The nursery is a blood bath, still, as the roses remain precisely where they were when Libby left last night. Whoever ordered them will be here today, then. She best not water them, or they will pee all over their new owner’s vehicle.
Meandering past them, Libby wields her watering can and wanders down the aisle of Dutchman’s britches (her favorite), picking off a handful of dried, curling leaves as she goes.
She could have stayed home today. Her parents asked if she wanted to, even offered to call in on her behalf. They’ve never done that before. Keeping your commitments is a core value in the Lucas household, though Libby supposes it isn’t every night that one of them trips over a dead body.
Freshly dead, too.
Sari was still warm when Libby fell on the dirt floor next to her, her body pliant. She can still see her as vividly as though they’re lying next to each other now—the gouges where her eyes should be, her skin torn and twisted. The image haunted her all night, even though Libby isn’t necessarily scared of death the way most people seem to be. It’s life that she loves.
Reaching into the pouch of her apron, she sprinkles fertilizer into a potted delphinium.
Dead things are empty things.
Taxidermy is therefore the art of illusion. With cotton and some glass eyes, she could make Sari look alive again. Not that she wants to … but she could.
Her phone buzzes in her back pocket. Libby’s heart skips and an unsettling feeling drags her stomach toward the floor. She checks it and discovers a text message from her mom. Love you, Lib. Have a good day, ok?
Love you too she thumbs back, and shoves the phone in her jeans pocket again.
She exhales. For a second there, she was afraid it was Reeves. She woke to a Snapchat from him this morning, a three-word query to which she didn’t know how to respond, so she didn’t.
How are you?
Besides Chloe and her parents, no one’s ever asked her that before. Certainly not a boy, and certainly not one of Reeves Singh’s social status.
How is she?
Traumatized? Afraid? Fine?
She’s all and none of these things. What is that, then? Indifferent? Confused? Suspicious?
He could be a killer, you know, her internal voice nags.
“Oh, I know,” she replies. Libby snaps her head up, checking to see if anyone overheard. But she is alone in the nursery as far as she can tell, unless someone is lurking behind a ficus.
Which, someone is.
“Know what?” the stranger inquires, though as he approaches, she sees he isn’t a stranger at all.
“Oh, hi, Mr. Taylor.” An ember flares in her cheeks. “I was just … talking to myself.”
He smiles. Always a kind, close-mouthed smile with him. A non-Duchenne smile, the one that doesn’t quite reach the eyes.
“Are you here for pumpkins?” she wonders. “They’re out at the front.” It’s become her default greeting to people who wander back this way this time of year. No one’s interested in aloe or echinacea; IT’S FALL Y’ALL, as the many painted signs remind her.
“Actually…” Mr. Taylor points to the potted rosebushes. “I’m here for those lovely ladies.”
“Oh…” Libby’s brows shoot up toward her hairline. “So you’re the mysterious rose … buyer.” She’s so dumb. Her cheeks warm again and she busies herself with getting a cart to help him bring them to his vehicle.
“Indeed I am.” He’s nice to play along. In his thirties, Mr. Taylor is one of the younger teachers at Monroe Academy, and therefore, one of the most notorious student-crushes. It isn’t that he’s terribly attractive—though he’d be out of Libby’s league for sure—but he has a job and a house and a car and he isn’t bald, although he keeps his hair shorn close to his scalp. More than that, however, it’s the air of mystery that trails him like a shadow. He never talks about his personal life. No one knows if he has kids or a wife—or a partner at all—and Libby supposes that’s actually the way it should be. Teachers shouldn’t be airing their dirty laundry in the classrooms, not like Ms. Allouez, the recently divorced chemistry teacher who allegedly had students destroy her wedding photos over Bunsen burners.
“Are these for Sweetest Day?” she asks, because she has to try. Sweetest Day was yesterday, but people will come in for belated gifts all week.
“I didn’t know that was a thing.” Mr. Taylor chuckles as they load the last of the sunset-pink roses onto the flatbed. Libby takes the handle and follows him out to his vehicle.
“When you work in a garden center, you learn that every day is a special occasion.”
“That’s kind of a nice way to look at life in general, isn’t it?” He winks, and she so badly wishes she could believe him. But after tripping over Sari’s dead body last night, she just can’t get behind it. Nevertheless, she smiles, a non-Duchenne to match his from earlier.
“Are these for you, or…?”
“My sister, actually. She’s always wanted a rose garden. And I thought … well, what better time than now?”
June, Libby thinks, but doesn’t say it. Maybe he has a shelter to protect them from the frost. But these are Aurora, Heather had said. They’re heartier than most. She shares that little factoid with him, pleased with herself for retaining it.
“Aurora? Well, how ’bout that. That’s her name.”
“Your sister’s?”
“Mm-hmm. I’ll have to let her know; she’ll be amused, I’m sure.” Mr. Taylor slams the hatch.
Libby can just barely make out the roses on the other side of the tinted glass.
“Thanks, Libby. I’ll see you in class tomorrow.”
So he doesn’t know about Sari Simons yet, she thinks, and it isn’t her place to tell him. He will find out on the news soon enough, whenever police release their statement.
Back inside, her mind is a Rubik’s Cube, wringing and twisting this way and that, trying to unlock an answer. She compartmentalizes what she knows.
Reeves’s DNA is on Madison. He allegedly admitted to having had contact with her at school Thursday afternoon. Smart on his part, reasons Libby. That way, police are inclined to ignore his fingerprints.
Furthermore, they had been fighting. They were always fighting, it seemed, their few amiable moments existing between arguments. It honestly would have struck her as odd if they hadn’t been fighting up until Madison’s death.
And Sari. This one is so obvious it’s almost laughable, because Reeves led her right to the body last night. They hadn’t been lost at all. How easy would it have been for him to have killed Sari and hidden her in the haunted house?
But she had seen Sari in line, hadn’t she? She’d seen her barrettes and her cosmological-print backpack. Unless … her mind had been playing a trick on her. We see what we want to see. That isn’t a phenomenon. That’s just a fundamental truth about being human. Perhaps her memory is filling in its own gaps, coloring the reality she wants to believe.
Another theory slithers into her mind.
Chloe.
What if she had been there last night? What if she killed Sari and ordered Reeves to bring Libby to the body? But—
“Libby?”
She whirls around, her hand flying open and tossing fertilizer onto the concrete floor.
Axel Winthorp looks like an apparition the way the light obscures him. “Do you have a few minutes to talk?”
Libby sinks her teeth into her bottom lip as she mouths a single syllable. Fudge.