I swallowed, but yanked the door open nonetheless and clambered down the stairs. The morgue reeked of roses. Dad had probably stuck some bouquets in one of the cold chambers to keep them fresh for the funeral. On autopilot, I walked over to the back wall—where Dad told he’d placed Mom—and pulled on the lever of her chamber. Her straight, shiny black hair gusted around her snowy shoulders.
“She always wore it in a braid,” I told Cruz.
My gaze roamed over the rest of her face that I knew by heart, over her high cheekbones, over the twin peaks of her upper lip, over the upward slope of her eyes, all remnants of our Native American ancestry.
“You look a lot like her,” he said, hanging up his coat next to Mom’s mortician robe. It drooped, as lifeless as her body.
I did look like Mom. I had the same black hair, black eyes. I even had the same sloping lips. The only difference between us had been our build. I was an entire head taller than she’d been, and slender like Dad.
Cruz circled around me, hooked his fingers around the shelf’s handle, and slid it out…slid Mom out. Her skin, which was always brown, even in the winter, had turned alabaster. Only the unnatural blue tinge of her lips and eyelids shattered her otherwise colorless complexion.
“What does Catori mean?” Cruz asked, his voice slicing through the thick silence like the blade of the scalpel that would soon slash through Mom’s sternum.
I took a step back to allow him to slide the drawer out completely. “It means ‘spirit’ in Hopi.”
“Aren’t you of Gottwa descent?”
“Yes.” I gazed down at her closed eyes, willing them to open again. “But Dad liked the name.”
“And Nova?”
“It means, ‘chasing butterflies’. When my mother was born, three butterflies landed on her crib. At least, that’s what my grandma told me.” Her lids didn’t flutter. For a second, I saw myself as a child spooked by a nightmare, tiptoeing into my parent’s room to find comfort in their bed. I would always come around to my mother’s side because she’d lift the covers and let me crawl in, whereas Dad would carry me back to my bedroom, promising the dream catchers would trap my next nightmare.
“Catori?”
“No one calls me that. Just Cat.”
“That’s too bad. It’s a beautiful name.” He raked his hand through his wavy black hair. “Look, I’m going to start…examining your mother. I think it would be wiser if you left.”
“I’m a medical student.”
“If you want to keep her memory intact, don’t stay for this.”
“I’m staying.”
“Why?”
“Because”—I gaped at the thin white sheet covering her chest and legs—“her heart didn’t just stop. Someone stopped it. And I want to be there when you find out how.”
CHAPTER 3 – THE BOOK
“What makes you think your mother was murdered?” Cruz asked me, tilting his head.
“She was forty-four, in perfect health. There’s no way she had a heart attack.”
“People have heart attacks all the time,” Cruz said.
“People with poor eating habits, heightened stress, or genetic predispositions. Mom had neither of those. I won’t interfere with your work, but I’m staying.”
“Suit yourself,” he said. He flung the sheet off Mom’s pallid body, but it seemed to lift in slow motion, caressing her collarbone and her chest, slipping over her navel and thighs, gliding over her calves and feet, finally pooling onto the tiled floor like milk.
I blinked, and the quiet unveiling was replaced by the horror of her naked body sprawled out on the steel bed. I stumbled backward, but caught myself on the metal instrument rack. The shiny, sharp tools rattled in time with my pulse.
My stomach contracted, and the orange juice I drank earlier shot up my throat. I just made it to the metal sink. I gripped the edges as more spasms hardened my insides. I wasn’t sure how long I stayed hunched over the sink, but white and black dots started dancing before my eyes.
Wordlessly, Cruz’s hands settled around my elbows. He guided me back up to the kitchen where he sat me down and crouched next to me. “I’ll come to get you when I’m done. To tell you if I find anything in her system, all right?”
I nodded. Although I looked at his face, I couldn’t see him. All I could see were those damn monochromatic dots, like static on a television screen. As his shoes clanged against the basement stairs, I breathed in and out, waiting for color to flood my eyesight again. When it did, I rose. Walking proved difficult as my legs were still wobbly, but I didn’t give my body a choice. I needed to pull through this. Mom would have wanted me to stay strong.
