Chapter 24
twenty-four
OLEANDER
I woke up to the smell of coffee. Not the bitter, watery stuff I made in the chipped ceramic pot I'd found in the back of the cupboard, but the rich, dark roast Dominic used to have shipped from some small roastery he'd found.
It was a smell that belonged in a different life, a life of clean linens, morning sunlight, and the quiet security of being wanted by a man who knew exactly how I liked my mornings.
I didn't move. I was still on the couch, my limbs heavy and leaden, my neck stiff from the angle I'd slept at.
The grey light filtered through the curtains.
The radiator hissed, a rhythmic, wet sound that felt like breathing.
I waited for the logic to kick in, for my brain to remind me that I hadn't bought coffee beans in weeks, that the machine was unplugged, and that the man who loved that scent had been dead for seven months.
The logic never came. In this apartment, the walls had started to feel less like architecture and more like a skin that was slowly thickening, drawing closer to my own.
Everything was becoming domestic. Cared for.
When I finally stood up and walked into the kitchen, the coffee maker was indeed on, its little red light glowing like a watchful eye.
A single mug sat on the counter. My favorite mug, the one with the small chip on the rim that Dominic had always promised to replace but never did because he knew I liked the imperfection.
It was seductive, in a way that made my skin crawl and my heart ache simultaneously.
There was a terrifying comfort in being looked after by a ghost. It required nothing of me.
No explanations, no apologies for the things I'd said to Rowan or the way I'd looked at Julian.
It was a love that didn't ask me to be better or different.
It just asked me to stay. To sink into the rot and let the shadows tuck me in.
I looked at the kitchen table. The leather-bound notebook was there, sitting squarely in the center of the wood.
I had put it in the back of the hallway closet when I moved in, buried under a stack of winter coats.
I'd shoved it behind a box of old shoes and closed the door firmly, needing the weight of the wood between me and those spiraling symbols.
But here it was. It didn't look like it had been moved.
It looked like it had grown there, a dark fruit produced by the apartment itself.
My phone vibrated on the counter. Liliana. I picked it up on the fourth ring.
"Oleander?" Her voice came through, worry bleeding through her tone.
"I'm here, Lili," I said. I reached out and touched the edge of the notebook, tracing the grain of the leather. It felt warm. Too warm for a room that was currently sixty-two degrees.
"You sound wrong," she said. I could hear the background noise of London, a distant siren, the muffled roar of traffic. "You sound distant. Like you're speaking from the bottom of a well."
"I'm fine. I just haven't had my coffee yet," I lied, watching the steam rise from the mug I hadn't poured.
"Don't do that. Don't use that tone with me," she snapped. "Tell me what's happening in that house."
I hung up. I didn't say goodbye, didn't offer an excuse. I just tapped the red button and watched the screen go black. I had never hung up on her before. Not once in thirty-one years. The silence that followed wasn't peaceful. It was an accusation.
I sat at the table and stared at the notebook for twenty minutes. The red light of the coffee maker finally clicked off, leaving the room in a dim, grey twilight. My chest felt tight, a physical constriction that made every breath a conscious effort.
I picked up the phone and called her back. She answered on the first ring, her breath hitching into the speaker.
"I'm sorry," I whispered. "Lili, I'm so sorry."
She was crying, the sound of her jagged, wet breaths breaking something inside me. I felt the guilt, but I couldn't feel the heat of it. I was just cold.
"Whatever you're not telling those men, Oleander, you have to tell them. All of it. Now."
"They already know enough," I said. "They know what I brought here. They know I'm the reason it's here."
"Then tell them the rest," she sobbed. "Tell them about the end.
You watched Dominic descend into that madness.
You saw the books, you saw the symbols, you saw him talking to things that weren't there, and you stayed quiet because you wanted to believe it was just a phase.
You stayed quiet and it killed him. Do not do this to these men.
Do not let your silence be the thing that buries them too. "
"It wasn't that simple," I said, but it was. I had watched my husband's collapse without ever raising an alarm, because the alternative was admitting that the man I loved was becoming a monster.
"It is that simple," she said, her voice turning hard through the tears.
"If you love them, if you even care about them staying alive, you will show them everything.
You will give them the notebook. You will stop protecting a dead man who never protected you.
Promise me, Oleander. Promise me you won't stay quiet this time. "
"I promise," I said, but the word felt light. It felt like it had no mass. I stayed on the line until she stopped crying, until just her soft breathing reached my ears. Only then did I hang up.
I put the phone down and leaned back. The scent of sandalwood bloomed in the air behind me, so strong it was as if he were standing directly behind my chair. I didn't turn around. The cold was real. It was a sharp, biting chill that seeped into my marrow, making my teeth chatter.
She doesn't understand, a voice whispered.
It wasn't a sound in the room. It was a thought that wasn't mine, vibrating in the space between my ears.
It was smooth and cultured, the voice of the man who had taught me which wine to pair with duck and how to hide a bruise with professional-grade concealer.
She never understood us, Oleander. She only sees the surface.
But I see the edges. I see where you end and I begin.
I closed my eyes. The domesticity of it was the worst part.
The way the ghost wasn't just haunting me.
He was making me a home. He was making sure I was fed, that I was caffeinated, that I had my research close at hand.
He was making sure I never had a reason to leave the apartment, because outside there were men who wanted things from me: honesty, vulnerability, a future that wasn't paved with ash.
I reached out and pulled the notebook toward me, the symbols on the cover seemingly darker than they had been an hour ago. The lines were telling me that I was being swallowed whole, and for the first time in my life, I was too tired to fight the current.