The Butterfly Garden (The Collector #1)(39)

Bliss shook her head. “I can’t even imagine.”

“That’s not a bad thing.”

“I’m forgetting things from home,” she confessed. “I was trying to remember my street address earlier and I couldn’t remember if it was a road or an avenue or a street or what. I still can’t. One-oh-nine-two-nine Northwest Fifty-Eighth . . . something.”

Which was really what all the fuss came down to. I shifted to lay one of my hands over hers, because there was nothing I could say.

“Every morning when I wake up and every night before I fall asleep, I tell myself my name, my family’s names. I remind myself what they looked like.”

I’d seen Bliss’s family, a collection of clay figures. She made so many figures that there was no reason to give this set any special significance, unless you noticed the glossy parts where her fingers had worn the clay smooth, or that they were positioned in such a way that they were the first and last things she saw in a day.

Maybe the Gardener was right, and I do give everything a meaning.

“What happens when that isn’t enough?”

“Keep reminding yourself,” I told her. “Just keep doing it, and it’ll have to be enough.”

“Does it work for you?”

I never memorized my address in New York. When I had to put it down on a form, I asked one of the other girls, and they laughed at me every time but never actually made me learn it. I never changed my license from the fake one because I didn’t know how well it would stand up to real scrutiny, or if the DMV would do more than a cursory check of the information.

But I remembered Sophia, the faded plumpness she grew into after she kicked the addictions, and Whitney’s red-gold hair, and Hope’s laugh, and Jessica’s nervous giggle. I remembered Noémie’s gorgeous bone structure, from a Blackfoot father and a Cherokee mother, remembered the way Kathryn’s smile could light up a room on the rare occasions she gave it. I remembered Amber’s bright, flashy clothing, the patterns never working together and yet always working, because she loved them so much. I didn’t remind myself of them, didn’t strain to keep them in my memory, because they were indelibly written there.

Just like I could have gladly forgotten my mother’s and father’s faces, my Gran’s stretchy unitards, almost all the people from before New York. But I remembered them too, and in a misty way I even remembered aunts and uncles and cousins, and running around in convoluted games I never understood, and posing for pictures I never saw. I just remembered things, remembered people.

Even when I would rather not.

We sat up at the same time, propping ourselves on our elbows, as a door opened and a flashlight beam swept into the far end of the Garden.

“The fuck?” Bliss whispered, and I nodded in silent agreement.

The Gardener was in Danelle’s room, seeking comfort and ostensibly giving her comfort as well for being the one to count in Evita’s final game of hide-and-seek. Even if he was leaving, he never needed a flashlight. Neither did Avery, who was banned from the Garden for another two weeks for breaking Pia’s arm, or Lorraine, who was either asleep or crying herself to sleep at this time of night. There was a button in the infirmary that buzzed in her room and the kitchen if she was needed in her capacity as nurse.

The figure was dressed all in black, which might have seemed like a good idea until he stepped onto one of those white sand paths. He moved cautiously, the cone of light sweeping before every step, but we could tell from his posture that he was gawking at everything.

I never questioned that I immediately labeled the intruder as male. Something about the way he walked, maybe. Or the idiocy of bringing a flashlight if you’re trying to sneak around.

“Which do you think would get us in more trouble?” Bliss breathed against my ear. “Finding out who he is, or ignoring him?”

I realized I had a pretty good idea of who the intruder was, but I’d told the Gardener I wouldn’t tell anyone. Not that a promise to a serial killer holds a great deal of weight, but still. I pretty much never made promises, simply because then I felt bound to keep them.

But what the fuck was the Gardener’s younger son doing breaking into the inner greenhouse complex? And what did it—could it—mean for us?

The first question answered itself almost as soon as it crossed my mind, because it was the same reason I climbed those trees almost every afternoon to catch those glimpses of a real world Outside the glass. Curiosity, among other things, for me. Probably just curiosity for him.

The second question . . .

There were girls who could die if we chose the wrong thing to do. If he was just in the Garden itself that would be fine—it was a private garden space, who cared?—but if he explored the hallways at all . . .

Maybe he’d see the dead girls and call the police.

But maybe he wouldn’t, and then Bliss and I would be left explaining why we saw an intruder and did nothing.

Swearing under my breath, I slipped off the rock, crouching low to the ground. “Stay here, and keep an eye on him.”

“And do what if he does something?”

“Scream?”

“And you are—”

“Giving this to the Gardener to deal with.”

She shook her head but didn’t try to stop me. In her eyes, I could see the same awareness of being stuck. We couldn’t risk everyone’s lives on hoping this boy would be better than the rest of his family. And it wasn’t like seeing the Gardener with someone would be a first for me. He usually went for the privacy of a room, but every now and then . . . well. Like I said, he was a remarkably self-contained man, until he wasn’t.