Rose Petal Graves (The Lost Clan #1) (2 page)

“I’m not hungry, honey, but
you
should eat. You’re getting too skinny.” Said the man whose middle was still concave in his mid-forties. He patted my shoulder as he walked past me. “I’m going to bed.”

“The medical examiner arrived last night.”

Dad paused on the stairs. “He did? Wasn’t he supposed to get in tomorrow?”

“He was, but he’s here now. Don’t you want to meet him?”

Dad’s eyes were bloodshot. “Not really in the mood. Can you show him around? Show him”—a sob caught in his throat—“show him where I…where I put your mother?” he whispered the last part.

My eyes heated up, but I reined the tears in until Dad had climbed those rickety wooden steps. Those stairs had gotten me into so much trouble when I was in my early teens, sneaking out to parties and coming home past curfew. Even though I tiptoed, one would always crack and give me away. And Mom would come out of her bedroom, with her reading glasses on and a paperback dangling from her fingers, and ask if I was all right. I’d thought it was her way of guilt tripping me, but now, I believed she was just worried about me. I pressed the heals of my hands into my closed eyes to squeeze out the tears, and then, when I sort of had myself under control, I headed to the closet where we kept the cleaning supplies.

I grabbed a rag and a bucket that I filled with soapy water, and headed out to the hearse. The fresh air stung my cheeks and blew against the wind chime, making it swing back and forth. The noise was deafening. Dropping the bucket and rag, I dragged one of the wicker chairs toward Mom’s last creation and climbed up to unhook it.

The bells were as cold as icicles and prickled my still-warm palm. They hadn’t served their purpose; they hadn’t kept evil out. Maybe Mom had gotten it wrong. Maybe bells above a doorway were an invitation to malevolent spirits. I tore the chime off the big hook and walked over to the dumpster. Without hesitating, I flung them inside, and then I just stood there and stared, half expecting our garbage can to burst into flames, or the bells to start careening, but neither happened. Only the wind whistling through the bare branches of the rowan trees disrupted the otherwise blissful silence.

I returned to the porch, pushed the wicker chair back against the wall, and picked up the cleaning supplies. Old snow crunched underneath my boots as I plodded toward the hearse. I placed the bucket on the hardened earth and dragged the passenger door open. The rag I was still holding slid through my fingers and fell into the bucket, settling on the filmy surface.

The car was spotless
. Not a splatter of vomit remained. I checked the seams of the leather seat, but found nothing to sop off. I sniffed the air, but even that was clean. I popped my phone out of my pocket to text Blake a thank you when Cruz’s car rumbled down our long driveway. He came to a stop inches from me.

“Morning,” he said, stepping out. “Beatrice said these were your favorite.” He handed me a bakery bag smudged with grease stains.

I slipped my phone back in my pocket and checked the contents. Two corn muffins with real bits of corn were nestled at the bottom, still hot from the oven.

“You took it down,” Cruz said.

I followed his gaze to the bare hook. “Yes.” I didn’t tell him that I’d thrown it away.

“Want me to take this back in for you?” he asked, tipping his clean-shaven chin toward the bucket. “You don’t seem to be needing it.”

“I don’t. Blake washed the car already.”

One of Cruz’s dark eyebrows arched up. “Did he, now? How kind of him.” He sounded sarcastic. I guessed he and Blake hadn’t hit it off. I was about to grab the bucket when Cruz bent over and seized it. His skin didn’t glow like it had last night. It was normal, perhaps even a little tanned.

He followed me up the porch steps, and through the front door. While I hung my coat, I pointed out the kitchen. He walked straight toward it, trekking bits of snow onto the hardwood floors.

“You can just leave the bucket in the sink,” I said. “When you’re ready, I’ll show you—” My voice broke. I crumpled the bakery bag in my clenched hand. “I’ll show you downstairs.”

“You don’t have to,” Cruz said.

“I do.” I tossed the bag on the wooden kitchen island and headed toward the door, which Mom had painted bright yellow. She’d thought that adding cheery paint would help me get over what lurked behind it. Instead, it had increased my distress, as I’d always found myself staring at it. I wrapped my fingers around the knob, but couldn’t bring myself to turn it. Several minutes passed. Finally, Cruz put his hand over mine and pressed down to accomplish the task I was unable to. As soon as the latch clicked, I pulled my hand out from under his.

