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“Upset enough to do something like this?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” I straightened as a thought suddenly came to me. “Wait. You know what? Rosalind got headless flowers, too.”

“The doll? Someone sent the doll headless flowers?”

“In one of the dioramas,” I clarified, grabbing my phone and opening the museum’s Instagram account. I quickly found the photo I had in mind: the little blonde doll standing in her doorway, looking befuddled as she held a paper-wrapped bouquet of stems in her hand.

“Here,” I said, holding out the phone. “Look at that.”

Her eyes widened. “Audrey, you posted this yesterday. That can’t be a coincidence.”

“I know,” I said, nodding. “I’m wondering if maybe Lawrence used it as inspiration.”

“What about Lena?” Cat asked, taking the phone and beginning to scroll through the comments. “Hasn’t she had problems with him, too?”

“Yeah, but . . .” I trailed off as I saw the color drain from Cat’s face. “What is it?”

“Have you seen this?” she asked, turning the phone to face me and pointing to a single comment: Roses are red, violets are blue, some flowers are headless, you could be too.

“Jesus Christ,” I gasped, my hands shaking as I snatched the phone from her. “I can’t believe I missed that.”

“Missed it? Do you have to approve the comments?”

“No, but part of my job is to read them all and delete things that are inappropriate. You’d be shocked how many morons think our posts are the best venue for a dick joke. I delete hundreds of trash comments every day. But last night I blew them off because Nick was over, and then this morning I was exhausted when I was reading through them. I must have just glossed right over this.”

I tapped the name of the offending commenter, someone calling themself “zoomie098.” They used an avatar of a sunglasses-wearing wolf as a profile picture and a Chris Farley quote as their bio, and their grid was a mishmash of reposted memes in a bad imitation of FuckJerry. I relaxed slightly. I was almost certain this was just a lame attempt at a joke. Almost. I screen-capped the profile for reference and then deleted the comment.

“Nick came over?” Cat asked sharply.

I looked up, surprised. “That’s what you’re focusing on right now? Someone posted a rhyme about cutting off my goddamn head and you’re on my case about Nick?”

“I just don’t understand why you waste your time with him, especially since I thought you were interested in Max.”

“Nick just dropped by to hang out,” I said with a shrug.

Cat gave me a dubious look.

“It’s true,” I insisted. “When he went to kiss me, I actually sent him away.”

“You sent Nick away? That’s a first.”

“Trust me, he was surprised, too.”

On the table between us, my phone vibrated. We both looked down and read the text that popped up from Nick on the screen: How about some real fun tonight?

“Speak of the devil,” Cat muttered.

“God, Nick, take a hint,” I said, rolling my eyes as I dismissed the notification. “Needy is not a good look on him.”

“Audrey,” Cat said slowly. “You don’t think . . . you don’t think Nick might have left those flowers?”

“Oh, please,” I said, bursting out laughing. “I don’t think Nick even knows how to find a florist. The man has never once sent me flowers.”

“Maybe there’s some poetry in starting with dead flowers.”

“No way. I don’t know who left those flowers, but it couldn’t have been Nick.”

“If you say so,” Cat said, but she still looked doubtful.





CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT





HIM


I’d felt electrified as I used the shears, snipping the head from each orange rose and setting the stem carefully in a box. My hands had been bloody, my body still vibrating with a dangerous mixture of anguish and righteousness as I placed the box in front of her door, and I had walked away certain I had communicated my message loud and clear. But then the night had taken a turn, and I was no longer sure it had been the right thing to do. In fact, as I replayed the action on a loop in my mind, I became more and more worried I was only going to drive Audrey away from me.

You know he just drives everyone away. My niece’s mocking words came back to me as I sat before a cheerful blue row house in Capitol Hill on a set of concrete steps I’d climbed dozens of times before.

Across the street, I saw a sandy-haired woman lean over a high-end stroller, cooing at the infant inside. With a start, I realized this was the same woman who used to waddle up and down these streets, her hands cupping her massively pregnant belly. I wanted to rush across the street to congratulate her, peer underneath the awning of the stroller to see whether the baby had its mother’s sharp features, tickle its fat little feet. I restrained myself. The last time I had seen this woman, I had been shouting some things I wasn’t proud of, and I didn’t want to alarm her.

But, oh, how seeing her and her infant made me smile. My body went warm and fuzzy as I imagined Audrey’s slight form swelling with the fruit of our union. Her small face would grow rounder, glow, as she carried our little one within her body, and when our beautiful child finally made its way into the world, she would look up at me from the hospital bed with a bursting smile and say, I love you. I love this life you’ve given me.