My gaze locked on the yellow door. Damn door!
Inflamed by the need to make it disappear, I went outside, braving the wind that swirled snowflakes around the tombstones. I hurried to the shed at the back of the house where my parents used to store a bunch of unnecessary items, like my first bike and extra car tires that didn’t fit any of our cars. I shoved things around, aiming my phone’s flashlight on the hoarded mess. Finally, I found what I was looking for: a paint can and a roller brush. The dried paint around the lid was white. Not yellow. Perfect.
After grabbing both, I locked the wooden doors and returned to the house clutching the swinging bucket and brush. I discarded my jacket and sweater on my way to the kitchen. They landed on the back of the crackled brown suede armchair, but slid onto the rug. I snatched a pairing knife from the wooden block and popped the lid off the can. Grabbing yesterday’s newspaper, I plastered the floor with the broadsheets, and then I dipped the brush into the can and rolled it over the yellow color until sweat and paint dripped along my bare forearms. It took three coats to get rid of the color. By the time I was finished, even the doorknob was white. I backed up and stared at it, and then I started crying because I’d just gotten rid of something else my mother had made.
The doorbell rang. I prayed it wasn’t another visitor armed with a casserole and unsatisfying words. Blotting my eyes with my knuckles, I went to open the door.
The postman stood before me in his furry, flap-eared hat. “I got a delivery for you, Cat,” he said, handing me a heavy box.
“I didn’t order anything.”
“It’s—it was for your mother. You want me to return it? I can just—” He shifted and his rubber boots squeaked on the porch boards.
“I’ll take it.”
“Um…you got something on your face. Makeup or paint or something.”
“Oh, yeah. I was redecorating.”
“I did that when my momma passed away. It helped.”
It hadn’t helped me.
“Well, you have a good one,” he said, giving me an awkward thumbs-up. “And stay warm,” he added, trotting back to the post truck.
Hugging the cardboard box to my chest, I shut the door and raced up the stairs to my bedroom. I kicked the door closed and placed the box on my feather-printed comforter. Using the tip of a pen, I sliced through the packing tape, pulled the tabs open, and combed away the Styrofoam peanuts.
“What the hell?” I murmured, lifting a thick, leather-bound book that smelled musty, as though it had been sitting in someone’s basement for half a century.
I ran my fingers over the embossed gold title. The Wytchen Tree. Mom tended to the cemetery garden, but a book about a tree was downright eccentric, even for her. I crossed my small bedroom toward the shapeless beanbag next to my window. The purple velvet cover was threadbare in places, but I’d never wanted to reupholster it. That purple fabric had captured my tears of anger when I was a child and my tears of heartache when I was a teenager. Replacing it would mean getting rid of my childhood, like covering an old plush toy with new fur. Hadn’t I gotten rid of enough things already?
The beanbag molded to my body and supported my elbows as I propped the heavy book open. It was printed in 1938. Nearly a hundred years ago. The book must have been worth a small fortune. Perhaps I should have returned it. We weren’t poor�
��I was one of the lucky few who hadn’t needed to take out a student loan—but we were by no means rolling in it. I bit my lip and glanced at the box. I could still return it as long as I didn’t crease a page or damage the soft binding. No one would notice that a set of eyes had perused it.
Delicately, I flipped from one page to the next, because I was curious what had been going through my mother’s mind these last few days. In the first chapter, I found out that a wytchen tree was just a fancy name for a rowan tree, the very trees in our cemetery. I read about its virtues, about the berries’ use in jams and medications. And then I came upon a passage that made me understand why my mother had purchased the book.
In 1812, Negongwa, the revered leader of the Gottwa Indians, espoused the American cause in exchange for a plot of land that spanned from the coast of Lake Michigan to the edge of the Manistee Forest. This land later became known as Rowan.
