Made for You (19 page)

“If I wanted to judge her, it would be because she slept with my boyfriend.” I force the words out carefully. I don’t want to say them, but I don’t want to lie to the detective either. I swallow to try to keep my throat from feeling like it’s closing.

I don’t look at anyone other than the detective. “Plus, she told people I slept with him . . . with Robert earlier this year. They were already sleeping together then. I had no idea, but that’s all we have in common: Robert. I didn’t know about her, but he said she was angry about him not breaking up with me.”

“Could Robert do this?”

“Kill two girls in our class, and try to kill me?” My voice is getting shrill again. “No! No, he couldn’t. He’s not like that.”

“Not even to make amends with you?”

“How would killing them make
amends
with Eva?” Grace sputters. Her hand flings into the air in a gesture of frustration, almost as if she can’t stop the motion. It stays there, upraised with her fingers splayed open, as she half yells, “Are you crazy?”

Mrs. Yeung catches Grace’s hand and holds it. “Are you done with us, Detective?”

At Detective Grant’s nod, Mrs. Yeung tells my parents, “Someone will escort Grace to your house so the girls are able to see each other.” She looks at Nate. “You can bring her over if my husband or I can’t, but I trust all of you”—she gives the three of us a stern look—“to stay together. No slipping off to the parties you don’t think we know about.”

Grace startles, but Nate says, “I won’t let them out of my sight when I’m here.”

My father shoots Nate a look of approval before offering, “Why don’t Nate and I walk you out to your car?”

Mrs. Yeung nods. “Let me text David, so he knows I’m on the way.”

After they walk out, the detective sits quietly for a moment. Then she says, “Did Michelle also have a relationship with Robert?”

“Micki?” I want to laugh at the absurdity of that. “She wore a purity ring, and she meant it. The only way she’d have been with Robert would’ve been after a church-made vow of forever. I’m pretty sure she never even dated. No one at Jessup was up to both her standards
and
her parents’ standards.”

“The Adamses have a history of marrying within their station,” my mother offers mildly. “Prenups and fidelity clauses are required, and Micki wouldn’t have risked dating anyone her father didn’t approve of. I expect she planned on finding a husband at Duke in a couple years.”

The detective looks at my mother for a moment, and then merely nods before telling me, “You need to be careful, Eva. No going out alone.” She turns to my mother. “How sure are you of Mr. Bouchet’s honesty?”

“We’ve known him since he was in elementary school. His family was here all the time when the children were younger.” Mom clasps her hands tightly together, and I can see by her expression that she’s thinking carefully. “He’s a good boy.”

“I trust him,” I interject. “I was with him when we saw the news about Micki. He was shocked and upset.”

The detective nods. “If anything he says or does alarms you or if
anyone’s
actions alarm you, you contact me immediately.”

“We will,” my mother promises. “We want you to catch this person. This . . . killer.”

“We all want that, Mrs. Tilling.” The detective stands, and my mother shows her to the door.

Then I am left alone in my house thinking about the words carved into Amy’s skin. I thought that Micki’s death tore me up, but I am horrified by Amy’s. It’s disgusting, what he did to her.

I hope she was already dead when the killer cut her.

I start to think of my classmates. I can’t think of anyone who could do this. Maybe they’re wrong to think it’s a teenager. Teachers? I picture Mr. Sweeney and Miss Ferguson. They’re not killers. I’m pretty sure Mr. Sweeney couldn’t kill a bug much less a girl. I start to picture my friends and classmates. I picture Robert. No. There’s no one I can think of who would do this.

None of it makes sense to me. Micki did nothing to me, and although Amy slept with Robert, that’s not reason enough to wish this on her. Neither of those things explain why the killer attacked
me
. I sit on the sofa trying not to think that someone wants me dead—someone who has now killed two girls I know.

DAY 14: “THE FLOWERS”

Eva

I
SLEPT HORRIBLY AFTER
Detective Grant left. I don’t remember most of my nightmares, just vague images from the death visions I had of Nate and Grace’s possible ends. I think that Amy and Micki’s killer is the same person who pushes Grace into her car trunk and makes Nate choke on liquor. I have no actual proof—just a feeling. The odds of
two
killers in my small town seem impossible. Truthfully, even one seems impossible, but I know there is one. We all know that now. What I don’t know—and need to figure out—is what it has to do with me.