“I got it from here,” he said.

I stared straight into his face. Cruz’s eyes were green, like the clusters of lanky leaves that sprouted from the rowan trees planted around the oldest section of the cemetery. “I’d like to see her.”

“How about I establish cause of death first? And then, when she’s dressed and ready—”

“I’ve seen a lot of dead bodies, Mr. Mason—”

“Cruz. I’m twenty-four, not forty. And yes, I imagine you’ve seen your fair share of corpses, but this is your mother we’re talking about.”

I swallowed, but yanked the door open nonetheless and clambered down the stairs. The morgue reeked of roses. Dad had probably stuck some bouquets in one of the cold chambers to keep them fresh for the funeral. On autopilot, I walked over to the back wall—where Dad told he’d placed Mom—and pulled on the lever of her chamber. Her straight, shiny black hair gusted around her snowy shoulders.

“She always wore it in a braid,” I told Cruz.

My gaze roamed over the rest of her face that I knew by heart, over her high cheekbones, over the twin peaks of her upper lip, over the upward slope of her eyes, all remnants of our Native American ancestry.

“You look a lot like her,” he said, hanging up his coat next to Mom’s mortician robe. It drooped, as lifeless as her body.

I did look like Mom. I had the same black hair, black eyes. I even had the same sloping lips. The only difference between us had been our build. I was an entire head taller than she’d been, and slender like Dad.

Cruz circled around me, hooked his fingers around the shelf’s handle, and slid it out…slid Mom out. Her skin, which was always brown, even in the winter, had turned alabaster. Only the unnatural blue tinge of her lips and eyelids shattered her otherwise colorless complexion.

“What does Catori mean?” Cruz asked, his voice slicing through the thick silence like the blade of the scalpel that would soon slash through Mom’s sternum.

I took a step back to allow him to slide the drawer out completely. “It means ‘spirit’ in Hopi.”

“Aren’t you of Gottwa descent?”

“Yes.” I gazed down at her closed eyes, willing them to open again. “But Dad liked the name.”

“And Nova?”

“It means, ‘chasing butterflies’. When my mother was born, three butterflies landed on her crib. At least, that’s what my grandma told me.” Her lids didn’t flutter. For a second, I saw myself as a child spooked by a nightmare, tiptoeing into my parent’s room to find comfort in their bed. I would always come around to my mother’s side because she’d lift the covers and let me crawl in, whereas Dad would carry me back to my bedroom, promising the dream catchers would trap my next nightmare.

“Catori?” 

“No one calls me that. Just Cat.”

“That’s too bad. It’s a beautiful name.” He raked his hand through his wavy black hair. “Look, I’m going to start…
examining
your mother. I think it would be wiser if you left.”

“I’m a medical student.”

“If you want to keep her memory intact, don’t stay for this.”

“I’m staying.”

“Why?”

“Because”—I gaped at the thin white sheet covering her chest and legs—“her heart didn’t just stop. Someone stopped it. And I want to be there when you find out how.”

CHAPTER 3 – THE BOOK

“What makes you think your mother was murdered?” Cruz asked me, tilting his head.

“She was forty-four, in perfect health. There’s no way she had a heart attack.”

“People have heart attacks all the time,” Cruz said.

“People with poor eating habits, heightened stress, or genetic predispositions. Mom had neither of those. I won’t interfere with your work, but I’m staying.”

“Suit yourself,” he said. He flung the sheet off Mom’s pallid body, but it seemed to lift in slow motion, caressing her collarbone and her chest, slipping over her navel and thighs, gliding over her calves and feet, finally pooling onto the tiled floor like milk.

I blinked, and the quiet unveiling was replaced by the horror of her naked body sprawled out on the steel bed. I stumbled backward, but caught myself on the metal instrument rack. The shiny, sharp tools rattled in time with my pulse.

My stomach contracted, and the orange juice I drank earlier shot up my throat. I just made it to the metal sink. I gripped the edges as more spasms hardened my insides. I wasn’t sure how long I stayed hunched over the sink, but white and black dots started dancing before my eyes.

Wordlessly, Cruz’s hands settled around my elbows. He guided me back up to the kitchen where he sat me down and crouched next to me. “I’ll come to get you when I’m done. To tell you if I find anything in her system, all right?”

