Ghost Flower (29 page)

“What is this?”

“These are the presents your grandmother has bought for you since you’ve been gone,” Mrs. March said. Her eyes dared me to look
away from her. “She’ll see something advertised and say, “Aurora would like that,” and then go out and buy it. Or she’ll stop someone on the street and ask where they’ve gotten something. The other day she made Arthur take her to Walmart because she felt you needed that.” “That” was a giant inflatable NASCAR.

I stared.

“The idea was, if she found just the right present, you would come home.” She lapsed into silence as I took it all in, her words, the objects. She stood watching me. Finally, in a voice so soft it was almost a whisper, she said, “Do you see? Do you understand?”

No,
I wanted to say. “If she loved her granddaughter so much, why couldn’t she just show it? Why all this and not—not something simple?”

“She knew she’d failed you before. She’s a hard woman, and she has ghosts that dog her. But more than anything, the entire time you were away, the one sustaining thought of her life was that you were alive and would come back.”

“Then why is she so determined to push me away now? Keep me at arm’s length? Why can’t she show it?”

“She’s terrified of you.”

“Of me? No. That makes no sense.”

“Terrified of
losing
you. The way she lost your father and your mother. You’re the best thing she has, and she knows it. But she only knows how to lock valuable things up, to protect them. That’s what she was doing the other night. Your first night here.”

An idea began to take shape in my mind, but it was hazy, abstract. “What do you mean?” I asked.

Now she opened the other door of the armoire. That side appeared to be empty until she touched a switch and a light came on, and I saw it had no back. It led to a hallway parallel to the one outside.

“The House is filled with secret passages you never discovered,” Mrs. March said. “Your grandmother used this one to get to your room and make sure your door was locked. She was checking that you were safe. She’s gotten a bit paranoid, and she’s—she’s constantly worrying about thieves now.”

“Why?”

Mrs. March closed both armoire doors and stood very still, with her back to me, as though making a decision. “Her mind isn’t as clear as it used to be,” she said, turning around. “Recently, the last few months especially, she gets confused. It wanders, and when it does, it’s always to you and your mother. I think—” she stopped herself with a little shake of her head. “Arthur told me it happened in the car on the way to dinner tonight.” I nodded. She looked down at her hands, like she was frustrated they couldn’t do anything to fix this. “She knows it’s happening, and it scares her. She’s asked Arthur and me to not mention it to the Family; they’d get her into a home faster than Bridgette could drive her there. But it’s getting harder.”

The backpack seemed to have become unbearably heavy on my shoulders.

Still looking at her hands, Mrs. March went on in a quiet voice. “She thinks people only care about her for her money. She’s afraid that right after your birthday, you’ll leave.”

Suddenly I saw Althea not as a cold, conniving matriarch but as a very lonely old woman, desperate to exert her control the only way she knew how. Not out of cruelty but because she felt that control slipping away and otherwise no one would pay attention to her.

Now Mrs. March looked at me. Her gaze was direct and demanded complete honesty. She said, “Will you?”

“Will she what?” Althea demanded, appearing in the doorway.
“Why are you two gabbing practically in my bedroom in the middle of the night?”

“I was giving Aurora a tour of the House,” Mrs. March answered smoothly.

Althea frowned. “At midnight?” Then she looked slightly confused. “It is midnight, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Mrs. March confirmed. “She couldn’t sleep.”

Althea’s eyes came to mine. “I couldn’t sleep either. I kept dreaming about thieves.” I noticed she was rubbing her fingers together. “I liked it better when I kept a gun under my pillow.” She looked at me. “Don’t suppose you fancy a game of gin.”

I said, “I don’t know. Are you going to cheat?”

“Do you hear that?” she asked Mrs. March. “Calls her own grandmother a cheat.”

“Well, you are one,” Mrs. March said.

“Insolence. Everywhere.” But she was happy. It was as though the entire scene in the car had never happened. “Well, come on. We don’t have all night, and I want to win some money.”

She led the way into her bedroom. It was old-fashioned with dark red wallpaper and a big mahogany four-poster bed and Persian rugs on the floor. There was a round card table near the heavily curtained windows. On one wall hung a tiger’s head, a fox, a rabbit, and a deer, all slightly dusty. “Shot all of those myself,” she told me proudly. “Sit. Penny a point. You shuffle.”

