Chapter 17
Eliza
With Jasper’s father returning, everything was in chaos.
Jasper insisted that I continue in the garden even though Darius had demanded that nothing else be touched.
There was an uncomfortable eeriness to the conservatory now as the layers and the puzzle pieces continued to show but not click into place.
The fact that Jasper’s father had returned after all this time made me prickle with unease.
The fact that he had not brought Hester with him obviously hadn’t been a surprise to me, though it was obvious that Jasper had expected her to be standing next to his father when, in fact, she stood dead at the foot of my bed.
And the more and more time I spent working in the conservatory getting to know the woman Hester had been, the more I knew how wrong this all was.
All of them—Jasper, Sowerby, and Darius—each continued to act as though Hester would walk through the door at any given moment. But I knew the truth.
And I believed at least one if not all of them did too.
Hester Blackwood was dead, and she was clearly not happy about it, not that I blamed her in the slightest.
Which raised the question: Which of them knew she was dead?
Each of them continued to act weird in their own way, though Darius, I knew the least, and he seemed the most suspicious in how he talked about her.
I had said I was putting roses in the garden, trying to pull more information from him, giving him ample opportunity to say how much she hated them.
Knowing she hated roses from her journal but that they were used as a wax stamp on her letters was one of the only clues I had—even if I had no idea what it meant or how, if at all, that information could help.
Sowerby refused to speak ill of Hester if he spoke of her at all.
I knew at one point he had been incredibly close to her, working side by side with her in the garden.
Had there been something romantic with Hester and Sowerby?
Could there have been a scuffle between Sowerby and Hester out near the cliff?
Maybe she told him she couldn’t see him anymore and he’d pushed her off the cliff.
With a tall stone barrier to prevent a fall and the fact that she still haunted the manor, it was an obvious guess.
Had both Darius and Hester left like Jasper believed, but something happened to Hester and that’s why she chose to haunt the manor?
For Jasper? As a sad and shattered mother hoping to right her wrongs?
The hair on the back of my neck rose. Perhaps it was my own wild, all-encompassing fears of the cliff, but it seemed like that was the most explainable place that Hester’s body would have gone, lost and never to be discovered.
That left another set of questions that I found myself pushing to the back of my head, not wanting to press into them any further.
The moment Darius had stepped foot in the manor, I expected the worry I had about Jasper killing her to dissolve.
Right in front of my eyes was evidence that Jasper had not killed his parents, confirmation that he had been telling me the truth about everything.
However, that feeling never left, and instead, more questions filled my mind.
I knew that his mother was dead, so what had happened to her?
If Darius had been playing dead this whole time, that also raised a lot of questions, though at the time he left, I suppose I understood why he would let the allegations against Jasper remain and pretend to be dead; everyone hated him.
If Darius had murdered Hester, killed her the night that her and Jasper had fought, then why would he have bothered to leave Jasper?
Why not take him? What had caused them to snap and suddenly become such horrible parents who left their son if they had, in fact, both left?
And why hadn’t they taken Jasper with them?
The questions continued to come with no answers. I was failing her.
Did Hester remain haunting these halls with tears in her eyes and a hand about her throat because the rumors were true and Jasper had killed her?
With every shred of my being, I wanted to think that Jasper didn’t have the demeanor of a full-blown killer, and that there was no possible way that a fifteen-year-old version of him could have killed her, but unfortunately, I couldn’t say that.
There was always a mysterious hardness to Jasper that left me feeling a little unsettled.
After I got to know him better, I’d just assumed it was how the scars inside him had formed after his trauma.
Cold and distant, unable and unwilling to connect with others no matter how much we laughed and talked—there always seemed to be a part of him that remained hidden and secret.
Sometimes, he could be the most charming man I’d ever talked to, if not a little filthy, but in others, he was frigid and terrifying, like when he’d surprised us with shotgun in hand.
Shotgun or not, his smile seeped into my bones and made me want to smile; I couldn’t help it.
I found myself forming a connection with him instantly, sharing things about myself that I never shared with anyone.
Was the connection that we had real, or was he simply someone dangerous who was capable of manipulating me?
I’d heard several serial killers described as being charming.
I’d watched enough crime documentaries and listened to enough podcasts to know the really good killers pulled you into their sticky web, telling you it was a rope to save you, not to strangle you until it was too late.
I couldn’t shake my intense feelings for Jasper, but I also couldn’t rule out that there was a whole other side to him he didn’t let me see, and I wondered if Hester had seen that side before she died.
When Jasper walked in yesterday, I’d wanted to comfort him.
I was thrilled he had returned, but something else lingered.
It had been so easy over the phone; the wild, crackling tension between us had been moved to the background since we weren’t close.
But as soon as he returned, so did the electricity and the danger.
Last night, when I entered my room, Hester had been in there.
Every time she came to me, it grew more terrifying.
It was a shock to see her, like we were in the presence of something we shouldn’t be.
This time, the normally sad Hester had been in a panic.
Her grayish opaque mouth was open as she tried to scream, but no matter how much she tried, nothing would come out.
She needed to tell me something urgently, and I had no doubt in my mind it had something to do with her husband, but whether it was anger or sadness, I couldn’t tell.
Only frustration floated from her, as she was incapable of communicating with me, the only one who could see her.
In a flurry of frustration, she had thrown the chair across the room.
She’d gripped my shoulders painfully, desperately, with everything she had, trying to communicate with me when the energy within her body pushed out and slammed me against the wall.
I’d never been so afraid in all my life. And then in ran Jasper.
At first, I’d worried that his presence would set her off more, but the scene that played out astonished me.
As Jasper held and comforted me—or at least he’d tried—the ghost of his mother stood behind him, watching him before dropping to the floor in a sobbing pile of nearly invisible crimson and gray.
It had been heartbreaking. Even though I had been terrified in that moment, it destroyed me to see her so dejected.
A minute later, she began to fade, and her body disappeared completely.
The second Jasper left, I checked the locket.
It was completely empty. Nothing. Not even the velvet backing.
Not knowing exactly how the dynamic between Jasper and I would take shape over the next few days made me tense and uncomfortable. We had just gotten close, and now all I could think about was the very real chance that he had murdered his mother and that she was clearly trying to warn me.
It proved not to be such a factor, though, as Jasper and Sowerby spent the next several days mostly absent in an absolute flurry as they busied themselves with lawyers and the state attempting to stop Darius from taking back the manor.
Everything in the house felt tainted and uncomfortable. So much so that, had it not been for the very real prospect of me losing my job—and, of course, my desire to help Hester—I would have left. It didn’t feel safe for me to be in the middle of it all anymore.
I kept busy in the conservatory, thankful for the distraction of being able to throw myself into my work.
All in all, I had found close to eleven almost-extinct plants in the conservatory.
All of them were thriving now with my help.
I had been putting off taking cuttings and propagations from them until they had more growth, but with everything happening, I knew I needed to do it today.
If there was a chance Darius got an order in place and I couldn’t work in the conservatory anymore, I had to make sure I had these plants for Pinehurst. If that alone hadn’t been enough, with the days quickly passing, I found myself facing the very real thought that I would be going home soon and would be forced to face everything I had been using Blackwood Manor to hide from.
Even though it was easy in the moment not to see my mother, I knew that behind the scenes, she was creating a war zone for me to return to. My problems were far from over. I’d only pushed them away momentarily.