Ghost Flower

by Michele Jaffe

  I felt, rather than saw, the other man’s eyes get huge as I sucked on the cut on my lip that I’d gotten from the Golds’ security guard’s right hook.

  The detective came around to take a look at me. He had an urban road system of veins on his nose, and there were teddy bears on his tie. I gave him a smile, apparently a bloody one because he pulled back. He turned to N. Martinez and said, “You had better get her tidied up. This gets out, we’re going to have flashbulbs lurking outside.”

  “That’s not standard procedure,” N. Martinez objected. The scowl hadn’t wavered, but it might have deepened. “The evidence—”

  “Get her cleaned up before Ainslie sees her if you want your job.”

  N. Martinez grabbed my arm with no pretense of trying to be gentle and led me out into the hall. He stopped to pick up a first aid kit, then dragged me to the men’s room. “I’m a girl,” I pointed out to him. You’d think someone with an interest in standard procedures would care about that.

  “But I’m not, and I’m coming in with you.” I knew from experience that police get very testy and overprotective when they hear you’ve kneed someone in the balls. He followed me in, put the first aid kit on one of the white porcelain sinks, and unlocked the handcuffs. “Wash yourself.”

  You reek of the fetid stench of death. Madam Cruz’s voice echoed in my ears as I watched him watch me.

  There were two sinks beneath a mirror. Behind me were two dingy green painted stalls, and alongside them was a urinal. There was a sign on the door with a time stamp that indicated the cleaning crew had been through that morning, but I didn’t believe it. The place could have used a full five hours of scrubbing.

  “Could you turn your back?” I said. “I’d like some privacy.”

  He ignored me and took up a position leaning against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest, still scowling. There was something familiar about him, I thought, but then realized it was probably just the expression in his eyes, the cold cop stare. I’d seen it before.

  I wondered what the N stood for. “Nosey,” maybe.

  My left hand looked bad, the knuckles covered with blood—mine, I noticed, as I rinsed it off—and starting to swell. It would be useless for at least a few days, depending on how long I kept it wrapped in a bandage. And that was the idea: No one could expect me to play the piano or tennis with a bandaged hand.

  Everything was going just how I’d intended. It was all—

  Cursed thing, only half-alive.

  I shivered. Stop it, I told myself. I reached around with my right hand to lift off my shirt, and it was only then that I realized I was shaking. Not just my hands but all of me, trembling uncontrollably. It was all going how I’d intended, but what was I really doing? Up until now it had been a game, pretend, an idea. Like a play, a character whose attributes you put on for a few hours and then later you get to go home and lie on the couch eating cheesy popcorn and watching movies and being yourself. But not anymore. Now it was irrevocably for real.

  Crashing Coralee Gold’s party was like plunging into a freezing cold lake, committing to it—it left no exit. I’d been seen. I’d been filmed. By tomorrow I’d be all over the YouTube feeds of Aurora’s former friends and classmates. There was no running away now. I felt trapped in the worst kind of trap—one I’d set for myself. Apparently even I knew I was unreliable.

  The floor seemed to roll under me, and my head swam. But I was damned if I was going to faint in front of Officer Sort-Of-Ugly. I leaned my hips against the sink and put my right palm on the mirror. I watched mascara trace lines down my cheeks. I should have worn waterproof I thought, and started to laugh the way you do when something isn’t funny, the way you do right before you begin to sob.

  “Hurry up,” N. Martinez said.

  If at that moment he had come over and asked if I were all right, if he had said anything nice, anything even the slightest bit reassuring or kind or thoughtful, I think I would have broken down. But the impersonal brusqueness of his command snapped me out of my panic. All my fear turned to anger.

  “I would hate to do anything to inconvenience you,” I said, grabbing a handful of paper towels and leaning toward the mirror to swipe the mascara from my face.

  “I doubt that.”

