Chapter 12
twelve
OLEANDER
The walk back from the bar was heavy, the fog pressing against my lungs, tasting of wet stone and old iron. I kept my head down, my boots thudding against the buckled sidewalk, trying to outrun the ghost of the piano melody Julian had played.
I reached the brick rowhouse and fumbled with the heavy brass key. My hands were shaking so badly the key sang against the lock. Inside, the hallway smelled of stagnant dust and the faint sweetness of his cologne.
I went straight for the phone on the kitchen counter. I hit Liliana's name. She answered on the first ring.
"Oleander?" Her voice was tight, the vowels clipped in that way she only got when she was three seconds away from a panic attack. "God, Oleander. I've been calling you since Tuesday. Do you have any idea what time it is here?"
"It's one AM, Lili. I know. I'm sorry." I sank onto the floor, my back against the refrigerator. The humming of the appliance was the only thing that felt real. "I just couldn't talk before. I wasn't ready to tell you."
"Tell me what?" She sounded wide awake now. "Are you hurt? Did something happen?"
"No. Yes. I don't know." I closed my eyes. "It's this place, Lili. The apartment Dominic left. Everything here is wrong. The fog doesn't move. The buildings look like they're leaning into each other, trying to share a secret. And the people... there are these three men. Rowan, Julian, and Theo."
I stopped, the names feeling like stones in my mouth. How could I explain the way Rowan took up all the space in a room, or the way Julian's music felt like it was written in my own blood? How could I tell her I slept with one, watching another, and being documented by the third?
"Men?" Liliana's voice sharpened. "Oleander, what are you doing? You went there to settle an estate, not to join a cult. What men?"
"They're part of it," I whispered, my voice cracking.
"The town. They see things I don't want to see.
And Dominic... he's here, Lili. Not just in the papers.
I found a notebook in the closet. It's full of symbols I can't read and handwriting that looks like he was trying to claw the words out of the paper. It's manic. It's frantic."
The line went quiet.
"Oleander," she said finally, her voice dropping an octave. "Dominic was into weird shit at the end. You know that. I'm the one who told you something was wrong, and you didn't listen to me. I told you for six months that he wasn't himself."
She was right. She'd told me about the books, about the late nights, about the way Dominic's eyes had changed in that last year. I'd told her she was imagining it. I'd chosen his version over hers because his was easier to live with.
"I know," I said, the words barely a breath. "I know you told me."
"He had those books, Oleander. Those maps of places that don't exist on any satellite feed.
He stopped being a husband and started being a.
.. I don't even know the word for it. A researcher?
A zealot?" Her voice broke. "And now you're in that town.
In his apartment. Touching his things. You're standing in the middle of the mess he made, and you're letting it swallow you just like it swallowed him. "
"There are things here I need to understand," I said. "Julian played a melody the other night. Something Dominic used to hum. He didn't know where it came from. He said the music just arrived in his head. How does that happen, Lili? How does a dead man's song end up in a stranger's fingers?"
"It happens because you're staying there!
" she snapped. "It happens because you're giving it a reason to stay alive.
Please, Oleander. Just pack a bag. Leave the keys on the counter.
Get in the car and drive until you see a Starbucks or a billboard for a fucking dental clinic.
Come to London. My sofa is terrible, but the air is normal. The fog doesn't talk back in London."
I felt the weight of the apartment around me.
"I can't," I said.
"Can't or won't?"
I didn't answer. The honesty of the "won't" was too heavy to speak. I wanted to stay because Rowan's hands made me feel like I existed, and Julian's music made me feel like I was heard, and Theo's camera made me feel like I was permanent in a shifting world.
"I'm scared for you," she whispered, and I could hear her crying now, a soft, muffled sound.
"I love you so much, and I am so fucking scared that I'm going to lose you to the same thing that took him.
If you're not going to leave, then you have to stop doing the thing you do. You have to stop looking away."
"What do you mean?"
"You know what I mean. You're a professional at denial, Oleander.
You could win gold at the Olympics for pretending the house isn't on fire while you're sitting in the kitchen.
But this town... if it's what I think it is, it will eat you if you don't look it in the eye.
Promise me. Promise me you'll actually look this time.
Don't let him hide from you anymore. Not even now. "
I gripped the phone as the scent of cologne flared in the hallway, sweet and suffocating.
"I promise," I said.
I didn't know if I meant it. I just knew that when I hung up the phone, the silence in the apartment felt like it was expecting something.