Ghost Flower (6 page)

“What are you doing?” she demanded, nearly dropping the groceries she had in her arms.

“I want to see who else is in this picture.”

She snatched it from me and put it back on the piano. “What makes you think there’s anyone else in it?”

“You can see the tip of a shoe next to Althea. And your father,” I pointed at the man in the polo shirt, “is looking in that direction. Who is standing there? Is it Aurora?”

Bridgette kept her eyes and one hand on the photo. She nodded, with her back to me. “This picture was taken the weekend before she disappeared. There’d been a tennis tournament at the club and—” She shook her head.

“Why did you cut her out? And why aren’t there any pictures of her?”

“After she disappeared it just upset everyone to see pictures of her. So we got rid of them. Why are you so interested?”

“I wanted to see what she looked like.”

She rounded on me. “She looks like you. Exactly. Like. You.” With each word she took a step toward me. Her posture was tense, angry.

I put up my hands. “She may look like me, but she’s not me. Whatever was between the two of you, it has nothing to do with me.”

She stopped moving and stared at me, twisting the ring on her finger for a moment like she was calming herself down. When she spoke again, her voice was normal. “You’re right. It doesn’t. Sometimes it—you just startle me.”

Bridgette was there for the next twenty-four hours, so I stayed away from the photo.

I learned the names and identifying characteristics of the ten dogs Aurora had had in the course of her life (all dead) while devouring red velvet cupcakes with extra buttercream frosting (Aurora’s favorite). Everything I memorized about Aurora, every new fact, made me more eager to see a picture of her. Would people accept me as Aurora? Would this really work?

There were no cards for Bain and Bridgette, but I made them up myself in my head.
Bain Silverton
[Alive, 23, working in the family real estate development business, capable but lazy, net worth unknown].
Bridgette Silverton
[ostensibly Alive but only visible evidence of a pulse was twisting Cartier ring, 21, taking time off from University of Arizona to work on father’s campaign for Congress, only uses fake sugar, net worth unknown but apparently inadequate or wouldn’t be doing this because Bridgette didn’t do anything without a good reason].

On my seventh night there, when I was eating frozen pizza (with pepperoni—Bain had slipped it to me when I’d begged for meat a few days earlier and it was our secret), a Sonora Heights Academy yearbook dropped onto the counter in front of me. “This is Bridgette’s
from senior year,” Bain explained, taking a beer from the refrigerator and sitting on the stool next to mine. “She told me you wanted to see a picture of Ro. Ro was a freshman, so her class is in there too.”

My heart began to pound faster. I flipped through, looking for the freshman class, missing it the first time and having to fan the thick pages back. “Aurora would have been a senior this year,” I said, half-babbling to cover my excitement.

“That’s why you really only need to get an idea of who her classmates are, in case they come up in conversation.” Bain gulped the beer down fast. “They’re graduating on June 14, and most of them will be taking off for the summer right after. So if you don’t come to Tucson until a week later, you won’t run into them.”

“Clever. Bridgette’s idea?”

I saw him start to frown then stop. “You just made a joke.”

“Are you sure?”

“And another one. No more meat for you.”

I don’t know what I expected, but when I found Aurora’s class picture, it wasn’t like looking in the mirror or meeting an old friend. It was generic, long dark hair parted on the side, headband, cardigan. She was smiling but not really, her expression as blank and hollow as a tribal mask.

Bain took the yearbook from me, flipped a few pages to a spread of candid photos titled “Community Activities” and pushed it back in my direction. His finger tapped a picture of two girls with bikes, side by side under a banner that said, “Be a Hero Bikeathon.”

One of them was dressed as Catwoman in an all-black bodysuit with cat ears, a cat collar, and a looped tail dangling off the back of her bike seat. The other was dressed as Wonder Woman in blue boy shorts with a white trim, a red T-shirt that had two yellow sequin W’s glued on, and a yellow headband. She’d wrapped the hand grips
of her bike in yellow tape to go with the Wonder Woman theme, and there was a red crystal star glued between handlebars.

