Aimée was sweet, and kind, and she never asked me why I was hurting, and I never explained. It was such a relief to have one person in my life who didn’t know about Chavi. One person who didn’t know the old Priya, and so couldn’t compare me to who I’d been and find me lacking or discomfiting now. Aimée saw my thorns and never tried to tell me I shouldn’t have them.
Asking her if we could stay in touch may have been the bravest thing I’d ever done. I couldn’t decide how I wanted her to answer. Keeping a friend seemed just as terrifying as losing one.
She was there with me the day I found baby’s breath on the doorstep. She’d laughed and said someone forgot to add the flowers, and I pinned it all around her bun until she had a bristling crown like a fairy.
And when I told Chavi about it, the ink all glittery pink for a good mood, I said how much it reminded me of that last birthday party, all the flower crowns and the wreath of white silk roses I still had in my dresser.
Still have in my dresser.
Thoughts of Aimée keep running through my head as I pack my journals back into the boxes, this time keeping them carefully in order. Chavi and I used the journals to settle any number of arguments or faulty memories, or just reminiscing for the hell of it, and they always ended up repacked however we happened to shove them in, hers and mine all mixed together. This time, though, it’s just mine in each box, until the last three finished books sit atop the taped boxes.
Over dinner, Mum points at the stacks of Chavi’s journals, the sushi roll nearly falling from her chopsticks as she waves them around. “Have you thought about what to do with those?”
“What to do with them?”
“Are we taking them with us?”
The whole house is a mess, as we’re finally going through boxes and deciding what we are definitely taking with us to France, what we need to think about more, and what we’re either throwing out or donating. It hadn’t occurred to me to think about the journals.
“I’m not suggesting throwing them out,” she continues after a moment. She eyes me carefully, like she’s afraid I’m about to explode. “I’m saying maybe you should read back through them, decide what you want to do.”
“Will you mind if I keep them?”
She twirls her chopsticks to flick me on the nose with the clean ends. “I don’t like holding on to the past, you know that, but this is not something for me to decide. As much as those are Chavi’s diaries, they’re also letters to you. If you want to keep them, keep them. Whatever you decide . . .” She blows out a sharp breath, tongue flicking over her lip to catch a grain of rice clinging to the gold hoop. “France can be a fresh start for us, but I will never, ever suggest leaving Chavi behind. I just want to make sure we’re keeping them because you want them, not because you feel like you should.”
Okay, I can see that.
So while Mum rattles around the kitchen swearing at the boxes of pots and plates and all, I settle back into the couch with the first stack of love letters from my sister. I’ve only ever seen the pieces Chavi chose to show me.
The early ones are written in crayon, the letters huge and sometimes oddly formed, the spelling absolutely atrocious in a way that’s only cute when the writer is in a single-digit age. She was so excited about me, promising to be the best-ever big sister, to love me always, even swearing up and down to share her favorite toys. The one about two days after I was born is freaking adorable, mainly because she was so sulky it practically oozes off the paper.
Somehow five-year-old Chavi hadn’t quite understood that a baby sister would be, you know, a baby, and therefore not able to play with her right away.
It sets a comfortable pattern. I get up in the morning, check the front step, do my schoolwork, sometimes head to chess or the store, come back in the afternoon to go through my stuff and the linens, more schoolwork, dinner, help Mum with downstairs boxes, and then spend half the night reading Chavi’s journals.
On Friday, there’s a wreath of honeysuckle nestled on a bed of blue tissue paper, sitting in what looks to be a cake box on the porch.
On Monday, there’s a bouquet of freesia in a violent explosion of color, pink and yellow and white and purple and rusty orange, the stems curling out past the large blooms to show the partially unfurled buds.
The carnations come on Wednesday, the burgundy tips bleeding down through the veins of the white petals. That’s where they stopped last time. Instead of Agents Sterling and Archer, the latter of whom I’ve seen only in passing as he drives down our street, Agent Finnegan comes to check on those.
“Are you doing okay?” he asks, not looking away from the rectangle of card stock in his gloved hands.
“Sure.” I lean against the doorframe, holding my cup of cocoa close to my face so the steam can offset the breeze. It is warming up outside, hovering in the high fifties the past couple of days, and the meteorologist is cheerfully predicting low seventies next week. It’s just that I’m in pajamas meant for inside only, without the urge to reach for the coat only a few feet away. “Just wish I knew what to expect next.”
“Columbines,” he answers absently, tucking the card into a separate plastic bag. “You know what those look like?”
“Blue? There’s a song about them, I think.” I didn’t actually mean the flowers, but his response is weirdly reassuring, like it didn’t occur to him not to tell me.
He stays in his crouch, forearms draped over his knees as he looks up at me. “Your friendly neighborhood creep is hard to learn about.”
“Landon?”
“Eddison narrowed down his possible neighborhoods, but no one in those areas claims to recognize him and we’re having trouble finding any paperwork on him. No lease, no mortgage. Neither the DMV nor post office has any records of a Landon in the area. We’re expanding the search, but it’s slow going.”
“It isn’t Landon on the security camera,” I remind him. “The eyes are the wrong shape.”
He frowns and glances up at me. “Archer was supposed to tell you: we found the one on the camera.”
“What?”
“Student down at Hunt U; he makes extra cash doing deliveries. One of your neighbors identified him in the picture with the freesia. When we talked to him, he said the flowers were dropped off in his car with an envelope containing the address and his delivery fee, and a requested time of delivery.”
“He leaves his car unlocked so people can anonymously deliver things through him?” I ask incredulously. “That sounds . . . that’s . . .”
“Idiotic in the extreme,” he agrees. “Also a good way to land in prison if he assists with illegal goods. He said he’d contact us if anything else showed up.”
“So either he chose not to, or these were delivered a different way.”
“Exactly. And something off the grid like this could match your paperless friend Landon. He’s not at the chess pavilion this morning—I checked on my way here—and we’re in court the rest of the week; next week, either Archer or I will accompany you to chess, and hopefully we can talk to him, or even follow him home.”
“I haven’t seen him since Eddison was out here. So, week and a half?”
“Not at all?”
“Nope.”
“Have your vets?”
“Haven’t asked.” I watch his frown deepen, his gloved fingers rubbing against each other in thought. “You’re worried.”
He reaches for his hair, catching himself just in time. He’s an odd mix of parentage, delicate of face but burly of body, his skin Irish pale and densely spattered with very light brown freckles, but his hair silky and dark. “Victor Hanoverian trained me. We were partners until I got my own team and he pulled Eddison and Ramirez. I’ve seen him walk into hostage situations and crossfire without so much as twitching. So the fact that he emails me every day to ask if there’s any new information? Yes, I’m worried, because him being twitchy scares the shit out of me.”
It’s an honesty I don’t expect out of someone who’s practically a stranger, but I’m grateful for it. “He’s scared about what happens when the flowers catch up to last year’s victim, isn’t he?”
“Or what happens if you leave before they’re cycled through,” he admits. “If you move, what if he does too? That puts the case out of FBI hands.”