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I breathe faster and faster, black spots dancing before my eyes. I want to run away and hide, but I need to know. I grab the shovel and dig as fast as I can to reveal the corpse’s left arm. I have to rip open the sleeve of a jacket and a shirt to expose the gray flesh. Even in the dim moonlight, I can see the empty space between the other tattoos.
There’s no daisy on Nero’s arm.
I sit back on my heels, the stench of Nero’s decomposing body rising all around me. What did I do? Did I kill my husband?
If my husband is dead, then who the hell has been living in my house for the past four weeks? A ghost? Maybe Nero’s vengeful spirit has been haunting me. Either ghosts are real, or my guilty conscience has manifested him to torment me into remembering what I did to him.
But that would have to mean I hallucinated the encounters that Nero and I had with Laz and Mia and then with Mom. I’ll ask them if they’ve seen Nero. I’ll call them right now, and I’ll know if I’m going mad or not. I scramble out of the hole and brush the dirt from my hands. I don’t even want to cover up the body. If I murdered my husband, then I deserve to go to prison.
As I straighten up, I see a dark figure moving across the garden toward me.
A scream rises in my throat, but I’m frozen to the spot. It’s him, the vengeful spirit of my dead husband, and he’s come to finish me off in the most gruesome way possible. There won’t be any escape.
But the figure’s footsteps squelch in the wet grass. I can hear him breathing, and moonlight glints on his wet, angry features. Surely a ghost, even one I’m hallucinating, wouldn’t be so solid or make any noise.
The man standing in front of me is a living, breathing man, and I realize I made a terrible mistake. I talked to Mrs. White onthe phone about the garden, forgetting that the man pretending to be my husband would be listening in.
The rain plasters his now see-through white shirt to his chest. Rain drops trickle down the tanned, tattooed flesh of his forearms. Among the roses, skulls, and snakes, there’s a daisy tattoo on his forearm.
A daisy tattoo that he got for me.
Because my name means daisy, and he knows how much I love them.
He insisted I carry daisies on my wedding day when I desperately wanted to, and Mom was arguing that they were tacky and cheap. Nero got the tattoo while he was gone because he missed me so much.
But he can’t be my husband because I think I killed my husband.
What the ever-loving hell is going on? WhatInvasion of the Body Snatchersnightmare is this? I’m alone with a corpse and a stranger, and the stranger has a murderous glint in his eyes as he stalks toward me.
I lunge for the shovel and brandish it protectively in front of myself. It shakes in my terrified grip as I back away. The stranger’s fists are clenched tight, and the tendons and veins are standing out on his forearms, making the daisy tattoo pop.
“Don’t come any closer. My husband never had a daisy tattoo on his arm. Who the hell are you?”
“I knew you would lead me to the proof.” The stranger looks from Nero’s corpse to me, and he’s breathing so fast and hard that he’s snarling with anger. “I’m the man who’s going to kill you,cara mia.”
17
Rieta
The stranger steps forward and takes the shovel out of my hands. Just takes it away from me because I’m shaking too much to defend myself. With rain pouring down my face, I wait for the blow that will knock me unconscious.
A blow that I’ll never wake up from because this man is going to kill me.
The stranger turns away from me toward the grave and starts digging. The wind whips rain into my face as I stand there shivering, and it takes me a moment to understand what he’s doing. He’s uncovering Nero’s head and shoulders. He wants to be sure who it really is. After a few minutes of digging, the stranger brushes dirt away from the corpse’s face. He even lifts the body up so he can examine his whole head.
I don’t want to look, but I must. The falling rain has cleaned the mottled flesh. Nero’s dead, decomposing face, wet from the rain and deformed in places, but recognizably him, stares out of the grave.
A memory pierces me so sharply that I cry out. A night just like this one in the pouring rain. The rough wood of the shovel handle against my palms.
Where are you? I’ll fucking kill you, bitch.Nero’s back to me as I lift the shovel.
I whirl around and dry heave, falling to my knees on the slippery ground. I retch again and again, my stomach heaving painfully. When I look up, the stranger is standing over me in the dark, gripping the shovel in both hands.
“Did he beat you?” he asks in a hard voice. “Did he torture you? Lock you up?”
I shake my head, shakily getting to my feet.
“Then why did you kill my brother?” he demands.
