time getting out of the car. He walks to the passenger side to get his winter jacket and is careful with his suit as he slips it on. He strolls to the trunk, where he pulls out a bouquet of red roses.
“Mom bought them for him yesterday,” Flo says. “She told me. Didn’t want him to come empty-handed.”
Fair enough. Not all men feel comfortable buying flowers.
The Ferrari is the only car in the parking lot. It might be happenstance, but if our suspicions are correct, he’d want to be alone today.
“A car just parked down the road toward the school,” Clothilde informs me as she trots up to join us at the main entrance. “A blue Ford.”
Flo’s eyes light up. “That’s Cédric! He listened!”
“Looks like it,” Clothilde confirms. “I’ll go meet him and see what I can do about those rusty hinges at the back door. But if he’s no good at stealth, there isn’t much I can do.”
“Thank you,” Flo says and squeezes the other girl’s hand. I wouldn’t go so far as to say they’ve become friends over the last week, but Clothilde seems invested in helping Flo get justice, and Flo knows to show her appreciation.
The dad looks around the parking lot as he approaches the main gate, and again when he’s in the cemetery. Yup, definitely wanted to be alone. A Tuesday night at eleven is a good bet if that’s what you want.
“Hey, Dad,” Flo says as he passes us. “Long time, no see.”
The dad stalks up the main path in direction of his daughter’s grave. His expression is severe, not a tear in sight, his lips set in a thin line.
We follow in his wake, making sure to stay close enough to hear if he starts talking.
At the mausoleum, he sets the flowers down on the doorstep, then takes a step back. He takes his time in studying the little stone building set up in memory of his daughter but doesn’t voice his thoughts about it. From his expression, I’d say he’s not impressed.
Clothilde appears through the stone walls, hands raised and eyes wide. “Boo!” she says, then cackles a laugh. “Man, I wish that worked sometimes.”
Flo’s dad, of course, doesn’t react at all.
Clothilde comes to stand with Flo and myself. “He climbed over the gate,” she says, her voice impressed. “Tore open his pants and all but made it in without making a sound. He’s hiding behind this horror, phone in hand.” She points to the mausoleum.
“Guess it’s my turn to play, then.” Flo squares her shoulders and steps onto the first step of her new home, facing her father.
“Tell me, Dad,” she says, her voice strong, “did someone tell you I was leaving?”
Her father grits his teeth and lets out a frustrated sigh. “Why did you have to do it?” he asks. “Why couldn’t you stay on course? You were going to give up everything we’d worked for for love? Really? Give up a bright future with all the money and stability you could ever want, to go live with a guy who can’t hold onto a job for more than six months?”
“Okay.” Flo’s eyes have lost some of their spark, but the determination is strong. “Someone told you. Guess it’s not really important if it was Joss or Cédric, though I’m going to guess Cédric since I actually managed to convince him to follow you here.” Joss had been by several times since she’d come out of the grave, and she’d talked to him about following her father, but to no effect.
“And now I even had to pay for this.” Her dad kicks at the mausoleum, missing his daughter’s ghost by mere millimeters.
“I’m sorry I’m always such a burden to you,” Flo says. Her form flashes quickly to that of a much younger version of herself, then comes back to the version I know, anger flashing in her eyes. “At least you’re rid of me now.”
“At least I’m rid of you now,” he echoes.
“Creepy,” Clothilde whispers.
“Cédric came to me crying,” the dad says, his own temper rising. “A grown man was crying in my lap because my daughter decided she didn’t want him anymore. You take away everything we’ve worked for for years, and to top it all off, you break the one asset I could still use. What use is a man who starts crying over a woman?”
Clothilde takes off toward the back of the mausoleum. “I’m just going to check our little witness isn’t going to do anything stupid until we have some definite proof.”
“I can think of plenty of uses,” Flo screams at him. “Cédric is a good man! He deserves a good life.” She deflates a little and her voice lowers. “I couldn’t give that to him. He might be sad right now, but I would have made him miserable in the long run.”
“I was going to talk some sense into you,” the dad says with a sneer. “Always standing on that bridge, wasting your time with God knows what. You’d just sunk my business, and there you were, singing and shaking your ass as if you were some ninny on TV who couldn’t find anything more constructive to do with your time.”
“I’m allowed to live my own life as I see fit!” Flo stands on her tiptoes, screaming into his face from no more than a centimeter away.
He flinches and takes a step back. He scans the cemetery but doesn’t seem to see any of us standing around him, least of all his daughter right in front of him.
“Jeez,” he says. “I’m even seeing things. See what you’ve brought me to? I’m staying up all night to work on finding your replacement, on finding a new marketing strategy. On figuring out what to do with that lousy fiancé of yours. And all because you can’t bloody swim!” His voice rose throughout his speech and at the end he’s screaming so loud, I’m surprised the neighbors don’t come running.
“I can’t swim?” Flo has taken a leaf out of Clothilde’s book and is standing on thin air to get right into her father’s face. “I can’t swim? You know bloody well I can swim, since you insisted I learn when I was five! But I can’t swim if my head’s bashed in, Dad! I can’t swim if I’m already dead! You did it, didn’t you? You pushed me over the railing during one of your hissy fits, never thinking about the consequences of your actions!”
“Of course I did! You were just standing there, dancing, when everything was going to shit! You deserved to be thrown in! You deserved to pay the consequences! But you weren’t supposed to die!”
Silence falls on the cemetery like a heavy brick.
“He just answered her question,” Clothilde whispers as she pops her head around the mausoleum to meet my gaze.
“I know,” I whisper back.
“Florence?” the dad asks, his voice shaky. He’s looking right at her, not through her.
Flo’s eyes are huge and her lips twitch as if she’s about to start crying. “Daddy?”
The dad’s eyes boggle, then roll to the back of his head. He falls to the ground like someone pressed his “off” button.
Cédric comes scrambling out from his hiding place. He takes in the flowers, the man sprawled on the ground. He’s searching for something else, but he can’t see the three of us crowding around him. “What the hell just happened?”