Page 36 of A Secret In The Garden

In a particularly disturbing magazine piece, a then nineteen-year-old Jasper was interviewed for his ingenious business strategy. The interviewer asked a series of crass questions before teasing that Jasper was so wealthy now that no one cared who he had murdered. Jasper had given a commanding response, putting the interviewer in their place, and from then on, the articles took on a very different tone—they seemed fascinated and enthralled by him, if not afraid.

Photos of him getting into helicopters, at award ceremonies with leggy blonds, even being mentioned in men’s fashion columns and Forbes features, it was endless.

It was a lot harder to find anything on Hester and Darius, but eventually, I found an old excerpt from a home and garden magazine. The article itself was somewhat useless, as it mostly spoke about the inspiration for the architectural details of Blackwood Manor, but the photo they used proved more than interesting.

Standing next to a heavyset tan man with a knifelike nose and the same sharp jaw as Jasper stood the ghost woman in her living form. There was no mistaking it. She beamed up at the man as he held her tightly, unable to hide his own happy smile.

It was her.

Jasper Blackwood’s mother, Hester, was dead and haunting me; there was no getting around it. And if Hester was dead, then she was incapable of writing those letters to Jasper. Which made me wonder where the ghost of Darius was lurking.

The happy young couple stood together amidst a beautiful, abundant garden absolutely brimming with red and deep purple blooms that set off both of their all-black outfits in a beautifully artistic photograph. Hester looked only slightly younger in the photo than she did in my room, but everything else about her felt different and would have been nearly unrecognizable if not for her strikingly beautiful features, which made you stop and stare. Gone were the sad, hollow eyes and sallow skin of the woman who visited me. She was gorgeous, and the glow of life radiated from her as she stood in a sun-drenched outdoor garden, her arms around Darius’s waist. She looked like a woman who had never once been touched by sadness—a far cry from the woman whose red-eyed sobs had woken me in the middle of the night.

I nearly leaped from the mattress when my eyes snagged on a shiny gold chain around her neck. She was wearing the locket. A scream sat in my throat, needing to be released with the buzz from my new information. But I couldn’t scream; instead, I moved to sit in the chair, alone in my room, and tried to make the puzzle pieces fit.

Several times last night, I’d gone back to the photo of Hester and Darius in the garden. There was something peaceful and happy about it. The couple’s happiness and love poured from my phone screen so deeply, I could feel it in my own skin.

What had happened to them?

And that’s when I saw it.

The koi pond that they stood next to. The layout was exactly the same as the conservatory—except they weren’t in a conservatory. They were outside in the fresh air with the open cliff behind them, in the exact spot where the conservatory now sat, except that was different too.

In the distance, a large stone wall safely blocked the edge of the cliff—a wall I knew for a fact was no longer there.

Eventually, I moved back to the bed and fell asleep with wild theories spinning webs in my head. Had Sowerby done it and was somehow getting money from Jasper? Hester and Darius were not at all what they had seemed in the photo. They let their plant poison half the town—their own neighbors. They were not good people. Quite the contrary. I knew better than anyone that happy family photos showed nothing of what went on behind the scenes. Had Darius gotten rough with Hester, and Jasper tried to stop him? What had happened for Jasper to have Hester’s blood on his shirt? They said it was tested and confirmed to be her blood.

Had Darius done it, and that was why only Hester’s ghost had shown herself? It seemed Blackwood Bladecraft, Darius’s company, had started to expand and, with it, gained a bit of controversy. Several media sources had shamed Blackwood Bladecraft for their expansion into other more secretive medical areas of alloy testing and manufacturing and for supplying weapons to stores that made them easily accessible to children. Though there were sprinklings of talk about money suddenly hemorrhaging from the company, the timeline was all wonky and confusing.

I needed to find out when the stone wall had been removed. Could they have fallen by accident? Was that why Hester’s ghost haunted Blackwood Manor? Did proximity matter to spirits? Or did they haunt Blackwood Manor because their killer was still there? As a kid growing up in Pinehurst, I had already heard most of what I had read about Jasper, mostly little bits and pieces of conversations adults had around me. At the time, it hadn’t mattered; I’d barely kept the information. I mostly remembered the ghost stories about the knife victims haunting the manor. Looking through the articles, the ghost stories seemed to have originated from a maid who used to work at the manor who stated she saw the ghosts, which was ultimately what made her quit. It had all felt so far away from me then. Now, it felt like one of the most important things in the world.