As I lie in my bed, thinking over what I know about the visions and murders, I realize that there is one more thing I do know: I can’t see faces in my visions. I’m not sure why that is. I can see them in my own life, but when I fall into someone’s death, the sense that’s least reliable is vision—or maybe cognition. I grab my laptop and I try several search terms, but it’s not until I enter “face blind” that I get useful results: prosopagnosia. Basically, as I read I learn that some people can’t recognize faces, even people they see regularly and know. Prosopagnosia is either inherent, or it’s acquired from a brain injury. Although my brain injury didn’t cause me to have trouble recognizing faces in the waking world, it has in my death visions. I try a few more searches, but not surprisingly, there aren’t any articles that explain altered perceptions in death visions. The most useful information I have is that people with face blindness—prosopagnosics—have to use other characteristics to identify people. The bit that I learn isn’t much, but I’m not sure where to learn more. I can’t expect any insight from my doctor, especially as I’m not interested in sharing my new ability.

I spend a few minutes thinking about it, and then I close my laptop and start slowly working my way downstairs. Some coffee and food will help me think. At the very least, it’ll distract me from this nightmare for a few minutes. I thump into the kitchen, where I find my mother. It’s odd seeing her so determinedly domestic, but it’s also comforting. If there was ever a time when I was willing to admit to needing some extra TLC, this is it.

She puts her hands on her hips when she sees me and
tsk
s. “Why didn’t you call for help? Your independent streak has to be some latent Tilling gene.”

“Says the black sheep of the Cooper clan,” I tease without thinking.

She stops moving, her hand midway to the pitcher of orange juice, and I wonder if it was wrong to try to tease her. I thought we were trying to be closer. I thought it would be okay. Hurriedly, I start, “I’m s—”

My apology is lost under a snort of laughter. She’s laughing in that unrestrained way that I’ve so rarely seen, and I can’t look away. My mother is beautiful when she’s
real
like this. In the midst of everything that’s so very wrong, I’m exceptionally grateful for this moment.

“Oh my goodness, Eva,” she says a few snorts later. “No one—and I do mean no one—has the sheer nerve to mention that other than Daddy. I swear they all think the whole of Jessup is going to go all cattywampus if they bring up my checkered past.”

She grabs the handle of the pitcher of orange juice and sits down; her poise is already returning, and if I hadn’t just heard those very unrefined noises, I would’ve never guessed that she had laughed. The pitcher and two glasses are in front of her, and she watches me attentively.

I pull out my two chairs. I sit on the first, and I raise my leg to prop it up on the second chair. “You don’t
seem
much like a troublemaker, but I figure my ‘difficult streak’ has to come from somewhere.”

My mother smiles. “I was determined to be my own person, and after years of Daddy having so many of the church ladies lecturing me on my manners and my dress and everything under the sun, I had a fierce urge to prove I wasn’t a good girl.” She shakes her head. “I don’t imagine it makes a lot of sense considering who I ended up with, but I just wanted to be someone other than Lizzy Cooper, daughter of the great Davis Cooper IV.”

“I get that.” I stare at her, wondering how I didn’t know this before. “I feel like that sometimes. I’m his granddaughter,
your
daughter, and granddaughter to the Reverend Tilling.”

She sighs. “I’m sorry. You seem so confident all the time that it didn’t occur to me that you felt that way.”

“I’m fine. I just hate the way people watch me. It’ll be worse now when the news about the killer gets out.”

“They’ll catch him,” my mother says, and it feels somewhere between a wish and a promise.

We sit quietly for a few minutes, and I realize that despite all the wrong happening now, I have some
right
with my mother. Our peace is interrupted by the doorbell, and we both startle at the sound. For a moment, I see my own fears in her eyes, but then she pats my hand.

I brace myself for the vision, for falling into her death, but nothing happens. There is no death, no slipping into her future self, and I’m speechless at the absence. I don’t
want
to feel her die, but I don’t understand why it didn’t happen.

