RoseBlood(10)

I stall halfway up the stairs and glance again at the overgrown garden where the cluster of dead roses sways in the wind. Is that what the guy was doing earlier? Fighting a battle against weeds? Considering what was left in his wake, it looks more like he’s the weed himself, like the phantom in the stories—someone who contaminates his surroundings with death and violence.

An outcast like me . . .

I haven’t always affected things around me adversely. I used to be the one Dad would come to when any of his plants were dying. Maybe that’s why I’m here, to find that healing side again . . . to save this garden. Maybe that’s why the gardener’s glinting eyes appeared so familiar—it was my imagination, trying to revive those precious moments with Dad.

I’m totally losing it. I tap the end of my braid against my lips, nipping at the strands so they crinkle between my teeth.

“Rune, you’re chewing your hair, hon.” Mom pats my back.

“Did you see him?” I ask.

“Who?” She follows my gaze across to the garden.

“The guy by the roses earlier. He’s gone now. I think he works here . . .”

“What did he look like?” she asks.

“I could only see half his face.”

She rolls her eyes then looks over my head where the chauffer digs bags out of the limo’s trunk. “You’re not seriously asking me to believe you just saw the phantom in his half-mask, are you?”

“I didn’t say that,” I mumble around my wet hair. “Not exactly.” But now that I think about it, the side that was hidden from view could’ve had a mask.

Mom catches my braid and dries the end between her palms. “Sweetie, I understand you’re nervous. But I really need you to try. Stop convincing yourself this is going to be a bad experience before you even give it a chance. Okay?”

She kisses my forehead when I nod. I don’t dare tell her about the crow and its strange call. It would only validate what she left unsaid: that it’s all in my imagination.

As we reach the top step, the double doors—adorned with tarnished brass cherubs—swing open on a foreboding creak. Warm air and the scents of lemon oil and stale candle wax waft over us.

“Bon après-midi, mon chéri Emma!” An older woman squeals my mom’s name. The opening widens, revealing her height, taller than our average five-foot-six-inch stature by at least two inches.

Long, grayish-white braids dangle over both of her ears and skim her slim waist. A silk chiffon hanky wraps around her head to hold back stray strands. Round, gold-rimmed glasses soften the wrinkles at the edges of her eyes.

She’s dressed in a blue button-down short-sleeve shirt and khaki capri pants. Ballet-style slippers hug her feet. Judging by the dingy apron at her hipbones and the dust rag in her pocket, I’m guessing she’s with housekeeping.

Mom leaps into her open arms, shattering my hypothesis.

“Lottie,” she murmurs into the other woman’s swanlike neck. “It’s been too long.”

So this is Aunt Charlotte. I expected her to be draped in furs and jewels. What is it with the women in my family being housekeepers? Is it a curse they can’t escape, even after a run of fame and success? Still, she looks good for sixty. Maybe Ponce de León should’ve collected feather dusters instead of searching all over Florida for the secret to agelessness.

Giving my mother one last squeeze, the older woman’s eyes narrow to slivers beneath her lenses. “Rune?” she asks with a gritty voice, and they both turn to me. My aunt pushes the glasses atop the hanky covering her hair, jangling the chain that connects the earpieces. There’s the resemblance: the turned-up nose and soft hazel irises shadowed by short lashes. She favors my grandmother, but I see Dad there, too. Longing snaps inside of me as I imprint his image onto her.

“Yes,” Mom answers. “Grown a bit since her christening, hasn’t she?”

“She is exquisite.” The flavor of France spices my aunt’s English but doesn’t mask the tremor of emotion in her voice. “Looks so much like you at her age.”

Mom and Dad became high school sweethearts when he came from France to America as a foreign exchange student in the twelfth grade. A bitter irony, now that I’m treading his homeland during my senior year and he’s no longer in the world.

Aunt Charlotte steps closer, graceful and demure as any ballerina. The woman is oblivious to personal space. “You arrived sooner than expected. We did not anticipate you until later tonight.”

“We’re experienced shoppers.” Mom winks at me.

I teeter on the edge of the threshold, half in and half out, unable to bring myself to cross over like she already has.

“And did you find the drive suitable?” Aunt Charlotte aims the question in my direction. Her breath smells like canned pears and caramel, reminding me of Dad and how we preserved fruit together the last August before he died—something his mom did with him as he was growing up.

“Um, yeah. It was . . . nice. Roomy.” I can’t even say thank you for all she’s done before she whips off my cap, snatches the band out of my hair, and unwinds my braid. The ribbons flutter to the floor. Several droplets leftover from the rain drizzle from the door frame above, sinking cold into my scalp.

“She has his hair,” Aunt Charlotte says, and I can’t tell if she’s sad or happy as she crimps my curls in her fingers. I tighten my grip on my tote.