It felt like Hester’s peace was in my hands, that I was the only one who could help set her free. I had to do everything I could to find the answers about what had happened to Hester and Darius. I had been going about this all wrong, trying to keep Jasper away.

I needed to get closer to Jasper.

Something that didn’t sound really all that bad until I thought of the very, very real possibility that he had killed them—or maybe even just one of them—and the danger that put me in. He was certainly angry and cold enough that it wasn’t all that much of a stretch, but I’d seen him talk about money and luxurious things since staying here, and it just didn’t seem like he cared that much about the money for that to be his motive, not really. It sounded like he had been a pretty violent kid, so it seemed likely to me that money hadn’t been the motive—anger had been. I also got the impression that he wasn’t fond of Blackwood Manor, especially considering how often he worked and lived in his other homes across the world, which raised a lot of questions: If he had such horrid memories tied to the manor, why stay at all? Why not sell it? Something kept him from putting the manor behind him, and I was starting to think it wasn’t just memories.

When the hell was I going to find time to talk to Jasper? And not just talk to him but get him comfortable enough with me that I could pry, subtly, into the private parts of his life—all while finishing the fucking conservatory.

My head was a blender of thoughts as I made my way downstairs for the day. My exhausted, overstimulated body took me straight to the kitchen for coffee. I perked up at the thought immediately, looking forward to seeing Katya. She had very quickly become one of my favorite people, and only a portion of that was because she kept me extremely well fed and caffeinated. The instant we met, she was warm and caring, always leaving snacks or a plate out for me when I didn’t make it to dinner or was working late in the garden. Sometimes, I’d bring her a tiny bouquet of the flowers that had gotten pruned and would have been thrown out, and every time, she’d make a huge deal about it, acting as if I’d brought her a thousand dollars instead of wilted, half-dead flowers. Every time I left the kitchen in the morning, she had the most encouraging, uplifting things to say, just something short and quick. Sometimes, I thought her little words in the morning fueled my work well into the evening. She was like the supportive motherly figure I had always wished for. Not that I didn’t love my mother, I did—even when it got really, really hard to.

“Katya, my queen, do you possibly have a barrel instead of a mere mug this morn—oh, sorry.” I stopped as soon as I turned the corner and saw Jasper leaning against the counter, cradling a large mug of coffee as if it were a precious gold ring from Middle-earth.

“Eliza, sorry. Katya and Sowerby had to run out for something; she’ll be back this evening,” Jasper said as he nursed the steaming coffee. The clean, fruity scent of Fabuloso and warm coffee filled the air in an uplifting mix.

“Ooh shit, that’s right. I can’t believe I forgot. I meant to talk to you about letting me run into town to get them a card,” I said, slapping my palm to my forehead. She had been so excited for today that I had helped her pick out a sweater to wear a week ago. She had chosen a dark-green cashmere argyle sweater that made her hazel eyes pop beautifully.

His thick brows pulled together as his glare darkened. “A card? You couldn’t have forgotten; it just happened. Katya had to run out to grab flour, and Sowerby drove her because she hates to drive on the mountain. What would you get her a card for?”

Oh my god. Jasper didn’t remember.

“It’s their anniversary. I don’t have time to run into town now; the koi are getting delivered today.” Shit. I didn’t want her to think I’d forgotten. “Do you have some markers and some paper or something? It’s the thought that counts.” I shrugged as I moved to look through the cabinets in search of the biggest cup I could find.

Jasper made a choked sound. “Their anniversary? That’s beyond absurd. They’re not…” I could see the pieces slowly coming together in his eyes. Had he not known they were together? Maybe he and Sowerby weren’t as close as I’d thought.

“What?” I nearly shouted at him. “How could you not think they are together? They are the cutest couple in the entire world.”

He stared at me as if I’d just shot him with a freeze ray.