“What?” she exclaimed.
“Oh, Vance is wrapped around your little finger, honey!” Danielle giggled. “There’s a card…but I was strong enough not to read it, thank you!”
“Oh my heck!” Boston breathed as she hurried to the table. “It’s…it’s massive!”
“Oh, yeah! Vance never does anything average—a barrel of Tootsie Pops…a field of flowers.”
Boston shook her head, unable to believe the beautiful arrangement was actually sprouting from her simple cookie basket! The basket was stuffed with butterscotch daisies, miniature sunflowers, orange and yellow mums, orange lilies, and Leonidas roses that were rather terra cotta on the inside and creamy yellow on the outside. Stems of dried wheat and red berries embellished the already beautiful arrangement, and a small gift card was held by a plastic florist peg protruding from its center.
“I have just one question,” Danielle began. “What did you put in those cookies?”
Boston shook her head, still awed by the beautiful floral arrangement on the table. “Nothing. Nothing different from what I usually do…except I used milk chocolate chips instead of semisweet.”
“Well?” Danielle asked with pure impatience.
“Well, what?”
“Are you going to read the card?”
“Oh! Yeah…I guess so,” Boston said. Carefully, she removed the small card from its little plastic peg. She smiled as she read her name on the envelope, sprawled in nearly illegible man-writing (as she and Danielle liked to call it).
“Read it to yourself first…in case he says something I might feel compelled to chew a hole in him for,” Danielle suggested.
Boston giggled, opened the envelope, and removed the card.
“Boston,” she read aloud, ignoring Danielle’s suggestion for the sake of her own zeal. “More cookies, please. Be sure the lights are out when I come over to pick them up. Love, Vance.”
“Love?” Danielle squealed. “Love? Oh my heck! I knew it, I knew it, I knew it!”
“Danielle,” Boston began, “he’s just being nice. I’m sure…I’m sure he signed it that way out of habit. We all do it.” Still, Boston’s heart hammered like a train rolling down the tracks as she looked at the word love scribbled in Vance’s sloppy handwriting.
Danielle seemed to ignore Boston, however, and simply exclaimed, “Oh my heck!” She snatched the card from Boston’s hands and read, “Be sure the lights are out when I come over to pick them up.” Danielle smiled a knowing smile. “To the best of my knowledge, whenever the lights go out with you and my brother in the same room…oooo! Muchas smooches! Oh my heck!”
Boston couldn’t help but catch hold of Danielle’s excitement. The Steph-poisoned Boston was afraid to believe Vance meant the basket flower arrangement as anything more than a kind way of thanking her for the cookies. Yet the true soul of Boston Rhodes dared to hope differently. After all, there was nothing trivial, mediocre, or casual in such an effort, expense, and insinuative inscription.
“Maybe he’ll come over tonight!” Danielle said. “Dempsey called and wants me to run over and see the new ad campaign he’s working on. Maybe while I’m gone…maybe Vance will come over and turn out the lights for a little while.”
“And if not?” Boston asked, hopeful that Vance would drop by. She knew the job he was working on had run late the past few nights—but she hoped anyway.
“If not,” Danielle said, picking up a large Priority Mail box from one of the kitchen chairs. “Then you can start going through these for me!”
Boston gasped, opened the box, and squealed with delight when she saw its contents.
“The pictures?” she asked Danielle. “The pictures you’ve been begging your mom to send so you can start scanning them?”
Danielle nodded. “Look how many there are,” she said. She balanced the box on one arm, reached inside, and pulled out an ancient, sepia print. “I mean, I know this one. It’s my Great-Great-Grandmother Nathaniel.” She tossed the picture back in the box. “But when I got to digging through them, I found these three…that I thought our weird, sort of morbid curiosities about the past might find interesting.”
Boston watched, entirely intrigued, as Danielle reached into the box and withdrew three old, Victorian-era photographs. “Take a look,” Danielle said, handing them to Danielle. “I don’t recognize the names on the back…first names anyway.”