Then her hand is gone from mine already, and she’s heading to answer the door.

A few moments later, she returns, carrying a vase of flowers and a small package wrapped in brown paper. Her hands are shaking as she sets them on the counter.

“There are flowers,” she says, pointing out the obvious. “There are flowers here at our house.”

I look at them. A gladiolus and a scarlet lily are surrounded by honeysuckle. It’s an oddly beautiful bouquet, but it fills me with horror. The package that came with it is too small to be chocolates. If it were from a friend, I’d think it was jewelry. It’s about that size. Part of me is oddly distant, trying not to get scared. I think of my friends, of the death visions that I now suspect are real, and I am resolved to figure this out. I have clues the police won’t believe.

My hands tremble as I look at the bouquet. The killer knows where I live, knows I’m out of the hospital, and sent me flowers. After talking to the detective, I know these flowers are a message.

“I’m calling her now,” Mom says. Her phone is already at her ear, and she walks out of the room as she begins to speak: “Detective? This is Mrs. Tilling.”

My mother’s voice grows faint as she walks farther into the house, and I debate what I’m about to do. I need to know what’s in that package. I don’t want my mother to open it and find something awful there. I think back to every police procedural I’ve watched with my father. I don’t want to destroy evidence. So far, the delivery person and my mother’s fingerprints are on it.

I get up, grab my crutches, and hobble to the walk-in pantry. There in the far back, beside the tinfoil and storage bags, is an unopened package of the thick yellow gloves my mother wears if she hand-washes any dishes. I balance on one foot as I open the plastic bag and put on the gloves.

Once I’ve hobbled to the counter, I carefully open the small white envelope with my yellow-gloved hands. It’s a standard card, one of the “thinking of you” ones, and on it are five letters in tight block print:
YOURS
.

My hands are shaking as I set the card aside and turn my attention to the tiny box. Visions of severed fingers or ears fill my mind, and by the time I open the package, I’m expecting something gross. Inside the tiny box, which is actually a white cardboard jewelry box, is a dead cicada.

I don’t get it. The killer sent me a dead bug. It’s clearly a message, but I have less than no idea what it means. Is it a threat? Is it something else?

When my mother returns, I look away from the bug in the box to tell her, “I need my laptop.”

“What are you . . .” Her words fade as she comes to stand by my side. “He sent you a
cicada
?”

“I need my laptop,” I repeat.

She looks down at the card and gasps. Suddenly, my mother hugs me with one arm, and again, I don’t fall into her death.

When Nate arrives a few minutes later, I’m at my laptop typing. I hear my mother explaining that she’s not going to work.

“You’re going to work, Mom,” I call out. “Dad needs you there. I’m fine here with Nate. Promise!”

She doesn’t answer me, but her voice is a quiet hum in the background as she brings Nate up to speed. I’m copying and pasting possible meanings for flowers and cicadas and the word “judge.” I remember from class that there was a book in the 1800s that was supposedly all about the official flower meanings, but I’m guessing that the killer uses the internet if he’s anyone younger than thirty.

       
Gladiolus
: “I’m very sincere,” preparedness, flowers of the gladiators (Note: Dedicated/serious in his crazy?)

       
Red lily
: “high bred” or “high souled” (Note: Online it’s called a “scarlet lily,” but the orange one means “hatred.” I think this is red/scarlet though. He either is saying I’m high bred, or he is, or it’s supposed to be orange and he hates me.)

       
Honeysuckle
: united in love, devoted love, fidelity (Note: He’s telling me he’s a creeper. Figured that out already without the flowers.)

       
Asphodel
: regrets beyond the grave, I follow you to the grave, remember me after the grave (Note: Who had the asphodel? Micki or Amy?)

       
Amaryllis
: pride, pastoral poetry (Note: guessing it’s not the poetry. So who is he calling prideful? Or is he saying he’s proud of what he did?)

       
Cicada
: regeneration, change, rebirth, longevity, patience, immortality

       
Judge
: to form an opinion, to try, to weigh in, to find guilty or innocent; an authority

       
Yours
: What’s mine? The flowers? The cicada? The blame? The killer? All of it???