“Aurora,” Bain said, his finger resting on the one dressed like Catwoman. It was almost a shock to see her here. She looked so different from the sedate class photo. Here her hair was wild under the cat ears. She wore thick black eyeliner and was smiling in a confident, almost mocking way that was echoed in her posture, as though the costume fit not just her body but also her personality like a glove.

With all that confidence, the challenging smile, I would have expected her to be looking at the camera, but instead she was gazing at the girl next to her. That girl was lovely, with a golden mass of hair that framed her face like a corona, porcelain skin, and huge blue eyes. She seemed mild, and, unlike Aurora, her costume didn’t seem to suit her at all. She looked like a doll someone had dressed up in another doll’s outfit, but her smile was friendly and candid. I could imagine having lunch with her, talking for hours, lying on a picnic blanket and staring up at clouds and cracking stupid jokes. “That’s Liza,” Bain said, and I couldn’t quite tell from his tone what he thought of her. “The one who committed suicide.”

I stared at the photo for a long time, but the more I looked, the more it seemed to disassemble before my eyes. Liza came into sharper focus—sweet, funny, nice, pretty, kind—while Aurora became more of a blur. For the first time I began to see Aurora’s resemblance to me. But it wasn’t in her face; it was her eyes. I recognized the expression there from my own—the expression of someone who is keeping a secret.

Who are you?
I asked myself.
What happened to you?

I didn’t realize, then, that I had been staring at half the answer since I arrived.

T
here is noise coming from somewhere, like a television, a man’s voice saying, “Come on.” I’m standing in an unfamiliar room.

My heart begins to pound, and I hear a ring-a-linging in my ears. Then I realize it’s the phone in the room.
You have to answer it,
I think
. It’s life and death.

“It’s time,” the voice on the TV says, getting louder, like it’s trying to distract me from the ring-a-linging. I back toward the night table (“Let’s go!” says the voice), toward the phone, groping behind me to answer it. I keep thinking I’m nearly there, but it keeps receding. Glancing down, I see a notepad with the name TOM YAW written across the top. Is that who is on the phone?

“Gotta go,” the voice on the television says, and I realize something about it is familiar. My pulse begins to race, and an alarm goes off in my head. I grasp desperately for the phone, and my fingertips graze it. The receiver flies off and falls to the floor, and as I reach and catch it in my hand, my mind flashes
Watch out!
and I turn and see—

Bain was standing by the side of the bed when I opened my eyes.

“Did you know you talk in your sleep?” he said.

I was breathing fast, and my heart was pounding. “What are you doing here?” I got up on one elbow and glanced at the clock next to the bed. It read eight
A.M
. “It’s the crack of dawn,” I complained as though for years I hadn’t been used to getting up hours earlier. Then I noticed his white shorts and white shirt. “Why are you dressed like a hospital orderly?”

“Tennis,” he said, tossing the red-and-white-handled racquet I’d seen in the photo on the piano in the air and catching it. “Bridgette thinks it’s important that you at least know the basics of tennis even if you say you won’t play. The caretakers at the big house go to church Sunday mornings, so we have a few hours when they’re not around. Come on.”

I pulled the covers up to my chin. “I don’t know what to wear.”

“I put some of Bridgette’s tennis stuff on the couch,” he said. “Come on, we don’t have a lot of time.”

I was still slightly rattled as I jimmied myself into Bridgette’s clothes, picked up the tennis racket, and stumbled downstairs. I hadn’t heard Bridgette arrive, but she was sitting at the counter with one leg tucked up under her, sipping her fake-sweetened coffee, touching a piece of toast as though she might eat it, and reading the paper. She gave me a quick look, said, “Bain is already down on the court,” and went back to her breakfast.

No coffee for me, I gathered.

Between the lack of caffeine and the fact that Bridgette’s shoes were two sizes too big, I wasn’t my most graceful as I went down the tower stairs to the front door, but as soon as I stepped out into the morning air I felt energized. The guest house was beautiful, but to avoid being seen, I’d been inside for the entire past week. I felt free, like I’d been liberated from some kind of prison. The kind with the eight-hundred-count Egyptian cotton sheets.

