Chapter 36
Now
I opened my eyes. Shit. I blinked away sleep and grabbed my phone from beneath my pillow to check the time. Shit shit shit.
Almost eight fifteen. I wasn’t supposed to sleep until after I’d finished with Casey, but the driving and late night had hit harder than I’d expected.
I frantically opened the news app and scrolled to see if there was anything about the arrest of the great grandson of a particular former governor.
Anything that would prove I was right when I said we didn’t have to go through with the killing.
Nothing.
A quick internet search confirmed that Burt remained Alabama’s golden boy. My last bit of delusional hope evaporated. We—Frances, Bunny, and I—would have to leave soon for the motel.
Hattie-May claimed she had just the concoction to get the job done: a tincture made of select ingredients that would never show in a toxicology report, unless they were tested for specifically.
Bunny had assured us she knew the perfect location for Burt’s “overdose” to take place.
“The kind of place where nobody sees anything or remembers anyone,” she’d promised.
We couldn’t be late. Burt’s plane landed at eleven, and we didn’t want to give him a chance to come looking for Frances.
As soon as he got service, there’d be a message from my sister on his voicemail, explaining where she was and how she desperately needed him to come get her. And there we’d be, waiting.
This did not allow me much time.
I scrambled down from the top bunk, somehow (thank you muscle memory) not waking my sister.
I grabbed my shoes and sock-footed it to the front door, pausing in the living room long enough to listen for sounds of life.
The late night had done a number on everyone, it seemed, because not even Hattie-May, who’d never slept in during my entire childhood, was awake.
I took Hattie-May’s keys from their hook, and on the porch, stuffed my feet into my sneakers and hurried around the house to the backyard.
A shovel was propped against the back of the house.
I grabbed it, pausing for only a second, flooded with memories—the heft of the smooth wooden handle in my hand, the vibration of metal against skull, the way the tip sliced through soft earth like a hot knife through butter—before shaking away the intrusive thoughts and jogging toward the edge of the woods.
It didn’t take long to circle the backyard’s perimeter and find the narrow path to the greenhouse.
The path was a bit overgrown. Briars scraped at my legs as I dodged branches and roots.
I thought I’d never again return to these woods, to this path.
I hated the reason that brought me, but when I inhaled the scent of damp pine, I was seven years old again, running wild toward the greenhouse.
I was ten and catching tadpoles in the creek.
I was thirteen and climbing trees in the woods.
I was fifteen and shooting Ruth’s crossbow at a target in the backyard.
My toe hit a root and pitched me forward and out of my daydream. I caught myself, but the shovel flew into a briar patch that scratched my arms to hell when I pulled it free. As I made my way down the rest of the path, I moved a little more carefully.
Made me wonder, though.
Frances suspected that Burt had found the body. That he’d slipped away at night and stolen the helmet. The next day he had dirt under his nails. I’d convinced myself it was plausible, but now that I was here again?
How could Burt have found his way to the greenhouse, much less Casey’s grave? And in the dark?
Frances insisted Burt was smart and loved a game. If someone was determined to find the path, I guess it wasn’t impossible. But neither was it easy, or even likely. There was nothing marking your way, outside of the narrow trail worn from decades of foot traffic.
And how had he found Casey? Frances had watched me tug him into the forest, but hadn’t seen where I’d buried him.
It didn’t make sense.
Yet. There was the helmet…
The path ended and forest opened to the small field. The greenhouse sat in the middle.
The small lean-to attached to the end of the structure still held a push-mower and gas can, as well as bags of potting soil and random gardening equipment.
Hattie-May had always kept a roll of giant plastic bags for when she needed to clean up her space.
I rifled through the shelves in the lean-to. No bags.
Inside, then.
While outside the greenhouse was unchanged, inside was a different story. Once upon a time there’d been tidy rows of healthy plants. Everything labeled and orderly. This place had been precious to Hattie-May. Lush and green and flowering. It had been her church. Her altar.
The room was now a dying jungle. A few plants I didn’t recognize thrived, vining up the walls and hanging from posts.
Most, however, were shriveled stalks. A shelf that had once held rows of leather-bound books, histories of the Sight and tasseomancy—books I’d devoured on lazy summer evenings while lounging next to the creek—were now empty.
I swiped my index finger through the thick layer of dust and frowned.
Hattie-May would’ve never let her greenhouse fall into such a state if she could help it.
Ruth’s domain was behind a teacup, and certainly Hattie-May could also divine leaves in a pinch, but this greenhouse was where Hattie-May worked her magic.
Where she made a difference, helping those who couldn’t find it elsewhere.
Whatever happened with Burt, things couldn’t go back to how they were. If I spent another ten years away, when I came back next time, my great-aunt wouldn’t be here.
Aunt Hattie held an important role in our plan, but seeing the state of her greenhouse, I wondered if enough of the old Hattie-May existed within her foggy memory to brew a poison that could kill undetected. What if the mixture she had in mind wasn’t as perfect as she said?
Last night as we’d sat around the kitchen table and pieced together the plan, Aunt Hattie mentioned rosary pea, but when I walked the rows of the greenhouse and found the toxic plant, it was a dried husk, its leaves brown and the pods of red berries long gone.
We were putting our faith in my aging aunt, who wandered at night and lost slips of time.
Was the woman who’d always driven her own fate still here? Did that spark of magic still exist in her?
It must. I ran my hand over the skeleton of a long-dead oleander, a pang of sadness stabbing my chest. It must, and that’s that.
I got back to work, my cheeks damp as I picked through the clutter. I found shelves of tiny dark blue bottles, each filled and labeled and covered with dust. How long had they been here, waiting to rid the world of a pest?
I kept digging through the shelves and tables containing random stacks of even more random items. There was no roll of bags to be found.
Time was ticking.
Fine. I’d find Casey first, then figure out how to move him.
I locked the greenhouse behind me, grabbing the shovel from where I’d propped it nearby before walking around to the back of the building, careful to keep my eyes straight ahead, avoiding the spot where Casey and I had spent our last moments together.
How are you going to move him, if you can’t stomach looking at the last place you saw him alive?
I’d do it because I had to. Because Burt wasn’t giving me a choice.
If the path to the greenhouse was overgrown, then the path to the creek was nonexistent. It took twice as long as I remembered, but I finally found it and picked my way through the trees toward the sound of the trickling water.
The creek itself was small, its banks rocky. But yards away, there’d always been a flat area of smooth, sandy earth.
That patch of soft terrain was unchanged, though it had seemed to be tucked farther away when I was a kid.
The morning I’d pulled Casey through the forest by his ankles, it had seemed to take an hour to get there, my brain coming and going in bursts and gasps.
He’d been reed thin—all sharp angles—but yanking him through the underbrush had left me sore for a week.
I was overcome with emotion as I got to work. Every slice of the shovel uncovering a memory: us at the movies, in study hall, at parties, our teeth bumping together. I dug and dug.
No Casey.
I repeated the process again and again, digging deeper than I had that day. I’d been weak with grief and shaking with fear. His grave had been a shallow one.
Now, I dug deep and wide, each stab of the shovel growing more erratic.
By the third attempt it was clear. Casey wasn’t here.
A cry clawed at my throat.
His grave was empty.