Ghost Flower (7 page)

Giving myself the excuse that I was making sure the person wasn’t a prowler, I tiptoed down the stairs, out the door, and followed the same path he’d followed. As I rounded a corner, I saw light coming from the ground floor of the main house. Maybe the live-in couple
who looked after the place were entertaining, I thought, but then I saw Bridgette.

The room I was looking into through the curtains was a library, with floor-to-ceiling shelves lined with the kind of unopened books I had spent hours dusting in other similar houses. Even though it was a warm night, there was a fire burning in a fireplace, as though to set the mood. Bridgette was standing in front of it talking to someone I couldn’t see. She was smiling and looked—not like herself. Mischievous and happy. She was also naked. I quickly ducked down and out of sight.

Based on the card for Bridgette’s boyfriend,
Stuart Carlton
[25, financial consultant, collects rare baseball cards, $5,000,000 (plus trust fund at 30)], he didn’t strike me as the VW Bug type. Of course his car could have been in the shop, and he could have borrowed his housekeeper’s. Or it could have been someone else. Whoever he was, I hoped he’d show her a really good time because with her out of the house I saw my first chance since getting there to get online. I hadn’t been allowed near a computer, but with Bridgette busy I could use hers.

Backing away from the window, I sprinted back to the guest house. I found Bridgette’s computer in the bottom of a drawer in her room and woke it up. It was password protected, but I’d seen her type it enough times to know where the keys were, and it only took me two tries to get it—CHL0E. Her password was her favorite designer. Ugh.

I got the browser open and searched “Aurora Silverton.” There were news links in the context of the Silverton family’s involvement in various charities for missing children, including the Aurora Silverton Foundation, one record of her winning a junior-level tennis tournament in seventh grade, and a link to a piece by the gossip
columnist of
Tucson Today
about the preparations for Coralee Gold’s graduation party, which would include “a special memorial moment for absent classmates Elizabeth Lawson and Aurora Silverton.”

“They were a part of our class, and they should be a part of our celebration,” Coralee Gold told the columnist during a hush-hush planning session for what promises to be the party of the season. “I can’t tell you exactly what we have in mind, but I can say no one has ever done anything like it at a graduation party.” Coralee is the daughter of nationally famous Domestic Diva Gina “Good as Gold” Gold and her adorable husband Bernie.

Among the comments from people who loved Gina Gold and thought Bernie really was adorable, one jumped out at me that sent an icy chill down my neck.

AzAngry: “It makes me sick every time I see the Silverton name. How many more problems will they be allowed to bury the way they buried Elizabeth Lawson?”

Problems? Bury?

Before I could search the site for more, I heard the sound of voices and the crunch of feet on gravel outside. Apparently Bridgette’s boyfriend was not the sleepover—or even the stay-very-long—type. I closed the browser, shut the laptop, tucked it under the sweaters, and had just made it back into my bed when the front door opened. My heart was pounding so loud that when I heard footsteps padding slowly down the hall and Bridgette peered into my room, I was afraid she’d be able to hear it even from under the covers.

AzAngry was probably just a nutcase, or a disgruntled employee,
I thought. Hadn’t Bain said that people liked to think the worst of the
family? Liza had committed suicide. Surely no matter how powerful the Silvertons were, they couldn’t have orchestrated that.

Right?

A few evenings later, Bain, Bridgette, and I were together, sitting on the porch eating chips and salsa and discussing the plan for my return to Tucson. It was going to be the Friday a week after Aurora’s high school class would have graduated. It had to be on a Friday, Bridgette explained—

“—because Grandmother always has tea at four o’clock on Fridays and all the grandchildren are required to attend,” I interrupted. “This isn’t a bee; you don’t have to spell it all out.”

Bain laughed and said, “That was creepily like Aurora,” but Bridgette just stared at me and said, “Yes, it was.”

I grinned at her. After an uncomfortable moment, she picked up where she’d left off. “You’ll take the train from Phoenix and then a taxi from the station in Tucson,” she said. “When you get there, you’ll ring the doorbell. Mrs. March will answer, and you’ll tell her to pay the taxi. It’s the kind of thing Aurora would have done, and it will shock everyone enough they won’t think of not letting you in.”

