The Dead Romantics (34)

Mr. Taylor barked a laugh. “Course he did! Mind if I ask what else you need doing?”

So I told him—the flowers, and the murder of crows, and the party decorations, and Elvis—

“You know, there’s an impersonator who always sings up at Bar None. Your dad loved him. He’d stop by every Thursday night before heading to his poker game and make the poor guy sing ‘Return to Sender.’?”

“Bar None,” I echoed, remembering that Dad did love to go have a drink or two before poker nights.

“Yep. Always got them hips goin’ and everything.” He mimicked the impersonator as best he could without throwing out a hip. “Maybe that’s who your dad meant?”

“Maybe,” I said. It was worth a try, at least. I’d go first thing tomorrow. “Thanks—that’s a big help.”

“Always. Lemme know if you change your mind about those wildflowers,” he added as I waved goodbye, and then he gave a start, as if he remembered something. “Oh, Florence—I’d hate to ask . . .”

“Yeah?”

“As I said,” Mr. Taylor fretted, “we’re up to our gills in orders and running a bit behind—those flowers your dad ordered may arrive a bit late.”

My heart jumped into my throat. “He ordered flowers?”

“Earlier this week,” Mr. Taylor replied. “A bouquet of daylilies, to Foxglove Lane.”

So, not wildflowers. Of course Dad wouldn’t make it that easy. But Foxglove Lane . . . I knew where it was. But why would he send flowers there? I didn’t know why I said what I did next. Maybe it was to glimpse into the everyday life I’d missed. Maybe it was to walk, for a moment more, in Dad’s shoes. I said, “I’ll deliver the flowers.”

“Oh, I couldn’t ask you to—”

“It’d be a pleasure. Besides, I’ve nothing else to do today, and it’d be good to explore the town a bit since I’ve been gone.” I smiled to really sell the point, and he must’ve been really strapped for help, because he handed me the address written in Dad’s loopy script and a single arrangement of daylilies, and thanked me profusely.

It really wasn’t that big a deal, and I really didn’t have anything else to do today. I didn’t want to go to Bar None, because it was Saturday in the late afternoon, and I was sure it was already getting a bit crowded. And while I loved Mairmont, I didn’t want to see many of the people in there. I didn’t know who from my graduating class left the town or stayed—and most of them, unlike Dana and John, hadn’t been very nice.

I’d been lucky to have not run into them thus far, but considering that I’d only been here about twenty-four hours . . . I knew my luck was shit, and it’d run out sooner rather than later.

As I left the florist, I tried to ignore my untimely shadow, and Ben was really hard to ignore. Especially because he was pretending to not follow me, and that just made it creepier.

“I see you, you know,” I said when I reached the end of the block. I looked over my shoulder, and he quickly whirled on his heels and pretended to go the other way. “Seriously?”

He winced and turned back to face me. “Sorry. I was . . . I just saw you and I . . .”

“You’ve been following me since the bed-and-breakfast.”

He wilted. “I have no excuse.”

“Admitting there is a problem is the first step to recovery, good job.”

“I’m not sure what else to do.” He put his hands in his pockets, his shoulders hunched. He looked a bit more unraveled than he had this morning, his hair floppy and his eyes tired. “Or where else to go.”

There was nowhere else. It was me and then . . . whatever came after. If anything came after. My family was the spiritual but not religious sort. We all had our different ideas of what happened—whether we returned to the world, or became part of the wind, or just . . . if we just stopped.

And anyway, whatever I could’ve said wouldn’t have helped him.

He was, on all accounts, dead. Rose had verified it. And at least I knew I wasn’t going crazy—he really was here. For the moment, however long it took.

And I was his last stop.

I hugged the arrangement tighter. “Well, you can come with me,” I offered.

“Can I?” He perked, like a golden retriever who’d finally been asked to go for walkies.

“Yeah. We can get to the bottom of this thrilling mystery together,” I said, referring to the arrangement. “Why would my dad send flowers to a stranger’s house?”

“Maybe he knew them from somewhere?” Ben guessed.

“He did have poker games. Maybe it’s one of his buddies from that?” But I doubted he’d send them daylilies. He’d send them orchids or corpse flowers or—something a bit more his brand. Daylilies weren’t his style at all.

My frown deepened as I thought, prompting Ben to propose, “We’ll see when we get there, I suppose.”

“I hate surprises,” I agreed with a sigh.

Foxglove Lane was one of those quiet streets adjacent to the main drag where you could just see yourself buying a house behind a white picket fence and growing old in it. The houses were all different colors of Charleston-type designs, with porches that faced the west and narrow builds. When I was eight or nine, I went to a birthday party for someone who lived on Foxglove Lane. Adair Bowman, maybe? It was a slumber party and they broke out the Ouija board and I sat back and had absolutely nothing to do with it.