The tennis courts were between the main house and the guest house. You could see them from the French windows so I knew where I was going, but on the ground they were shielded behind a series of tall hedges. Even before I caught sight of them, I could hear the satisfying
thwop thwop thwop
of tennis balls being hit by a racket as a ball machine spewed balls at Bain. When I reached the fence, I stopped to watch him play. He moved with the kind of confidence and ease that come from natural skill, not practice. Which didn’t surprise me—it was hard to imagine Bain practicing anything. He was the kind of person who did what he wanted but didn’t work very hard at it.

He saw me standing there, hit a remote control, and the ball machine went quiet. “Just warming up.”

“I think you meant showing off.”

“Trust me, you’ll know when I’m showing off. Let’s see what you can do.”

The next ninety minutes were an endless study in what I
couldn’t
do. Which included: hold the racket properly, hit the ball forehand, hit the ball backhand, hit the ball over the net, serve, volley, and keep score.

At one point I saw Bain glance in the direction of the guest house hopefully, but apparently whatever he was looking for was absent. So he returned his attention, dejectedly, to me.

It was excruciating, him lobbing balls to me, me somehow managing to always be in exactly the wrong place and missing them. Once when I wasn’t paying attention, I accidentally hit a ball, and Bain’s face lit up. After that I tried harder, which guaranteed it wouldn’t happen again. The times I did manage to connect the balls were either too long or too short, except for the one I smashed into Bain’s shoulder so hard he yelped. Concentrating as intensely as I could, I got the
ball across the net only three times, and either that was the magic number or Bain was running out of patience because after the last time he said, “I think that’s enough,” and shepherded me back toward the guest house.

When we got back, Bridgette was there, sitting at the counter nibbling toast and sipping coffee. “Good game?” she asked, looking up and giving me a big smile.

That was odd. “I’m a natural,” I told her. “Ask Bain’s shoulder.”

I continued upstairs to my room and paused in the doorway. I’d been in a rush that morning so I hadn’t made the bed and I’d just flung the T-shirt I slept in on the couch. Everything was how I’d left it, slightly untidy.

But not quite as untidy. The T-shirt looked like it had been folded out of habit, then unfolded and left in a slightly different spot. The hairs had been cleaned out of my brush before it was set back down parallel to the side of the dresser. It was as though someone had searched the room and tried to put everything back but just couldn’t tolerate the disorder. Someone who wasn’t good with messes.

I smiled to myself as I noticed the corner on the top sheet of the mattress had been squared off. Running my hand along the side of the mattress pad, I felt the bulge of my wallet and pulled it out. My Eve Brightman ID was gone. As my mind raced through the best way to handle that, I checked my other hiding place. That one, at least, was untouched.

I peeled off my clothes and got into the shower. My ID was probably safer with Bridgette than it would be with me once I got to Silverton House. But without it, it would be nearly impossible for me to leave. I couldn’t think of any other reason Bridgette would have taken it.

As I was to learn, my imagination was pretty stunted.

One week down. Seven to go,
I told myself as I stood under the warm spray of the shower.

If you live that long,
a voice inside my head whispered.

After that, Bridgette got friendlier, and the days got more monotonous.

There were only four books in the guest house:
To Kill a Mockingbird, Northern Arizona Critters and Creepers, The Junior League of Scottsdale Favorite Recipes Cookbook,
and the yellow pages. I did spend some time reading over the messages people left in Bridgette’s yearbook, but unsurprisingly those were as arid as Bridgette herself.

There were magazines, all with titles like
Arizona Today
or
Arizona Home
or
Home, Arizona
. I read every one, spotting people who appeared in my notecards at dismal-looking parties, and learned a lot about things like desert gardening and the
New
New Arizona Cuisine (Get out that grill!).

At the beginning of the second week, Bridgette and I had been at work all day, and we were getting on each other’s nerves. I felt like the more I came to understand Aurora, the more she seemed to distrust me. We had dinner in silence, and I went to bed right after.

The clock said 11:09 when a line of silver light raked over the windows and I heard a car pull into the driveway. I assumed it was Bain, but when the door to the guest house didn’t open, I went to the window to check who had arrived. I saw an old silver VW bug and caught the sound of footsteps on gravel as someone moved quickly through the shadows toward the main house.