“Okay,” I say. “Thank you for telling me.” My mind feels full of cotton. I turn and walk slowly toward the back of the home.
“Let me know if you hear anything,” Noreen calls after me.
When I pass the dining room, I see that it is empty and the curtains are drawn. A heavy stillness grips the room; it looks suspended in amber. In the sunroom, when I step toward the doors to the terrace, they don’t automatically open. I look around, but there is noone in sight to help, no one to unlock the door. I cup my hands to the glass and peer outside, but no one is on the terrace.
My phone begins to buzz. I know who it is before I even look at the screen.
“Lucy,” Donovan says when I answer. Anger boils in his voice. “I assume you’ve heard what happened last night.”
“Is Cynthia okay?” I hear myself ask.
“I spoke with her niece this morning,” Donovan tells me. “Cynthia passed away last night.”
The floor tilts. I lean against the door, my vision blurring.No, I think.No no no no.
In my silence, Donovan goes on angrily. “I warned you about this. If you had listened to me, Ms. Kaminski might be alive today.”
His words are true, and they are poison in my veins.
“Jill is taking a leave of absence from the Oceanview Home,” Donovan says from far away. “If you need anything while you finish up your work, call me. I trust that you are still on schedule to be done by the end of next week?”
Be careful, my mom warned me.Every action has a consequence.
Jack’s car crushed against that tree. His leg… his family…
Cynthia alone in the garden, searching for hope where there was only danger.
I did this. I knew exactly what could happen because it has happened before, and I did it anyway.
A searing sob is stuck in my throat, stealing my air.
I need to leave.
Now.
I turn off my phone without saying another word to Donovan. I break into a jog, hurrying past the silent dining room and through the dark lobby. As I pull open the front door and Gully and I race out toward my truck, I hear Noreen’s thin voice calling after me.
“Lucy, dear? Where are you going? Wait! Oh, Lucy…”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Purple hyacinth: A flowering plant in the lily family with low spikes of densely packed blossoms whose inescapably sweet scent thrums with a message of regret
“Lucy!” My father looks up from his usual spot on the sofa as I burst through the door. “I’m glad you’re home. I have to tell you something—”
I keep going up to my room. I shut the door and curl into myself on my bed. Gully climbs up beside me. In the silence of the house, I hear my father rise from the sofa and walk to the base of the stairs.
“Lucy?” he calls.
I don’t answer. After a minute, I hear him walk away.
Cynthia is dead. She is gone. I will never see her again. What was I thinking, telling her to smell that honeysuckle? She was fragile, vulnerable, and she trusted me—just as Jack Harris had once trusted me. How have I done this again? How did I ever believe I might help Cynthia when I knew how I had destroyed Jack’s life? I put Cynthia in danger, knowingly, and—
And Marjorie. Oh, Marjorie—I can’t bear to think of Marjorie.
The day passes slowly and blurs into the next. Somewhere in the neighborhood, purple hyacinths push up through the soil; their cloying scent expands heavily in my chest, suffocating me with regret. My father makes meals that I don’t eat. He asks if I want to play chess, and I shake my head. I feel his eyes tracking me when I walk through the house. He doesn’t ask what happened, and I’m grateful.
I don’t sleep. Over and over and over, my mind shows me Cynthia walking among the flowers, alone. I set this all into motion, and now she is gone.