  His tone stopped me—it was almost like he was making a joke. But that seemed… unlikely. I resisted the urge to glance at him, concentrating on rifling through the first aid kit instead. I found an ace bandage and wrapped it around my left hand. I ran the fingers of my right hand through my hair and was turning from the mirror when I realized I’d parted it on the wrong side. Eve’s side. I quickly shifted it, then faced him and said, “I’m ready.” I held out my wrists for the cuffs.

  He let me stand there like that for a moment, the cuffs dangling from his right index finger, clearly enjoying himself. I could tell he was working up to something, probably some kind of unsavory proposal.

  He said, “I don’t know what you’re up to, but whatever it is, do it between eight A.M. and ten P.M. weekdays.”

  That surprised me, so instead of saying what I should have, I asked, “Why?”

  “I’m not on duty then. I don’t like dealing with spoiled girls or cowards.”

  “How do you know I’m a coward?”

  “You ran away, didn’t you?”

  I shook my head. “Someone has abandonment issues.” That got no reaction, not even a deepened scowl. “Besides, I’m not up to anything.”

  “I have five younger sisters. I know when someone is up to something.” He clicked the cuffs onto my wrists. “Come.”

  When we got back to the squad room, there was a woman detective in trousers and a blue button-down shirt at the desk. To her left was a slight, dark-haired man in khakis and a sweater. He looked like a well-dressed math teacher, but thanks to the flashcards I recognized him as Thomas Trident [38, Silverton family lawyer, newly married to Aunt Claire, likes antique cars and cooking, doesn’t like Uncle Tom jokes, estate depends on terms of prenup].

  Standing beside him, her posture so straight she looked like she had steel in her spine, was the woman I’d come to meet.

  Althea Bridger Silverton’s hair was a surprisingly chic helmet of silver. Even though it had to be nearly midnight and she must have been roused from bed, she was wearing a silver pendant over her rose ruffle-front blouse, and her beige trousers had a perfect sharp crease running down the front. She had the wan thinness and rigid posture of someone who was ill, but somehow on Althea it came off as glamorous. Maybe it was the large framed glasses, the tint partially concealing her eyes, but I had a fleeting image of her sitting at a white clothed table at a chic bistro in Paris, moving small pieces of lettuce around on her plate, sipping Chablis and smiling as men with thin cigars said witty things to court her favor like an elegantly aging French film star. The only sign that she was anything but calm were her knuckles, taut from gripping the chain of her Chanel shoulder bag so tightly.

  Would she believe I was her granddaughter, or wouldn’t she? The female detective was saying, “We’re still running her prints against—” But Althea silenced her by raising one perfectly manicured finger.

  She crossed the room toward me, taking her time. The air seemed to get more densely packed with each step, heavy and with the scent of gardenias. She stopped a foot from me and stared long and hard through the tinted glasses.

  My mouth went dry. My heart was racing. Her face was an unreadable mask. Without any change in her expression, her hand snaked out and slapped me hard across the face. “How dare you come back like this?”

  Welcome home, Aurora.

  “Althea, we should at least wait for the fingerprint—”

  “Shut up, Thomas,” she barked. “It’s her. No one else would have the gumption to behave this way. Come on,” she said, moving toward the door. “We’ll deal with you in private.” There was fury in her voice, but beneath it I could have sworn I heard an undertone of excitement.

  Her nails dug hard
into the skin of my arm as we left the station.

  CHAPTER 12

  We walked down the steps of the police station like that, with me pinned next to her, and toward a large dark blue Mercedes parked at the curb. When she was still a dozen stepsaway, a man got out of the driver’s side and opened the door for her.

  In all the photos I’d seen of Arthur Redmond [Silverton’s chauffer since before Aurora was born, drove because he loved it, net worth more than $3,000,000], he had wrapped his large, mahogany bulk in a navy-blue uniform with two rows of gold buttons marching down the front. Now he was wearing khakis, a pink-and-white-striped button-down open at the neck, a brown belt with a sterling silver buckle, and slippers with playful-looking terriers embroidered on them. Apparently even chauffeurs got to go casual when dragged out of bed at midnight.