Bain took the empty chip bowl and dumped the crumbs into his mouth. “And the fingerprints,” Bain said. “We need to get them to check them right away because once they’ve done it you’re clear. But we think if you suggest it, it could look suspicious, so I’m going to bring it up. As though I think I’m challenging you. Once Grandmother accepts you, everyone else in the Family will go along with it.”

I noticed that both he and Bridgette always pronounced the Family the same way, as though it had capital letters and was somehow different from every other family in the world.

“Is the Family some kind of cult?” I joked.

But Bain didn’t laugh. “The Family is the most important thing. You do whatever you must to protect it.”

“Yes,” Bridgette agreed, looking at him hard. “You do.” She turned back to me. “That only leaves the hug.”

“The hug?”

“Grandmother insists we hug her at tea, but Aurora hated it and wouldn’t do it. If you come in and don’t hug her, it could look like you don’t know the ritual. On the other hand, if you do, it would be out of character for Aurora.”

“Huh,” I said.

“We’ll just have to play it by ear,” Bridgette said, twisting the triple bands on her pointer finger. Leaving things unplanned clearly made her nervous.

“Maybe one of us could make an issue of it,” Bain suggested. He turned to me. “We figure if Bridgette and I doubt you the most vociferously, we’ll be able to control the opposition.”

“Vociferously. Fancy word,” I said.

He winked at me. “I’ve got a library card.”

Despite not trusting them and not wanting to like them, a strange kind of closeness had grown up between us during the past three weeks. A closeness I couldn’t risk.

I determined I would destroy it.

The next day was Friday, exactly a week before I was supposed to go back. Bridgette drove me into Phoenix to have my hair cut, so that it parted on the same side that Aurora’s had, and colored to resemble her slightly lighter brown.

She also gave me money to buy an outfit to wear back to Tucson, since the clothes I’d come in were a mess and I couldn’t show up in something from the Silvertons’ guest house.

I went to the mall and bought a shapeless nubby gray jacket with
three-quarter-length sleeves that looked like something someone’s grandma would wear, a midnight-blue sequin miniskirt that absolutely did not, a sleeveless pearl grey silk shirt, black peep-toe pumps with an ankle strap, over-the-elbow black gloves, two thick bangles, and a pair of Ray Ban knockoffs. The jacket just kissed the bottom hem of the miniskirt. It was definitely
not
the kind of outfit you’d wear to tea.

But it was perfect for a party.

Because I wasn’t going to be making my rendezvous with Bridgette. I had somewhere else in mind.

I was passing one of those kiosks that line the walkways of all malls when I saw a pendant that looked like a shimmering orange-and-black butterfly. The price was high, but I couldn’t pull my eyes away from it.

“That’s a monarch butterfly,” the kiosk guy told me as he stood a little too close to fasten it around my neck. He was young with dark hair and eyes, a few days’ growth of beard, and a slow, confident smile that said he was used to his advances being welcome.

He spoke English with a slight accent, and when I’d walked up I heard him talking into his phone in a language that sounded like Hebrew. Now he said, “They are special because they migrate.” He stood back and pretended to examine it while looking at my boobs. “For my people, the Native Americans, the monarch butterfly is a symbol of change. Of adventure.”

He was no more Native American than I was a liger. “Really?” I asked, wide-eyed.

He nodded. “You look like a girl who could use some adventure.”

My initial response was to turn around and walk away. I, Eve Brightman, couldn’t afford to draw attention to myself, to play games with people. I’d spent the past few years trying to be invisible.

But you’re Aurora now,
I thought.
And the rich can afford to play all the games they want.

I gave the kiosk man Aurora’s cocky smile and said, “Who couldn’t use some adventure? Any chance of a discount?”

Incredibly, it worked. His eyes widened slightly, and his hand went to my forearm. “That depends. Any chance of a date tonight, butterfly?”

“Sure,” I lied. I took the 20 percent off and didn’t mention that butterflies don’t come out at night.

