,” she said, opening the glass door. “Hello.”
“Mrs.—” I checked the name and address on the card, written in Dad’s sloppy handwriting. “Elizabeth?”
“Yes,” she replied, nodding, “that’s me, dear.”