Boston looked at the three photos. Her eyes widened; a chill prickled the hairs at the back of her neck. One photo was of an elderly man, the other two of young women. Instantly, Boston knew why Danielle had thought them intriguing.
“Postmortems,” Boston whispered.
“Exactly,” Danielle whispered in return.
“I’m already wigging out,” Boston said as she studied the photographs taken of the subjects following their deaths.
“But you’re intrigued too, huh?” Danielle said. “I know I am. I figure when I get back from Dempsey’s, we can go through the box. But it might be interesting to start with these.”
“Are there any more in there?” Boston asked, glancing into the box.
Danielle shrugged. “I don’t know. Mom sort of sent a conglomeration. There are old ones…really old ones…but there are even some of my old school and prom pictures mixed in. It’ll be fun to organize them. Don’t you think?”
“Oh, totally!” Boston agreed, still studying the three postmortem photographs in her hand.
Boston loved photographs, especially old ones, and the thought of going through Danielle’s old photographs with her was like anticipating the grandest adventure.
“Okay,” Danielle began as Boston placed the three postmortem photos back in the box, “so if Vance doesn’t show up—which I think he will, simply to see if you liked the flowers, if nothing else—then you can start going through the photos.”
“Oh, I’ll love looking through them!” Boston exclaimed.
“Not as much as you’ll love making out with my brother,” Danielle said. She giggled, grabbed her purse off the kitchen counter, and headed for the door. “I’m off to Dempsey’s. See you later!”
“Have fun!” Boston called to her. As Danielle closed the door, however, she remembered that in all her excitement over the flowers, she’d forgotten to tell Danielle she’d gotten the assistant news scriptwriter’s job at the station. Oh well. It was no big deal. She could tell her later.
Boston turned, sighed, and smiled as she studied the beautiful flower arrangement. It was September, and the orange, crimson, and gold colors arranged in the basket caused Boston’s already grand appreciation of the beginning of the season to heighten. She leaned forward, sniffing each rose, caressing a lovely orange mum with the tips of her fingers. She hoped Vance did come by to see if she liked the flowers—she just hoped he came by at all.
Yet as six o’clock spent its hour and then seven, Boston wondered if a long day working the stretch of road between the city and Mustang had been too wearing for him. She tried not to think of Vance trapped in that crummy motel. She wished the previous owners of his house would move out early.
Sighing with disappointment in the lack of Vance’s presence in the apartment, Boston turned off the TV. Yawning, she went to the kitchen, retrieved the box of pictures Danielle’s mom had sent, and returned to the sofa to leaf through them.
There were so many photographs—and from so many eras! To Boston, it was like opening a treasure chest and finding a wealth of gold pirate treasure.
Slowly she leafed through the photos, giggling when she came upon an awkward school dance photo of Danielle. Brace-faced and with a giant zit protruding from her chin, Danielle still looked beautiful—even at fourteen, fifteen, or whatever teen year she was enduring at the time the photo was taken.
“Sadie Hawkins,” Boston read on the back of the photo. She reached into the box and drew out another photo. This time Danielle had shed her braces and the monster zit on her chin. Boston turned the photo over. “Junior Prom,” she re
ad. She giggled and pulled out the postmortem photos instead.
“Who were you?” she whispered as she studied the photos. “Why did you die?” The thought intrigued her. Oh, she knew most people would think she was morbid for finding the photographs interesting. Yet she laughed—another human hypocrisy. People still took postmortem photographs, only usually they took them at funerals, when the deceased were already in their casket. But wasn’t it really the same thing? She’d even heard a lady once at a funeral commenting on how disturbing Victorians were for taking photos of their dead to remember them by. Boston had then watched the same lady walk up to her late uncle’s casket and take several photos. She’d always thought it was a connection with the past. People of bygone centuries did take photographs of loved ones before burial. It was a reflex borne of mourning, a desperate attempt to hold on, to always have a part of the loved one there, tangibly in view. People still mourned, still felt the need to hold on, still took photos of loved ones not for morbid reasons—but out of pure love, because losing someone hurt so thoroughly that the human spirit, heart, and mind often wondered if endurance of the loss was even possible. That’s why people took photos of loved ones before they were committed to the grave. It was why the Victorians did it, and it was why people still did it. And to Boston—well, she’d always understood it. Especially since her grandmother had passed away some years before. Oh, how she wanted to keep her image—even her last image—forever.