At the hair place I quizzed the woman who did my color about how to get to the Amtrak station and even made her write out the directions so she would be sure to tell anyone who asked that’s where I’d gone. It was amazing how nice people were when you seemed to have money. I pretended to go to the bathroom, snuck out the back of the shop without paying, climbed a fence, and used the map I’d ripped out of the yellow pages at the cabin to make my way to the bus station.

I hesitated outside it. My mother had loved buses. When I was little, we spent a month taking buses, and whenever I would ask her where we were going, she would just say “farther.” Looking at the station my fingertips tingled, as though searching for a hand to hold, and my chest felt tight.

But I couldn’t think about my mother now. I needed to get ready, to stop being Eve and to really start to be Aurora.

What would Aurora do?
I asked myself, and as the question lingered I spotted a bar across the street from the station. It was cool and dim inside, a long counter with mushroom topped bar-stools that rotated. The bartender wasn’t sure he wanted to serve me, but a man three stools down said, “Just give the lady her beer, Art.” So Art did.

“I’m Jerry,” the man on the stool introduced himself. “What are we drinking to?”

“Eve,” I told him.

“Friend of yours?”

“She was for a long time.”

“Something happen to her?”

“It was her time to go.”

“Well, then, to Eve,” Jerry said.

“To Eve.” We clicked bottles.

“Nice necklace. Monarch right?” he asked, then went on without me answering. “Interesting creatures. They’re poisonous, you know.”

“I didn’t.”

He winked. “’Course only to their enemies.”

The sun was getting low two hours later, as the bus lumbered out of Phoenix. I stared out the window past Eve’s reflection—now Aurora’s—into the yawning darkness beyond.

PART II

HAUNTED

It’s not like waking up. It’s like breaking the surface of the indoor pool at the Country Club,
she thinks,
going from murky silence to the humid, slightly mildew scented air that hangs heavily over you.

Only this isn’t the pool, isn’t the Country Club at all. Her half-open eyes focus slowly on different objects, the thin grey light of evening trickling in through the partially closed curtains to her right, intermittent headlights across the ceiling above her, her toes in a pair of high heels so far away at the foot of the bed, the hazy outline of the dresser beyond that, a mirror atop it.

The sound of steady traffic makes a low buzz from outside; from somewhere closer comes the stuttering drone of a tired air conditioner.

She is incredibly thirsty. Her throat is dry and scratchy, and her tongue feels like it’s twelve times too big for her mouth.

Memories slip in and out of her mind like the rake of headlights across the ceiling—looking for someone, falling, red brake lights by the side of the road, the whine of a powerful engine reversing toward her.

Only then does she feel the first stirring of fear. Remembering the car makes her heart beat faster; she feels something tighten in her chest.
Get up,
a voice in her head says, suddenly urgent.
You have to get up and get out of here before he comes back.

He? He who?
she asks herself, but there is no answer, just abruptly, this sense that she must flee. Now.

She sits up fast—too fast—sending a wave of pain and nausea crashing over her. Collapsing backward on the sweat-soaked bedspread, she takes three shallow, gasping breaths, then three deeper, more measured ones.

She swallows hard—God, she is thirsty—and tries sitting again, this time moving toward the edge of the bed and getting up more slowly.

There’s another dizzying moment. But this time it passes and when her eyes refocus she is facing a girl in the mirror. Herself, it must be herself, because there is no one else in the room. But there is nothing familiar about the girl she sees, the girl in the dirt-streaked sleeveless blouse and the pale peach miniskirt
with the bloody lip and the cut over her eye. She has no memory of her. She has no idea what her name is.

Panic overtakes fear, and she starts to tremble.
Breathe,
she orders herself, as she feels around and finds a pocket in her skirt. There’s a twenty-dollar bill and a piece of broken chain but no ID, nothing to tell her who she is.

Her eyes slew to the reflection of the window behind her. The curtains are half-closed, but the space between them is lit by the artificial brightness of a clot of neon signs. She stares at them without consciously seeing them, forcing herself to keep breathing. She lets her gaze linger, unfocused, around the room, until it rests on her hands. They’re badly cut and filthy
. A handful of dust,
she thinks, and then shivers. Something about the phrase makes her uncomfortable, but she’s not sure why, or where she’s heard it before. Maybe if she closes her eyes and lies down.