Negongwa, along with his entire family, lay beneath our property. Negongwa, my great, great, great, great, great, great, great-grandfather. The Wytchen Tree spoke about our ancestors. My mother had always been fascinated by our lineage. She hadn’t bought this book to learn more about trees; she’d bought it to learn more about her roots.
It was rumored that the Gottwa tribe possessed supernatural powers. Some said they were related to the Pahans or “little people,” but others described them as Pahan hunters. When they settled by the Great Lakes, they planted wytchen trees around their land that served as both a natural border and a shield against faeries, witches, and disease.
I snorted. I couldn’t help myself. Faeries? Seriously. When Mom told me stories of our ancestors, she’d always made them out to be magic-wielding semi-deities. But that was Mom, who’d believed there were more dimensions to our world, dimensions our ancestors could penetrate thanks to magic but which were lost on us rational humans. Most of my friends would lap up Mom’s stories and insist we go sit in the circle of rowan trees at twilight, above the graves, and call on the dead. I’d done it—several times—and nothing had happened.
I closed the book and brought it back to the cardboard box, dropping it on the pile of Styrofoam peanuts. Some drifted out like clumpy snowflakes, sticking to my comforter and gray jeans. As I brushed them off, something whacked my window, making me jump. “Just a tree branch,” I murmured to myself.
The snow was coming down hard, sheets of white slanting out of the dull sky. The branch struck my window again. This time, I was prepared so I didn’t react. I just watched the wild spectacle, mesmerized by the power of nature.
The power of nature.
I glanced at the book again. Perhaps there was power in a tree. I shook my head to dislodge the irrational idea. If a tree could really repel disease, wouldn’t it be planted next to every hospital? Wouldn’t houses be built only from that material? The future doctor in me couldn’t believe there existed a miracle barrier against disease. As soon as the blizzard blew over, I would head to the post office and send the damn book back.
I heard Dad and Cruz talking downstairs, so I shoved the box underneath my bed and went to join them. “You’ve met Cruz,” I said, gathering my hair in a ponytail.
Dad turned toward me. “I was just telling him that he couldn’t drive in this weather.” He squinted. “What happened to your face?”
“I painted the kitchen door. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Wouldn’t have changed much if I had, would it?” he said gently, but there was a reproach there. He’d always thought that I was too headstrong. Mom said it was a wonderful trait for a girl to possess. Dad didn’t agree. That wasn’t to say he would have wanted me to be submissive, but perhaps more soft-spoken.
“I wouldn’t want to impose,” Cruz said.
“Impose?”
“I told him he should stay in the guest room.”
Super. “What did you find?” I asked Cruz, to avoid dwelling on the fact that a complete stranger would reside under our roof tonight.
Dad furrowed his blond eyebrows, which accentuated the new lines that had appeared on his forehead and around his eyes.
“She suffered a stroke from a blockage in her carotid artery.”
“Show me.”
Cruz narrowed his eyes. “I already sewed her up.”
Dad’s hand settled on my arm. “Cat, please, let this go. It’s already so hard. Leave your mother in peace now.”
“She didn’t die because of a clogged artery,” I said. “She was healthy, Dad. So healthy.”
My father squeezed my arm. “People have strokes all the time.”
“But she was forty-four—”
“I know, Cat. I know.” My father’s voice was gentle but firm. He pulled me into a hug. I banged my fists against his chest, which made him hug me tighter.
“It’s not fair,” I sobbed. “Not fair.”
“You sure you want to be a doctor, honey? Because you’re going to see a lot of things that aren’t fair.” He caressed my hair, running his fingers through it like he used to when I had nightmares. And like when I was a little girl, the gentle stroking soothed me. “How about I dig up something for us to eat while you show Cruz to the guestroom?” he suggested.
I wanted to suggest that we inverse rolls, but Dad was already on his way to the kitchen. Wrapping my arms around my chest because it was damn cold in the house, I crossed the living room. “It’s over here.” I almost tripped over the upturned corner of the rug. “I need to nail it to the wood,” I muttered, mostly to fill the deafening silence.