Boston turned the photograph of the elderly man over.
“Noble Angus Nathaniel,” she read aloud. “39th New York Infantry Regiment.”
She smiled, her mind suddenly alive with possibilities. Boston hopped up and made for her bedroom. She knew Civil War infantry lists were often available on the Internet. If she could discover something on old Noble Angus before Danielle got home from Dempsey’s…
Chapter Twelve
Vance listened to Dempsey. He’d been talking to Dempsey on his cell almost all the way over to Danielle and Boston’s apartment. It seemed Danielle was at Dempsey’s place and that he had called Vance to make sure he approved of his starting to pursue Danielle. Vance had found Dempsey’s call kind of touching—completely unnecessary, but touching.
Naturally, Dempsey had turned the tables and asked Vance when he was planning to turn up the heat with Boston. Danielle had told Dempsey about the barrel of Tootsie Pops and now the basket of flowers. Dempsey already knew Boston and Vance had spent eleven minutes of bliss in the pantry at his party, so Vance hadn’t denied his attraction to and interest in Boston.
Gradually, their conversation had taken a different venue. Vance was now coaching Dempsey on how to get past his own fear of rejection.
As he parked and climbed out of his pickup, Vance said, “It’s easy, dude. Just coax her into the pantry, turn out the light, and go for it! I can’t believe you’re nervous.” He chuckled, “You always look like you’ve got it all together.”
“I’m a wreck, man!” Dempsey said as Vance sauntered toward Boston’s apartment. He’d been even more excited and more impatient to get over to Boston’s place when he learned that Danielle wasn’t home—that Boston was probably home alone. He’d been sweating over his plans all day, trying to build up his courage. Vance had decided to ask Boston out. He figured if she was willing to kiss him in the dark, maybe she would be willing to go out with him. He was scared to death, of course—but he couldn’t keep away from her any longer and needed to try. He’d begun to hope she could accept him—even for his past.
“You’re a wreck?” Vance laughed, forcing his mind back to Dempsey’s predicament. “Dude! She’ll be putty in your hands. I know my sister.”
“You don’t know how long I’ve been in love with your sister, Vance,” Dempsey admitted, lowering his voice. “What if she, like, throws up or something?”
Vance laughed again. “She won’t throw up, man. Just drag her into that pantry and lay one on her! It’s like a magic room, dude. I promise.”
Dempsey inhaled a deep breath. “Okay, man. But if she slaps me…I’m coming after you.”
“Deal,” Vance said. “Now go drag your woman into the cave and have your way with her.”
“All right. Thanks, man,” Dempsey said.
“Anytime, my friend.”
Vance closed his cell and dropped it in his pocket. He looked down at his dusty, dirty shirt and worn-out jeans. He considered that maybe he shouldn’t have come straight from work. He wasn’t a very appealing sight, all covered in dust and smelling like road base and tar. He lifted his arm and sniffed his armpit. Raising his eyebrows in surprise that he still smelled more like deodorant than sweat, he raised a fist and knocked on the door.
Fear washed over him for a moment. What was he doing? She’d run away as fast as she could if she ever found out the truth about him—when she found out the truth. In that moment, he knew Boston Rhodes deserved so much more than he had to offer. He almost turned around and hightailed it—but he’d already knocked. Nothing left to do but man up and take a chance.
Boston startled—a terrified, yet quiet, yelp escaping her throat as there came another knock on the door. Trembling, she snatched her cell from the kitchen counter and crept toward the door once more. Tears brimmed in her eyes as she flipped open her cell and pressed 911. She didn’t press send but let her thumb hover just over the send button.