  Althea turned to him and said with a sigh, “I’m afraid you will have to come back later for Thom.” As though that were the big inconvenience of the night.

  “Of course, ma’am,” he told her. Turning to me, he added, “And if I may, it is nice to see you again, Miss.”

  “Thank you, Arthur,” I said. I hadn’t even realized I’d used his name until I caught the flash of a look pass between him and Althea, and was glad I’d done it.

  But Althea’s tone was still devoid of warmth as she pointed to the door and said, “Come along, Aurora. There is no reason for us to stand gabbing like parrots in the street. Get in the car.” She let go of my arm, and I saw her savor the sight of the red gashes her nails had left.

  Bridgette, Bain, and I had spent dozens of hours rehearsing this first conversation alone with Aurora’s grandmother, plotting out answers to the inevitable questions—where have you been, why did you leave, why are you back, what happened that night?

  “Don’t tell her too much about where you’ve been,” Bain had cautioned. “Just say that for a long time you didn’t remember anything, and when you did you felt guilty for being gone.”

  “I think dirty is better than guilty,” I’d suggested.

  Bridgette had looked at me, cocking her head like a curious bird, and then nodded. “You’re right. Dirty. Althea will understand that, but she won’t want to hear too many details.”

  “And let her start the conversation,” Bain plowed on. “Wait for her to ask.”

  I slid across the wide camel leather expanse of the backseat, and Althea got in after me. The door clicked solidly closed on us, and I got ready for my first private performance.

  “Well, that makes a change from a normal Friday night,” Althea said as her sedan pulled smoothly from the curb.

  “Yes, it does,” Arthur agreed.

  Althea said, “Gin or Fish?”

  I wasn’t sure if she was talking to Arthur or to me. She wasn’t looking at either of us. Was this a test? She was busy flipping down the armrest in the backseat and extracting from it a deck of gold monogrammed playing cards. It had been specially outfitted with a teak top and two little leaves that flipped out to make a card table. She held the cards toward me and repeated, impatiently now, “Gin or Fish?” Her eyes met mine.

  “You want to play cards?”

  “We always played cards before. Why not now?”

  I considered for a moment, trying to mask the beating of my heart by tapping a fingernail against the teak table. Was it gin or Fish? Bain and Bridgette hadn’t said anything about playing cards. “Gin,” I said.

  Althea smiled, but I wasn’t sure if it was the right answer. “A penny a point,” she announced. “It’s not fun unless there is something on the line.”

  “I don’t play for money.”

  “Everyone always says that. It’s never true.” She pushed the cards toward me. “Cut.”

  As I watched her even up the cards, I realized her cold reception had done me a favor—any lingering concerns I had that what Bain, Bridgette, and I were doing might hurt her had completely vanished. Althea Silverton was invulnerable.

  She dealt with the quick competence of someone who did it regularly. We played in silence, broken only by the sound of cards being picked up and put down and once by her saying, “You’re playing well.”

  She was a shrewd player, but I wasn’t that far behind her, even with my attention divided between the game and watching where we were going. With the kind of life I’d been living, being able to gauge both people and their cards came in handy.

  I knew from Bain’s tutorials—the family real estate holdings were one of his favorite themes—that the Silverton compound was built on a massive property amassed over time by Aurora’s grand-father, Sargeant Silverton, and Althea. As Sargeant developed his real estate empire, they bought more and more of the parcels around them until they owned nearly an entire hilltop that backed onto Ventana Canyon. They’d built their house, which was officially Silverton House but was referred to simply as the House, and then houses for their children when they married. Immediately next door to the House was Silverton Manse, the house Bridgette and Bain lived in with their father, and beyond that was Weathervane, Aunt Claire and Uncle Thom’s house. When I’d asked why it was called Weathervane, Bain said I’d understand when I got there.

  Now as we wound up into the hills I saw a glass and steel building cantilevered out over the canyon like an eagle straining forward to take flight. Or, I realized, like a weathervane pointing due north.

