“Would that be a good setting for a party?” Faye asked.
“A garden party, I suppose.” Her eyes widened. “Are you planning a spring open house? What a great idea!”
“Actually, I’m planning a graduation party for a very special girl. A garden theme would be perfect because this girl has blossomed in front of my eyes.”
Faye could tell it took Wreath, who so seldom had something given to her, a moment to realize she was the honoree.
Wreath’s eyes lit up. “We can do it for all of our customers who are graduating,” she said. “We can sell exclusive sponsorships.”
Faye shook her head. “It will be exclusive, all right, designed just for you. This party’s not for sale. I intended for it to be a surprise, but I want you to look forward to it.”
Wreath did her funny dance and walked over to give Faye a hug. The woman, so alone a year ago, drank in the strawberry scent of Wreath’s hair, the warmth of her affection. “Why don’t you go next door and ask if J. D. might have a few plants he’d be willing to loan us? He’s the one with the plant sources.”
“You sure you don’t want to go?” Wreath asked with a cheeky grin, and Faye swatted her lightly on the rear and sent her out, hoping Wreath would understand when the time came.
J. D. grew still when Wreath walked in the store; she thought he looked almost ill.
“Are you all right? You don’t have the flu, do you?” she asked.
“Yes. No.” He shook his head, but his eyes were glued to her face. “I was wool-gathering. What brings you over today?”
Wreath outlined her design plans in great detail, J. D. hanging on every word as though listening to a foreign language. “Do you understand what I’m going for?”
“Absolutely. I’ll round up what you need and bring it right over.” He pulled the small notebook out of his pocket and started jotting something down.
“What are you writing?” Wreath asked.
“A list of what you’re looking for. I use lists to help me think.”
“Oh,” Wreath said. “So do I.”
“I’ve noticed,” he said.
“Well … thanks for the help.”
“Wreath,” he called as she headed out the door.
She stopped and turned.
“When you have a few minutes, I’d like to talk about your plans for the future.”
“Sure.” Lots of people had asked her about college. She didn’t know why J. D. looked so sober as he mentioned the topic. “Let me get the window done,” she said, “and we can visit. Maybe Faye’ll join us for a cup of tea.”
“That’d be nice,” he said.
Wreath pulled the stepladder out of the closet and noticed the messy remnants of a package of cookies. “You must have had a hungry bunch in today,” she yelled to Faye, who stood staring out the front window.
“We had a few lookers, and I sold that wicker settee you liked so much,” Faye called back.
Wreath dug through the cabinet. “Who ate all the snacks? I’d better put the grocery store on my to-do list.” She dug through her pack, stuffed in its usual spot under the workroom table, and made a few notes. “We need extras for that bride and her mother coming tomorrow to look for favors.”
Walking back out into the showroom, she sniffed the air with a frown. “Did you have a workman here today?”
Faye didn’t look up from Wreath’s laptop, where she now compiled her sales records, but shook her head absentmindedly. “We agreed to put that off until summer, remember?”
“Oh right,” Wreath said, trying to identify the scent while she arranged a bouquet of bright tissue-paper flowers. She felt antsy and attributed it to the odd exchange with J. D. “These paper flowers’ll be perfect in that corner. Will it be all right if I go up in the attic and dig around, see if I can find anything else for our garden theme?”
Faye glanced at the clock. “Are you sure you want to start on it this late? It’s getting dark. Let’s wait until tomorrow.”
“I’ll just be up there a sec,” Wreath said, waiting for a slight nod before pulling the staircase down and climbing up with the agility of a monkey. Hearing the familiar rustling noise, she added rat poison to her mental shopping list and fumbled for the string to the dim light.
As she wrapped her fingers around the pull, she inhaled and caught a whiff of the odor again, not musty like the attic usually smelled, but musky, like a man’s cologne … like Big Fun …
Taking a shallow breath, Wreath made herself act as though nothing was amiss. She yelled an inane question down to Faye and stood still, trying to see without turning the light on or moving her head.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw them, the heavy boots that had once kicked Frankie off the front porch when Big Fun thought she was hiding tip money from him. “You didn’t think you could run away from me, did you?” he asked from the shadows.