She brushed a tear from her cheek as she raised herself on tiptoes and peered through the peephole once more.
“Vance!” she cried in a whisper, relief and hope flooding her soul.
Quickly—desperately—wildly she turned the deadbolt, unlocked the doorknob, and opened the door.
“Vance!” she cried.
“Hi,” he said. He’d smiled when she’d first open the door, but his pleased expression quickly turned to a deep scowl as he looked at her. “What’s the matter?”
Boston reached out, taking hold of his wrist and pulling him into the apartment with her. Frantically she locked the door once more, twisted the turnkey on the dead bolt, and burst into tears.
“He’ll come back! I know he will!” she cried, throwing herself against the sure protection of Vance’s powerful body. She closed her cell phone, not even caring that her trembling caused her to drop it. Sliding her arms around Vance, hugging him tightly for reassurance that all would be well now that he was with her, Boston was instantly comforted as he returned her embrace.
“Who? Who will come back?” Vance asked, thoroughly perplexed. “What’s wrong?”
At once, Boston broke into one of her characteristic strings of babble.
“I was in the bedroom. I came home, and Danielle had gotten the package of pictures from your mom.” She paused, smiling even for her fear and tears. “And the flowers are gorgeous, Vance! I’ve never seen anything so beautiful! I can’t believe you’d—”
“Just tell me what’s wrong…what happened,” he interrupted. It was obvious he was concerned, and Boston thought perhaps he should be.
“Well, Danielle got the box of photos from your mom today, and she found these three that we were pretty sure are postmortem photographs. So, like an idiot—’cause I know I’m a chicken at night—but like an idiot, I thought I’d just look on the Internet for some information on the man in one of them…because his name is on the back…so he must be your guys’ relative, and his infantry number’s there too. So I thought I might be able to find something…but instead I decided to do a little research on postmortem photography of that era, and pretty soon I was getting totally freaked out because—let’s just say it—Victorian postmortem photography can be disturbing if it’s night and you’re home alone…and I was totally wigging out anyway because I am here all alone and shouldn’t have been looking that stuff up at night. So then I was afraid to go to bed or to get in the shower because…well…to be honest, I’ve just seen Psycho too many times, and that part when Janet Leigh gets shanked in the shower just freaks me out completely. So I didn’t want to get in the
shower because I’d been scrolling through pages and pages of those creepy old photographs, and then I started thinking about Tony Perkins in Psycho, all insane and stabbing Janet Leigh. So I thought maybe I’d watch TV or something and get my mind off of it, but then there was a knock on the door. So I looked through the peep hole, and it was some guy, a guy I didn’t know, so I didn’t answer the door…because…hello…I didn’t know him, and I’m here all alone. So I didn’t answer, so he starts pounding on the door and yelling about how he’s going to come back because he knows I’m here. And he was cussing…not like you cuss but, like, really bad words…and so he left, and I was totally freaked out then. But he came back, like, five minutes later and started pounding on the door again…and I thought I should maybe call 911. But they say to only call 911 if it’s matter of life or death…and so I wasn’t sure…and then he left…but he came back a third time, and I have no idea who he is or what he wants. He just keeps yelling about how I’m in his parking spot and he’s ticked off…though he used different verbiage than that, of course…and I don’t know what the heck he’s talking about. And I’m sure he’ll come back, and I can’t quit thinking about Tony Perkins stabbing Janet Leigh in Psycho in the shower…and those Victorian postmortem photos were really creepy and I…I…”
“Shh…okay…it’s all right,” Vance soothed, his powerful arms banding tightly around her. He rested his chin on the top of her head. This gesture lent even more comfort to her than his simple presence did, and she melted against him—feeling safe, protected.
“First of all,” Vance began, “you should never pause to dial 911 if you have even the slightest feeling you might be in danger, Boston.”
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