On her way to the church cemetery, Margot thrummed with nerves. Why was this woman following her? Was she the same person who’d left that note on her windshield? What the hell did she want?
It’s not safe for you here.
Margot darted her eyes yet again to the rearview mirror, but it seemed the auburn-haired woman had paused her pursuit for the moment. That, or she’d just gotten better at hiding.
Margot flicked her blinker, and the moment she turned onto Union Street, the church came into view. Without the swarm of congregants in front of it, it somehow seemed smaller than it had yesterday before the Sunday service. The grass around it was brittle and yellow. On a marquee sign in the yard, plastic letters spelled out the message: EVEN THOUGH I WALK THROUGH THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH, I WILL FEAR NO EVIL, FOR YOU ARE WITH ME. PSALM 23:4.
Margot pulled to the curb in front of the little white building and got out of the car, glancing around for any sign of the auburn-haired woman tailing her. Though the street was quiet and empty, Margot still got the unsettling feeling of eyes on the back of her neck. She pushed the thought away, then strode quickly to the gate in the white picket fence surrounding the graves, undid the latch, and slipped through.
Like the church, the cemetery was small, with no more than a hundred graves or so. Margot made her way through the recent ones, their headstones still smooth and gleaming in the fading evening light. As she stepped past a particularly big stone, another came into view behind it and Margot stopped short. There, engraved in the marbled granite, was her aunt’s name: REBECCA HELEN DAVIES, MAY 2, 1969–OCTOBER 7, 2018. But before Margot could even register the grief swelling inside her, she noticed the headstone next to it and her breath caught in her throat. Engraved on a matching stone was Luke’s name, his birth date etched beneath, his death date a clean blank space. She turned away.
She’d only taken two steps toward the older graves when one caught her eye. The headstone was larger than most of the others with a white cherubic angel sitting at the top. The base was surrounded by offerings, spilling out onto the graves on either side. There were bouquets of flowers wrapped in plastic, daisies dyed unnatural blues and greens. There were grinning teddy bears clutching stuffed hearts and little plastic candles, their ever-present flames flickering weakly.
Margot made her way over to read the inscription, although she didn’t need to. She already knew to whom the grave belonged. Sure enough, when she stepped in front of it, the engraving read: JANUARY MARIE JACOBS, APRIL 18, 1988–JULY 23, 1994. Margot stared at the death date. She’d spent that summer of ’94 with the very girl whose body she was now standing on top of. They’d played pretend and ran through cornfields and braided each other’s hair. Now, that time felt so far away. In the two and a half decades since, Margot had lived so much life; she’d grown into a different person entirely. Had she been afforded that life because some man had picked January’s window instead of hers? Did she have all those years because January had not? The gratitude she felt at the thought made her burn with shame.
Suddenly, a twig snapped behind her. She spun around, half expecting to see the woman with the auburn hair, but instead, standing twenty feet away at the edge of the cemetery was a man.
“Hi there,” he said. He looked to be in his sixties, with thinning hair and long limbs.
She cleared her throat. “Hi.”
“What brings you to our neck of the woods?” His voice was steady, calm.
“To Wakarusa?”
“To our cemetery.”
Margot blinked. He was wearing cargo shorts and Velcro sandals, his arms full of stuffed animals. Her heartbeat slowed. If he was there to follow or threaten her, he wasn’t exactly dressing the part. “Just visiting. Do you work here? At the church?” She didn’t recognize him from yesterday’s sermon, so she knew he wasn’t the pastor.
He smiled. “More like a full-time volunteer. I sort mail, help organize bingo. That sort of thing…Are you here to visit January?” He inclined his head to the stone behind her. “She’s gotten a lot of love this past week.”
“Because of the message on the barn?” Those words flashed through Margot’s brain. She will not be the last.
“Maybe. But what with that Natalie Clark case, it didn’t make much of a splash on the news.” He stepped through the little gate as he continued. “No, I think it’s because the anniversary’s coming up. Of her death. The twenty-fifth year. The same happened for year five and ten and so on, people sending things. Although there’s less each time.” He walked over and bent down to deposit his armful of stuffed animals, taking his time arranging them.
“Who are all those from?” Margot asked, watching as he swapped a teddy bear for a pink dolphin. Her gaze flicked over all the bouquets of flowers, wondering if any of them were from Jace.
He shrugged. “People across the country.”
“Do you always take care of the cemetery?”
The man stood, wiping his hands on his shorts. “Well, there’s usually not much to do. But I mow occasionally, water the flowers that are growing on some of the graves, that sort of thing.”
“What about January’s grave? Other than every five years, do you get any regular visitors or deliveries?”
The man shook his head. “No visitors, ’cept the odd tourist. And no deliveries, ’cept those.” He nodded toward the bric-a-brac surrounding the headstone, then stuffed his hands into his shorts pockets. “Though there is the ghost that visits every year.”
Margot snapped her head to look at him.
“Yep,” he said with a little chuckle. “Every year, around this time, a bouquet of flowers appears overnight on the grave. I never see who delivers it, so I call them ‘the ghost.’?”
Margot’s heart pounded. An annual flower delivery in the dead of night? That was Jace; it fit Eli’s anecdote to a tee. But what did the tradition mean to Jace, she wondered. Eli clearly thought his old friend had done it out of love, but Margot knew there were more possible explanations than that.
“Have the flowers come this year?” she asked. “The ones from…‘the ghost’?”
“Sure have.” The man shot a glance toward the headstone. “Those ones there.”
Margot followed his line of sight, but there was so much surrounding the stone she couldn’t tell which bouquet he was looking at. She bent down, touched a hand to a plastic-wrapped bouquet of lilies. “These?”
“The ones to the right.”
To the right was a glass vase, its flowers buried beneath the lilies and a leaning teddy bear. “Do you mind if I—?” Margot looked to the man, who shrugged. She gently moved the other objects to the side to reveal a dense bouquet of white roses, their petals already yellowing with death. “Do they ever come with a note?”
The man shook his head.
“And do you remember when they came this year? What day?”
“Well, now, lemme think.” He sucked his teeth. “I should remember because they showed up a bit earlier than usual and before all the rest of the stuff did. Oh, I remember! They were wet when I found them, so they must’ve showed up the night of the storm. You remember the storm from a few days back?”
“Of course.” The summer had been hot and dry, so the recent storm stuck in Margot’s mind. Though what day it had passed through their little town, she couldn’t remember. She stared at the roses for another long moment, then stood. “Well, thanks for talking with me. I appreciate your help.”