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“Where are you?” I said, my voice cracking.
“I’m here, I just came into the factory. Where are you?”
“Cleve’s office, top of the stairs on the right,” I said, and a minute later I heard him pounding up the steps.
“What happened?” he said when he saw me lying on the floor.
I patted the floor next to me, trying to swallow. My throat was really dry. “Come here.”
He lay down next to me and I pointed to the ceiling. “You see those yellow flowers up there? Do you know what they are?”
“Nope,” he said, getting that tone of voice he always had when I was coming unglued, cautious, concerned, and ready to act.
“Look at the other pictures.”
“Liz,” he said and I pointed at the ceiling.
“An anchor,” he said. “Some yellow flowers. A lilac?”
“Lavender,” I said.
“And a sky.” He got it then. “Navy, Lavender, Skye. What are the yellow flowers?” He stopped, and then turned his head to look at me.
“Magnolias,” I said, pretty sure they were.
He was quiet for a minute and then he said, “Yellow magnolias? I thought they were white.”
“The Elizabeth Magnolia tree has yellow flowers,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm.
“Oh,” Vince said, and looked back at the ceiling. “That’s. Different.”
“Maybe they’re there because I’m Cleve's niece,” I tried.
“Maybe,” he agreed. But then he came to the same realization I had. “Where’s Molly? She’s his niece, too.”
We both stared at the ceiling for a while, and then I tried to find my place in reality again. “So I’m Cleve’s daughter? My Uncle Day is really my uncle? Does my mother know?”
“She should have some sort of idea if it’s a possibility,” Vince pointed out. “You’re making a jump in logic here, though, just based on a ceiling.”
“Vince,” I said in a certain voice and we’d been together long enough that he knew what I meant.
“Yeah, I think you’re right. Makes sense. Magnolia, it’s time you had a DNA test, just to get the final word on that. You think your mother lied to you?”
“Many times.” I closed my eyes. “My mother must have had a very good time when she was eighteen.”
He rolled a little to one side to get his phone out and took a couple of pictures of the ceiling.
“Why?”
“So you’ll have a record of it. Cash is going to have the place demolished, remember?” He took another picture and then he looked at me, both of us still on the floor. “Let’s go to JB’s and get food. And you need a beer.”
“It’s going to take more than a beer,” I told him.
“We can work on that.”
He was sitting up, putting his phone back in his pocket, when there was a knock on the door, and Cash came in saying, “Lizzie, it’s dinnertime.” He stopped when he didn’t see me and then half a second later saw Vince getting up from the floor.
“Yoga,” Vince told Cash as he held his hand down for me, and I grabbed it and he pulled me to my feet.
