Page 147 of What We Become

And it wasn’t us.

I take the stairs two at a time, shouting something vaguely reassuring when Mom calls after me, although it could’ve been family emergency or flower emergency or just a noise with the right number of syllables. Either way, nobody follows me outside.

The drive home isn’t long, but I spend every minute trying to build an explanation that doesn’t involve Stephen.

Maybe Rosa sent them because kitten is back at the diner. Maybe Amy sent them because she knows Sage has been having a shit time. Maybe some confused florist delivered them to the wrong house and six deeply suspicious people collectively failed to question it because flowers are pretty and nobody expects a bouquet to be part of a murder plot.

Unfortunately, probability has become a vindictive bitch who enjoys watching me suffer.

Knox opens the door before I reach it. His hair is damp, and his thermal is sticking to his chest in dark patches. His expression is set in a way that says he’s already completed a full sweep of the house and he’s angry the walls haven’t confessed.

“Anything on the cameras?” I ask immediately.

He shakes his head.

“Fuck. Where’s Sage?”

Knox’s jaw tightens, a muscle jumping there like Morse code for bad news. “Bedroom. With Micah.”

I don’t ask if she’s okay. The answer is in the set of his shoulders. Sage is never just okay when things go sideways—she’s either “fine” or she’s white-knuckling through a panic she won’t name out loud.

I step past him into the living room. Eli is there in a T-shirt and sweats, and he’s staring at his phone like it owes him answers.

“Anyone claim them?” I ask.

“Rosa swears she didn’t send them. Amy didn’t either, and she was with Sage the whole time.” He looks up, and his eyes are already rimmed with dark shadows. “They were in the house, Milo.”

The words feel like a boot in the center of my chest.

“What do you mean, in the house?”

“On the kitchen counter. Already in the vase.” Eli drags a hand through his hair. “No card or wrapping. Nothing to say where they came from.”

“Who put them in the vase?”

“Nobody here.”

I look past him toward the kitchen, where the sunflowers sit in the same plain glass vase that held Micah’s tulips. Bright yellow faces turned toward the room, all of them cheerful enough to be deeply fucking sinister.

“Who saw them first?”

“I did,” Eli says. “They were there when I came downstairs after my shower.”

“What time?”

“A little after one.”

“And before you went upstairs?”

“The tulips were still there. I remember looking at them when I rinsed my coffee cup.”

My stomach drops. “How long were you in the shower?”

“Twenty minutes. Maybe twenty-five.”

That isn’t a delivery window. It’s a fucking appointment.

Knox was sitting outside Amy’s place while Sage visited her. Holden was at work. I was at Mom’s, and Micah was out running errands. Eli was the only person inside the house, alone upstairs with enough water pounding around him that he wouldn’t hear someone moving below.