Page 84 of A Secret In The Garden

“The corpse flower, that big one—you have to be careful. It’s almost extinct. It’s going to bloom—tomorrow and…there’s supposed to be a big party—” I couldn’t say the words out loud without my voice cracking and streams of tears cascading down my cheeks.

“Ma’am,” he said, ushering me toward the driveway, where my car was packed and waiting with the rest my things.

“But—”

He let out a huff, opening my car door and angling me so I had nowhere to go but into it. “Listen, I will make some calls and do what I can about your plants, but I’ll tell you right now, there’s nothing that can be done about that big, tall one. It’s directly over the remains. The bulldozer has to get in and—” Realizing he was saying too much, he suddenly shut up and tried to get me to sit down in the driver’s seat.

“Where are Jasper and Sowerby?” I asked.

“Ma’am,” he nearly whined in frustration.

“Tell me where they are, and I’ll go.”

Another long huff before he finally caved. “Jasper Blackwood is in custody getting processed at the local jail.”

“And Sowerby? The older one?” I pressed, needing to know his involvement. When he had looked at the broken soil, he had known. I was sure of it.

“The older gentleman is currently speaking to their attorneys. Miss, I can’t tell you any more.”

The car door closed, and I placed my hands on the steering wheel and tried to catch my breath.

The phone rang twice. Numbly, I held it to my ear.

Nick told me to hurry over and fill him in on everything. He was devastated hearing everyone would miss the blooming of the corpse flower. I hadn’t been allowed to take the propagations from the conservatory with me. The only plant I was allowed to take was the ghost orchid that Jasper had given me from my room. I glared at the perfect white flowers wrapped in the cupholder beside me.

After hanging up with Nick, I immediately phoned Dr. Lithgow, who flew into an absolute tirade, cursing me for not having smuggled out anything and promising to rain a fiery hell on the police department if they didn’t adhere to the legal protection for rare plants before he hung up on me to make some phone calls. It didn’t sound like I still had a job, even if he hadn’t said it in so many words.

Shifting in my seat, I realized I still had Hester’s locket in my pocket. I had meant to leave it in my room when the cops had me go up to collect my belongings. It felt wrong to leave it at the manor where Jasper could get it but wrong to take it. I took it. I needed strength more than ever, and every time I looked at the worn locket, I was reminded of Hester’s resilience, how, even in her death, she refused to give up until her murderer was caught.

Admittedly, there were still things that didn’t make sense to me, like why she seemed to want Jasper and me to be together—the happy look on her face when he was in my bed. She never acted like she was upset or afraid of him, though maybe she just wasn’t anymore.

I couldn’t believe she had been in the conservatory the whole time. Why hadn’t I ever thought of that? It made perfect sense why Jasper never let anyone touch it, saying it was too painful. Yeah, it probably was painful for him to remember how he’d murdered his mother and buried her in her own goddamned garden to decompose with her own plants.

At least, in the end, I’d been able to help her.

Once they exhumed her body, hopefully they would be able to finally put all of the missing pieces together and charge Jasper. Part of me never wanted anything to do with Blackwood Manor again, but a more curious—and admittedly broken-hearted—part of me needed to know why Jasper had done it. Idiotically, I found myself holding on to a tendril of hope that maybe it had been some sort of an accident, that he hadn’t killed his own mother on purpose. Though at fifteen years old, even had it been an accident, there’s no possible way he could have buried that body by himself. It was obvious Sowerby had helped him.

When the old man had stormed into the conservatory at the sound of my screams, he had glanced at where I had been digging and then settled his face with a look of resignation. I should have known something was odd about that space. Sowerby refused to be near it whenever he was in the garden. It made sense why he got so jittery and weird when he had been helping me in there.

Looking back, it was obvious he had wanted me to be the one to find her body. That’s why he had been nagging Jasper to get a crew in to fix it up…but why? Was it possible he had known about it and wanted justice for Hester, too?

All I knew was that Sowerby had known that body was there the entire time, and the two of them had been covering up Hester’s death together.

Chapter 26

Jasper

You’ll be out soon; Leon said they can’t immediately arrest you without direct, irrefutable evidence such as a weapon or forensic analysis, which they won’t get until an autopsy is performed.” Sowerby attempted to calm me with his tense, fatherly voice.

“Where is Eliza?” I struggled to relax my jaw enough to speak.

Heaviness loomed in his eyes. “Security confirmed she left the manor.”

I focused on a small spot of black on the speckled floor of the police station as I struggled not to come apart at the seams. I was on autopilot. Breathing in and out. Swallowing. Blinking.

I wanted to throw the stiff metal chair I sat in against the wall. I wanted to curl into a ball on the floor and never get up. I wanted to stab something—someone. But more than anything, I wanted to take back the last twenty years and redo them. This whole time she’d been feet away from me. Dead. I wanted to kill my father.

“The girl will be fine; it was a shock. I’m more concerned about how you are, Jasper.” Sowerby sat in the chair at the end of the metal desk, wisely bypassing the one nearest me. It was amazing to me that, even now, he could remain calm and poised. I wondered if that was something that came with age or if he had always been this way.