Papa has stopped the car on the side of the road and told them to both get out. Evie realizes now that her father hadn’t known Luiza’s secret. But maybe now he can scrape away all the mud and flower petals, dig up her body, find out what she could not; what Magda never knew. Understand what happened to Luiza. She doesn’t dare look at Magda, who she can feel is puzzling, who keeps elbowing her in the ribs. Instead she wipes her eyes and just stares straight ahead, sending her sister silent thoughts. I have to, I have to, I have to.
‘Tell me what you saw,’ Papa keeps saying. ‘You must tell me.’ Must with his mouth tight around the m. He’s trying to be gentle, but his fingers are digging into her upper arms.
‘She didn’t see anything,’ says Magda. ‘She just wants attention.’
‘I did see something,’ Evie shouts. ‘It was the evening of the garden party, right before Luiza disappeared.’ Hot, red waves ripple through her. She fights back tears, and wishes she could bite Magda’s knowing smirk right off her face as she tells Papa about how she sat for hours hiding under the cassia tree, with its branches that hung down as low as her knees. The ground was carpeted with pink flowers she had gathered in handfuls, plus a few white ones from the gardenia. She tells him about how their stems were so thin that it took all afternoon to make a crown and she worked very hard on it, even when she heard Magda calling her to come help with the bar. The crown was for Luiza and, though a few of the flowers were a bit bruised at the edges where she’d held them too tight, it looked so pretty. When the party started, Luiza came out to the garden and stood by the cassia tree, and Evie crawled out from under its branches to give her the crown. Luiza said she loved it and promised to wear it all night, even if their mother got cross. But then she kept feeling inside her pocket, where Evie could see the outline of her cigarette packet.
‘She said I should go help Magda before she came to find me, so I left. But then I remembered that I’d left my book under the tree, and when I crawled under again to get it, I saw that the school I’d started making wasn’t finished and I just wanted to poke a few more holes in the ground and catch a few beetles and give just one last lesson.’ Here Evie reddens, trying not to see Magda’s sneer, and angry at herself for forgetting to make up something that sounded less childish. ‘I was little then,’ she says, staring at the ground, but Papa gives her shoulders a gentle shake, which brings back the memory with sickening freshness.
‘I know,’ he says, rubbing her trembling arms. ‘You’re a young lady now. What happened next?’
So Evie takes a deep breath, for she’s about to betray the adult she loved the most, the one she still believes loved her the most, and who she now imagines reaching back through space, smelling of cassia flowers and sea water, gripping her arms until they bruise. Don’t tell.
Evie was still under the tree when a man came to talk to Luiza, who wouldn’t face him. He had his back to Evie.
‘I couldn’t see him very well, just his back and his legs,’ she says to her father now, worried she’s mixing things up.
‘That’s fine, pet. Go on.’
‘Then she said he was disgusting and worth less than a madman.’
Her voice had sounded strange, high and fake, and she kept turning her chin in a funny way and shutting her eyes.
‘Then he said something like he was growling, and he did something—I think he hurt her—but I couldn’t see because he was in front of her.’
‘He hit her?’
‘No, he barely moved, but she fell down on the ground and she was crying so hard and he just turned around and walked back to the house, and then I saw that it was Mr. Carmichael.’
Her father says softly, ‘Carmichael?’
Evie worries that she’s in trouble, and doesn’t say how funny Luiza had looked wearing the crown while she got angry at Mr. Carmichael, and how when she lay on the ground, her face was puckered and ugly. And then the way the crown had come apart in the back after Luiza slid to the ground, covering one eye; how she didn’t take it off or try to move it; how it did look childish, and awful, and sad.
‘I wanted to take the flowers back but—’ Evie chokes, noticing that Magda is trembling beside her.
‘That’s all you cared about?’ demands Magda. ‘The stupid flowers!’
Her sister shoots hate from her black eyes after Papa tells her to wait in the car, that he and Evie have more talking to do in private. Magda sulks off and Evie knows she’ll catch hell from her later, but she doesn’t care.
‘The flowers were very special,’ says Papa, blinking hard, still rubbing Evie’s unbending arms. ‘And you were right not to waste them. You can keep going.’
But Evie is too tired to say the rest, to say that she didn’t care about the fucking flowers—she wants to say the forbidden word to help expel some of her frustration and grief, but it won’t come. No words come. She only wanted to take the flowers back so that Luiza wouldn’t look ridiculous as she cried, but it didn’t matter—it was too late.
Papa lets go of her arms and kisses her on the head. He waits until her shudders have slowed, then says she’s to tell that very same story to Mrs. Carmichael.
‘But I think it will make her feel awful.’
‘I think you’re right.’
‘Then what will we do?’
‘All these months; has it been a year yet?’ he says, taking Evie’s face in his hands. ‘I’ve wondered why. Why did she leave us? Now I know.’ He crumples against her.
Before he stopped the car, Papa had driven faster than ever before, the trees above them a patchy blur. When Evie tipped her head back, she imagined the branches overhead as arms stretching over her, reaching down, about to pluck her from the back seat. This is her father now, the heavy, smothering boughs of his arms, the crushing weight of his trunk as he sobs into her hair, lifting her off the ground. Then he straightens—his body, his tie, her dress. He takes her hand and leads her back toward the car, smiling queerly.
‘Your sister loved you, Evelyn. I know she did,’ he says to her now. ‘Everything that happens from this point on is necessary, for her.’