There were only two chairs at the table, and I noticed Mrs. March had disappeared. A little while later she came in with milk and cookies. Forty minutes later she came up to take the plates away. Althea yawned and laid her cards down. “I’m sorry, my dear. I think I have to go to bed.”

I tallied up the points. “You’re just saying that because I’m winning.”

Her eyes sparkled. “Untrue. To prove it, I propose we continue in the morning. Two pennies a point.”

“You’re on,” I said before I’d even thought about it. It was as though I’d made the decision without realizing it. I would be staying. Even if everything else was wrong with the Silvertons, this one thing was right.

I helped Althea into bed. As I reached the door, she said, “It’s such a pity you can’t see her. She—your daughter looks just like you, Sadie. Same stubborn look in her eye. Same smile. You’d be proud of the kind of young woman she’s become. You’d be so proud.”

“Thank you,” I whispered. I closed the door and ran back to my room.

There were four missed calls from an unknown number. I turned off my phone.

For the first time since I got to Tucson, I had a dreamless night.

MONDAY

T
he yellow-and-white awning snapped back and forth in the breeze blowing across the upper balcony of the tennis club. It was a glorious day: blue sky, three perfectly placed cirrus clouds high up. Althea was next to me, her chair turned to face the awning, peering at the courts below through binoculars.

“I don’t see Bridgette. I guess Stuart is standing her up for the doubles tournament,” she reported, sounding gleeful. “Too bad you wouldn’t take my bet.”

“I would have,” Bain’s voice floated to us. I turned and saw him walking across the patio toward us, his arms tan and muscular in his white polo shirt but his calves strangely scrawny, as though he only worked out the parts of his body people saw the most.

“You’ll take any bet. That’s your problem,” Althea said.

Bain didn’t look as happy. “That’s not true,” he objected.

“A good man can make a joke,” Althea intoned. “A great man can take one.”

Althea had been in fine form picking on everyone all morning, and I was enjoying being with her. My phone had rung three times
with an unknown number, but I had ignored it. After the previous night, everything seemed so clear: What I’d thought was a ghost trying to attack me at Silverton House had been my grandmother trying to check on me; whoever was making these calls was just a prankster trying to scare me. I wasn’t going to let them.

Now Althea announced, “What time is it? I could use a lobster salad.”

I looked at Bain who shrugged. He pointed to his wrist. “No watch.”

“What happened to your watch?” Althea snapped at him. “The gold Rolex I bought you for graduation. Why don’t you ever wear it?”

That made me think of the closet full of presents for Aurora, and I began to think this calling to account might be her way of asking people not to validate that they valued what she’d given them, but that they valued her. She reminded me of one of those Chinese boxes carved out of a single piece of jade that are wonders of intricate craftsmanship but delicate and impossible to completely see into.

“It’s in the safety deposit box,” Bain said. “I don’t want anything to happen to it.”

“Bosh, watches were meant to be looked at; that’s why they’re called watches. Otherwise they’d call them ignores.” Her eyes went to me. “I feel a few more witty comments coming on. Go get me a lemonade. And put it on your tab. You’ll be rich soon; you can pay.”

I’d just picked up the lemonades from the sliding window at the snack bar when I heard a laugh behind me. It was a ringing peal, happy and joyful, and it struck a chord of memory. I swung around fast—too fast. I ran right into the woman who had laughed, spilling lemonade down her front.

I started apologizing without looking up, saying, “I’m so sorry, I hope I didn’t—” But before I could finish, a voice snarled, “Watch
where you’re going.” My eyes snapped up, and I was looking at Colin Vega.

He was standing next to the pretty brunette woman I’d walked into. She had a splash of lemonade on her blue-and-white argyle polo shirt. “Look what you did,” he said to me, his eyes challenging, as though I’d done something much worse than spill lemonade.

“I’ll clean it up,” I offered.

“Don’t bother, we’re going,” he growled. Taking the brunette by the arm, he said, “Come on, Reggie. This was a mistake,” and turned to go.