Wreath dove for the opening to the stairs, looked down at the shop floor, and pitched forward. As she hit the floor, she wished for half a second that Law had been there to break her fall, as he had at Thanksgiving, and then she stumbled to her feet, unsteady but propelled by fear for her and Faye.
“What in the world?” Faye asked, rising from the desk. “Wreath?”
At that moment, Big Fun’s legs, looking like tree trunks, started down the steps, his torso hanging briefly in the small entry space.
“RUN!” Wreath screamed at the top of her lungs, heading for the back door.
“Fred? What are you doing here?” Faye sounded baffled for a moment before reality hit, and she jumped up. “Wreath!” she yelled.
“I’m okay,” Wreath shouted back. “Get J. D.! Call 911! Hurry!”
Faye hesitated and then ran toward the front door, screaming louder than Wreath would have imagined possible.
Desperate to divert Big Fun, she glanced back to see Faye gesturing wildly to J. D. on the sidewalk out front and pushed open the door, thankful it no longer stuck. As she had hoped, Big Fun followed her, and she sprinted down the alley.
“You can’t escape,” he roared. “You’re going to pay for what you’ve put me through this past year, and you’re going to tell me what you did with the bracelet!”
Wreath kept running, using every shortcut and decoy she’d memorized over the past months, wishing she had her bike but knowing she’d be more agile on foot.
“I’m going to wring your scrawny neck and kill that old lady you’re so crazy about and that uppity teacher and that boyfriend and your grandfather. I’ll kill them all!”
Dashing around a corner, her fright was covered with sorrow. She had brought harm to innocent people who had tried to help her, people she loved. The look of shock on Faye’s face was seared in her mind, and she remembered the woman calling out the name “Fred.”
Of course! Big Fun was the mysterious Fred Procell who had come around looking for her. Now he was more insane than ever, talking out of his head, threatening to kill a long list of people, including her grandfather. She didn’t even have a grandfather. He had lost his mind, and she had to save the people she cared about.
She jumped over a low fence, a downtown neighbor’s dog barely acknowledging her. “Good boy,” Wreath mouthed to the dog she saw regularly. The animal charged at Big Fun, tripping him.
Wreath dashed through the back gate before Big Fun got back to his feet, and she zipped through another yard and zigzagged out of town, wondering if she should avoid the junkyard altogether. She had enough in her pack to run.
Her pack! She had left her pack at the store.
A car drove by, and she jumped behind a tree. She didn’t know what to do. If she went back to the store, Big Fun might hurt Faye and Julia, even J. D. But she needed the pack, which contained half of the money she had saved, her journal, plus a change of clothes. And the bracelet. He would kill for it.
After months of living in the woods and relaxing enough to roam Landry’s sidewalks with little fear, Wreath suddenly felt exposed, no cover
around to hide her as she tried to decide what to do. She stayed close to houses, figuring that trespassing was better than being caught by Big Fun.
“Wreath!” a familiar voice called out. She spun around so fast she nearly fell.
Clarice pulled to the curb, a calm smile on her face. “Need a ride?”
Wreath looked wildly around but saw no sight of Big Fun. “That’d be great.” She practically leapt into the car and slouched down in the seat, gulping in air.
“What in the world is wrong?” Clarice handed her the standard bottle of water with a look of alarm. “Are you running from someone?”
“Being followed,” Wreath gasped, sounding like she had when she’d had the flu. She looked back over her shoulder.
“Wreath, this cannot continue,” Clarice said. “You must let me help you.”
“No. You shouldn’t be seen with me.” Wreath tried to push the door open, even though the car was moving. “He’ll hurt you.”
“No one’s going to hurt me.” The lawyer gave a small laugh. “I’ll beat up anyone who tries.”