  We drew up in front of a set of massive iron gates with interlocking S’s on them, and the car came to a stop waiting for them to open.

  Althea announced, “Gin,” laid down her cards, pointed her tinted lenses at me, and said, “Are you on drugs?”

  In the surface of her glasses I saw my eyes widen in surprise. “No.”

  “Do you have any diseases?”

  “No.”

  Silence. She nodded once toward the rearview mirror, and the gates began to swing open. The big car slid between them and up the drive to the House. I had an anxious feeling that the real action was about to start.

  She raised a thin fist to her mouth and cleared her throat. “When we get to the House, you will go straight to your room and wait until you are summoned tomorrow morning. The staff needs to be informed of your return, but they will be told my way, not by you.” Her voice was hard and cold, without a shred of kindness. “I will think nothing of throwing you out, young lady, so if you want to stay, you had better show more cooperation than… in the past.”

  I nodded. In the past. What was the real Aurora like? I wondered.

  The car swept around the massive stone fountain in the middle of the circular drive and stopped in front of an entrance with three flagstone steps. Small lights cast golden halos around the stone-framed windows. The front door was a massive hunk of oak, hand-carved, I knew, by Aurora’s father for her mother as a wedding present with the story of Apollo and Daphne. It was set into a façade that was supposed to look like a Tuscan Villa, but on a scale not even a Medici could have conceived. Three stories built around an open courtyard in the center, it seemed even more massive than in the photos I’d seen.

  As the car pulled up, she said, “Do you know why you lost, just now, at gin?”

  “Because you outplayed me.”

  “No. It was because you were careless.” She spoke quickly, and if I’d thought she was intense before, it was nothing compared to the way she spoke now. “I could see your entire hand reflected in the window. I knew every move you were going to make before you made it. A stupid mistake.” She looked at me over the tinted glasses. “You should take care to protect yourself.”

  I had the impression she wasn’t just talking about cards, and I wasn’t sure I was either when I told her, “Or maybe you shouldn’t palm the aces.”

  There was a startled intake of breath, and then she said, almost wonderingly, “You‘ve changed.”

  “I will take that as a compliment, Grandmother.”

  She seemed on the verge of saying something, but then Arthur was there, holding her door open for her. When she was out
of the car, he came around to open mine. I stood for a moment breathing in the warm night air, sweet with the scent of honeysuckle, and looked up at Silverton House.

  Althea had said everyone was asleep, but staring at the rows of glinting windows, I had the sense that someone was watching. The House, I realized. It was as if the House were watching. Waiting for me.

  Something isn’t right, a voice said in my head. No good will come to you here. Leave now while you still can.

  Althea’s hand gripped my arm like a talon, and she led me inside.

  CHAPTER 13

  As I walked next to Althea, I reviewed the layout of the House in my mind, preparing for the next test.

  Althea cleared her throat. “Your room,” she prompted. I felt her gaze burning into me. Aurora’s room was on the third floor in the southwest corner. From the front door there were two ways to go.

  I could either turn right…

  “Where are you going?” Althea demanded. I turned to look at her. Behind her tinted sunglasses, her eyes were challenging.

  “To my room,” I said.

  “You’re not going to take the stairs?” she asked.

  “The shortest way is to cut across the courtyard and take the middle stairs.” I watched her expression change. “You said to go there directly,” I said, working not to sound smug.

  Standing, I was six inches taller than she was, which made it easier to see through her tinted lenses. I caught something between surprise and confusion flicker across her face.

  “Indeed. I just didn’t expect you to be so very obedient.”

  “As you’ve said, I’ve changed.” I bent to kiss her cheek and said, “Goodnight, Grandmother.”

  She pulled away like I’d scorched her. “Don’t call me that. After what you have done, you have no right to be so familiar. If you must call me anything, call me Althea.” Her tone held the keen tang of an icicle in the moonlight. “Go to bed.”