That’s when I saw it. The lemonade slipped from my hands, splashing down my front and all over the patio. “Your leg,” I said. “You’re missing part of your leg.”

He was wearing shorts, and his left leg beneath the knee was a prosthesis.

The brunette he’d called Reggie smiled and squeezed his arm. “Isn’t he amazing? His walk is so even now. You can barely tell when he wears pants. I’m Regina.” She leaned forward to hold out her hand, but Colin batted it down.

“Don’t talk to her,” he said, wrapping an arm around her and pulling her away as though to shield her from me. He gave me a look of pure venom.

I stared at the ground, looking at where one of the paper cups I’d dropped rolled to a stop beneath a table. I said, “I’m sorry I upset you.”

“Upset me?” He made a thin, mirthless sound. “I lost my leg fighting because of Aurora Silverton. I gave up my basketball career because of Aurora Silverton. I’m not going to give up another second of my life thinking about Aurora Silverton. You have no power to upset me.”

Bain had come up to stand next to me. “Don’t talk to my cousin that way.”

“Your cousin,” he snorted. “Like you care. Look at my leg. Look at it.” I moved my eyes to it, and then to his face. “This is what the Silvertons did.” His glazed-over eyes began to slowly focus on Regina, and as they did, he relaxed. “I’m sorry you had to see that, sweetheart,” he said, kissing the top of her hair. “I shouldn’t have brought you here.” He pulled her, still wrapped in the protection of his arm, away.

It became very important to me then to collect up the two paper cups and flatten them and fold them and slide them one at a time into the trash. There were sounds, but they seemed to come from a long way off. And my ears were roaring and muffled at once, as though the entire ocean were in there, and it was too crowded for it to move much.

I watched a napkin flutter end over end toward the edge of the patio and thought it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, so beautiful that it brought tears to my eyes, and I stood there with the sticky lemonade drying on my legs and my chest feeling like someone had punched it.

And just when I thought it couldn’t get worse, it did.

I heard Althea say, “Oh my,” and turned in time to see Stuart step onto the patio. He was followed by a small crowd of people, including Coralee and her crew. “You witch,” he said to me holding up his hands. “Did you do this? Did you curse me?”

From the fingertips to just past his wrists, Stuart’s hands were red and covered in sickly yellow-and-white crusty blisters that looked like they might have pus in them.

“Are you happy now?” Stuart demanded.

I was bewildered. I had no idea how to reply, and I looked around
for Bain or Bridgette. But I didn’t see either of them. Finally I said, “I had nothing to do with that. I haven’t seen you in two days.”

Stuart brushed that aside. “Some crazy magic you learned on the street? One minute my hands are fine, and the next they look like this. I know it was you. If you tell me how to reverse the spell, I’ll drop the charges.”

“What charges?”

“For assault.”

“I think you have that backwards,” I said, working to keep a tremor out of my voice. “
I
didn’t assault
you
.”

He leaned close to me to growl, “You’ll pay for this.”

“All I said was that you should be careful where you put your hands,” I told him, leaning as far from him as I could. “Frankly, it looks like I was right.”

Someone laughed behind him, and he turned to scowl, then brought the scowl to me. “I know this was you,” he repeated. “I’ll figure out how you did it, and I’ll get you. I’ve got protection if you try to do anything again.” He pointed behind him with two grotesque thumbs, and I saw N. Martinez and another officer standing at the back of the crowd.

At least N. Martinez’s low opinion of me could be confirmed.

Stuart hissed, “Keep your distance.”

Over his words I heard the ghost’s from the night before.
Wait until tomorrow… you’ll see…
I had a sinking feeling this was what she’d meant.

But who could have done something like that? Since Stuart had told everyone that I attacked him, almost no one knew what had really happened. Coralee and Bridgette did, but I doubted either of them would have hurt him. And even if they’d wanted to,
how could they have done it? How could anyone
?

I was suddenly desperate to get out of there. I glanced around again, looking for Bain or Bridgette, but instead spotted Grant coming toward me. I’d forgotten that he and I were supposed to have a date. His mouth moved, but somehow I couldn’t hear what he was saying, couldn’t hear anything. Then, as though the ocean drained out, I heard him say, “Are you okay?” and sound came pouring back in dizzyingly.