“You seem cold. Do you want me to build a fire?”
“I can do it.”
“I’m certain you are capable of it, Catori, but I’m also certain you have other things to do. Like take a shower.” His gaze struck my paint-splattered forearms.
“Fine.”
Cruz smiled.
My grandparents’ old bedroom contained a queen-sized bed pushed against a wall, a nightstand, and a small dresser. It was modest, but cozy. For years, I’d asked my parents if I could move into it, but they’d refused, suspecting that my incentive to live downstairs was based on my desire to break their rules.
“Bathroom is through here,” I said, pushing through a door that led to a room paved in mosaics with a claw-foot bathtub and chrome and porcelain sinks.
I tucked my hands in the back pocket of my jeans. “Only bathtub in the house.”
He rested one of his hands on the curved ceramic edge. I must have imagined his skin glowing the other night because it didn’t tonight.
“How long do you think you’ll be staying in town?”
“A few days.”
“The snow should stop by tomorrow, so you should be fine to leave then.” He frowned, probably because he picked up on my not so subtle attempt to get rid of him. “Let me get you a towel and some fresh sheets for the bed.”
As I headed back into the bedroom, Cruz’s voice rang out, “Did you put a tarp up on that plot you dug up?”
“What plot?”
“The one between the rowan trees.”
“What, are you a botanist too?” I asked, pulling out a set of pressed white sheets and fluffy navy towels.
“My dad taught me about the fauna and the flora. He was a nature-lover.”
“Was?” I placed the towels on top of the dresser and the sheets on the bed.
“He and my mom died in a car accident when I was a teenager.”
“Oh.”
He shrugged. “You grieve, and then you forget the pain and you move on.”
I didn’t think I could ever forget the pain of losing my mother, but it wasn’t worth debating with Cruz. For all I knew, he hadn’t been that close to his parents.
“So, did you cover that plot?” he asked as I turned to leave. “With all that snow falling—”
“That’s not where we’re putting Mom,” I said.
“Then why did you dig it up?”
“Mom did. The headstone started caving and she was afraid there would be a landslide
. She wanted to solidify the foundations.”
“So that’s where the old casket downstairs came from.”
“What old casket?”
“Didn’t you see it? It was in the middle of the room.”
“No. I…I didn’t.” All I had seen was Mom.
“Could you open it for me?” he asked.
“There’s probably nothing left inside besides bones. ”
“Still, I’m curious. Aren’t you?”
“Seeing my ancestor’s remains isn’t at the top of my bucket list.”
“Your ancestor? One of the twelve rumored to be powerful?”
I snorted. “You’ve heard the stories?”
“Stories? You don’t believe them?”
“Are you really asking me if I believe in faeries?”
“I am, Catori.” His green eyes seemed to glow brighter.
“Sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t. And I don’t think anyone in their right mind should believe in little people wielding magic sticks.”
“Little people?” He chuckled. “Why would you assume they’re little?”
“They were called pahans, which means ‘little people’. Haven’t you seen Tinker Bell? She’s tiny.”
“And she’s also a piece of fiction,” Cruz said, still smiling.
“Just like all faeries. Anyway, I should get cleaned up. I’ll see you at dinner.”
CHAPTER 4 – ROSE PETALS
“It wasn’t me,” Blake said. I could hear he was at work from the sound of oil sizzling.
“What do you mean it wasn’t you?” I asked, putting my cell phone on speaker so I could pull off my jeans.
“Maybe your dad cleaned it up?”
I frowned as I turned on the shower. “Maybe,” I said, but considering the state my father was in that morning, I doubted it was him. “Is your grams keeping the place open tonight?”
“Yes and it’s packed. Who knew blizzards could be so good for business?”
“People are getting dinner and a show.”
Blake laughed. “Did the new medical examiner already leave town?”
Rose Petal Graves (The Lost Clan Book 1) Page 2