“Joke all you want, but Big Fun is strong and mean.”
“So am I,” Clarice said. “You have to tell me the truth. I cannot help you unless you do.”
“I’m being chased by a very bad man,” Wreath said, her eyes moving back and forth so rapidly she got dizzy. “He’ll kill you. I know he will.”
“Wreath,” Clarice said in the tone television lawyers used in court, “does this have to do with Fred Procell?”
“You know him?”
“Every lawyer in Rapides Parish knows him. That man has a rap sheet longer than my arm. I’ll call the police.” She pulled over and started to reach for her phone.
“Don’t stop the car,” Wreath said. “Please keep driving.” She felt lost, the way she had the day Frankie died. Big Fun would never give up, and he would hurt everyone who loved her, even Clarice, who only thought she was tough.
“I must notify the authorities.” Clarice left the engine running but didn’t drive on. “It’s my responsibility.”
“Please, no,” Wreath said.
“I won’t tell them you’re with me for the time being,” she said. “But they need to know where Procell is.”
Wreath tried to hold back the sob that was perilously close to jumping out of her mouth. “I guess I don’t need a ride today after all.”
“You’ve trusted me for months, Wreath. Trust me now.”
Wreath sniffed, still not one hundred percent recovered from the gallop through town. Trust? She knew all about trust. People you trusted moved to other cities or took the cash you had hidden in your closet or died and left you alone. They wound up getting hurt because you came into their lives.
“I’m serious. Let me out,” she said.
“Wreath,” Clarice said. “I’m going to call the police. Collect your thoughts, and let’s figure out what you need to do. I’m here for you.” Her voice was now so kind that it almost sounded like Frankie’s.
Wreath sat for a moment and then looked at the woman as Clarice punched in the numbers. She spoke precisely and made a few comments before ending the call. “The police are on the scene,” she said to Wreath. “They are looking for Procell.”
“Is Faye all right?”
“I don’t know, but we can check on her.”
“No,” Wreath said and took a deep breath. “I need to get my backpack from the store. But I don’t want anyone to see me.”
“What if I went in and picked it up for you?”
“Faye’s in danger….” Wreath’s voice trailed off as she remembered Big Fun barreling away from the store. “Do you have a piece of paper and a pen?”
Without a word, Clarice reached into the backseat, hoisted up a leather satchel, and pulled out a yellow legal tablet and her fancy ink pen. She handed them to Wreath.
Dear Mrs. Durham, Wreath wrote, then crossed out the words and started over. Dear Faye: I am sorry for running out on you, but I’ll be in touch when Big Fun, a/k/a Fred, is gone. Clarice is giving me a ride home. Will you please give her my backpack? Love, Wreath Wisteria Willis.
She was so upset that she did not notice she had written her real last name.
Rarely was Clarice this unsure about whether she was doing the right thing, but she had felt from her first encounter with Wreath that she had been sent into the girl’s life to watch over her.
Faye, the young teacher, and J. D. were pacing when the lawyer walked in, their disappointment obvious that she wasn’t Wreath.
“Have you seen Wreath?” they asked in unison.
Clarice nodded slowly.
“Where is she? Is she hurt?”
“She’s fine, although a little shaken up. She asked me to give you this, Mrs. Durham.”
Faye nearly ripped the folded yellow paper from the attorney’s hand.
Scanning it, she again looked past Clarice. “Is she in the car? I want to talk to her.” She started for the door. “We need to tell her that Fred Procell is behind bars and will never lay a hand on her again.”
“Wait,” Clarice said in a voice she sometimes used on hostile witnesses. “Let me take her the pack and ask her if she’s ready to talk, if you don’t mind.”
“I can’t wait,” Faye said.
“Me, either,” Julia said.
“We have to go with you,” J. D. said.
“I expected that’s what you’d say,” Clarice said. “I know we all have Wreath’s welfare at heart.”
Clarice’s car was empty when they rushed up to it.
Wreath was nowhere to be seen.