I nodded. Although I looked at his face, I couldn’t see him. All I could see were those damn monochromatic dots, like static on a television screen. As his shoes clanged against the basement stairs, I breathed in and out, waiting for color to flood my eyesight again. When it did, I rose. Walking proved difficult as my legs were still wobbly, but I didn’t give my body a choice. I needed to pull through this. Mom would have wanted me to stay strong.

My gaze locked on the yellow door.
Damn door!

Inflamed by the need to make it disappear, I went outside, braving the wind that swirled snowflakes around the tombstones. I hurried to the shed at the back of the house where my parents used to store a bunch of unnecessary items, like my first bike and extra car tires that didn’t fit any of our cars. I shoved things around, aiming my phone’s flashlight on the hoarded mess. Finally, I found what I was looking for: a paint can and a roller brush. The dried paint around the lid was white. Not yellow.
Perfect.

After grabbing both, I locked the wooden doors and returned to the house clutching the swinging bucket and brush. I discarded my jacket and sweater on my way to the kitchen. They landed on the back of the crackled brown suede armchair, but slid onto the rug. I snatched a pairing knife from the wooden block and popped the lid off the can. Grabbing yesterday’s newspaper, I plastered the floor with the broadsheets, and then I dipped the brush into the can and rolled it over the yellow color until sweat and paint dripped along my bare forearms. It took three coats to get rid of the color. By the time I was finished, even the doorknob was white. I backed up and stared at it, and then I started crying because I’d just gotten rid of something else my mother had made.

The doorbell rang. I prayed it wasn’t another visitor armed with a casserole and unsatisfying words. Blotting my eyes with my knuckles, I went to open the door.

The postman stood before me in his furry, flap-eared hat. “I got a delivery for you, Cat,” he said, handing me a heavy box.

“I didn’t order anything.”

“It’s—it was for your mother. You want me to return it? I can just—” He shifted and his rubber boots squeaked on the porch boards.

“I’ll take it.”

“Um…you got something on your face. Makeup or paint or something.”

“Oh, yeah. I was redecorating.”

“I did that when my momma passed away. It helped.”

It hadn’t helped me.

“Well, you have a good one,” he said, giving me an awkward thumbs-up. “And stay warm,” he added, trotting back to the post truck.

Hugging the cardboard box to my chest, I shut the door and raced up the stairs to my bedroom. I kicked the door closed and placed the box on my feather-printed comforter. Using the tip of a pen, I sliced through the packing tape, pulled the tabs open, and combed away the Styrofoam peanuts.

“What the hell?” I murmured, lifting a thick, leather-bound book that smelled musty, as though it had been sitting in someone’s basement for half a century.

I ran my fingers over the embossed gold title.
The Wytchen Tree
. Mom tended to the cemetery garden, but a book about a tree was downright eccentric, even for her. I crossed my small bedroom toward the shapeless beanbag next to my window. The purple velvet cover was threadbare in places, but I’d never wanted to reupholster it. That purple fabric had captured my tears of anger when I was a child and my tears of heartache when I was a teenager. Replacing it would mean getting rid of my childhood, like covering an old plush toy with new fur. Hadn’t I gotten rid of enough things already?

The beanbag molded to my body and supported my elbows as I propped the heavy book open. It was printed in 1938. Nearly a hundred years ago. The book must have been worth a small fortune. Perhaps I should have returned it. We weren’t poor—I was one of the lucky few who hadn’t needed to take out a student loan—but we were by no means rolling in it. I bit my lip and glanced at the box. I could still return it as long as I didn’t crease a page or damage the soft binding. No one would notice that a set of eyes had perused it.

Delicately, I flipped from one page to the next, because I was curious what had been going through my mother’s mind these last few days. In the first chapter, I found out that a wytchen tree was just a fancy name for a rowan tree, the very trees in our cemetery. I read about its virtues, about the berries’ use in jams and medications. And then I came upon a passage that made me understand why my mother had purchased the book.

In 1812, Negongwa, the revered leader of the Gottwa Indians, espoused the American cause in exchange for a plot of land that spanned from the coast of Lake Michigan to the edge of the Manistee Forest. This land later became known as Rowan.