Another note was in the driver’s seat. I hate to be so much trouble, but please leave my backpack with Law Rogers at the state park. I’ll get it from him later. Thanks for all your help. Wreath.
Clarice called herself every kind of fool for letting the teen out of her sight, and the worried group jumped in her car, speeding toward the park.
“Dear Lord,” Faye prayed out loud, “please watch over Wreath, and give me another opportunity to help her.”
J. D. patted her leg and then leaned forward. “We’ve got to do whatever it takes to find Wreath,” he said. “I can’t live with myself if we don’t.”
Pulling into the park, they piled out of the car and ran into the office, where a ranger stood behind the counter, his hands flat on top of the smooth wood surface.
“May I help you?” he said.
“We’re looking for Law Rogers,” J. D. said.
The man shook his head. “You just missed him. His shift ended not fifteen minutes ago. He’s not in any trouble, is he?”
“We have a message for him from a friend,” Clarice said.
“Must be a pretty important message,” the ranger said. He pointed toward Landry. “His grandpa picked him up today for band practice at church.”
Wreath crouched in the woods close to Law’s trailer, more scared than she had been since Frankie died.
She looked at her watch. Nearly two hours had passed since she’d run from Clarice’s car, but she still felt winded. J. D. and Faye had come by earlier, pounding on the door and calling her name in a hoarse voice. “Wreath, please come out,” J.D. begged, while she huddled nearby. I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, Wreath thought.
“She must have gone somewhere else,” Wreath heard Faye say.
“But where?” And then they left.
Within minutes, a battered pickup pulled off the road and drove right up to the front steps, bypassing the driveway for the little bit of grass in the front yard. Law’s mother stumbled out of one side, laughing loudly, and a man walked around the truck.
The door had hardly closed when Law and his grandfather turned into the drive. The two talked for a couple of minutes, but Wreath could not hear what they said.
When Law got out of the car, he leaned over the window and spoke. “If you hear anything, let me know. I’ll start calling everyone I know.”
Wreath sighed with relief. Her pack was s
lung over his shoulder.
She stared as the taillights of his grandfather’s car disappeared into the night. Law, illuminated by a streetlight, looked at the old truck on the grass of his front lawn and at the still-dark trailer, and stepped away from the mobile home, his head up, as though searching the sky.
She drank in the sight of him and wished her life didn’t have to be so weird.
“Law,” she called out so softly that she wondered if he would hear, but he turned instantly.
“Wreath?”
“I’m over here. Near the end of your house.” After the close encounter with Big Fun today, she intended to stay in the shadows as much as possible.
Law rushed toward her. “What in the world?” he asked, embracing her so fiercely that her feet came off the ground. He ran his hands over her hair and down her arms. “Did that man hurt you?”
Wreath clung to him, barely shaking her head.
“You scared the living daylights out of me. We’ve got to call Mrs. Durham and the others. They came to the church, and they’re out of their minds with worry.” He was wild-eyed, speaking rapidly.
“No, I can’t go over there,” Wreath said loudly, and a light came on in the end room.
A minute later a woman’s slurred voice called from the front of the trailer. “Law, is that you?” Then the light went off again, the sound of muffled voices inside.
“We have to get you over to Mrs. Durham’s,” Law said. “They need to talk to you.”
“She was hurt, wasn’t she? Faye’s hurt.” Wreath’s heart broke at the thought.
“She’s fine. Everyone’s fine.” He scanned her face. “Except for you. Wreath, we have to get you to them. They can work all this out for you.”
“I can’t be near them,” she said. “He’ll find me. He’ll hurt me.”
“Has he been stalking you all this time?” Law curled his hands into fists. “That guy won’t ever hurt you again. Shane arrested him. He chased him all over downtown and tackled him. He’s in jail.”
“Is Shane okay?”
“Yes. Shane’s fine. And you’re safe. Listen to me.” He put his hands on each side of her face, as though she would break. “That jerk’s behind bars.”
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