Chapter 7

Chapter 7: Lilies For Mum

Selina POV

The florist on Kent Street only had three kinds of lilies left.

"White," I said. "The big ones. She liked the big ones."

The girl wrapped them in brown paper and didn't ask who "she" was. I paid with the house card and didn't look at the receipt. Damien would see it at the end of the month, a line on a statement between his tailor and his wine merchant. Flowers, St. Agnes Florist, forty dollars. He wouldn't know what they were for. He never asked.

The cemetery gates were open. I parked by the chapel, where I always parked, and walked the gravel path with the lilies held against my chest like a baby.

I'd come here every month for five years. I knew the way with my eyes closed. Past the angel with the broken wing. Left at the bench with the brass plaque. Up the small slope where the old yew tree dropped needles on everything.

My parents were under the yew. Daniel and Maria Torres, side by side, one stone.

I was halfway up the slope when I heard a soft woman’s laugh. This was out of place in a cemetery at nine in the morning. 

I looked up, twenty feet away, at a white marble headstone I'd walked past a hundred times, stood a woman in a camel coat with dark hair falling down her back. And beside her, stood my husband. One hand in his pocket and the other on her shoulder. 

I stopped walking. He was wearing a navy jumper, not the tuxedo or anything from our wardrobe either. A jumper I had never seen in my life. So he'd changed somewhere. At someone's place.

Amora tipped her head against his arm, the same way she had in the photo. She said something I couldn't hear. He looked down at her and his face did something soft.

I'd been married to him for two years and yet I didn't know his face could do that. My fingers tightened on the brown paper until it crackled.

He heard it because his head turned. His eyes found me across the grass, and for half a second, I saw shock, real shock. Like he'd seen a ghost. Then it closed over and it became hard and cold, like the way water freezes.

He let go of Amora's shoulder and came at me across the grass. His strides were fast and gravel crunching.

"What are you doing here?" Damien demanded.

"Good morning to you too."

"Don't." He stopped in front of me, close enough that I had to tilt my head back. "Did you follow me?"

I stared at him.

"Did you," he said again, slower this time, "follow me?"

"How would I follow you, Damien? I didn't know where you were. I didn't know where you were all night."

His jaw tightened.

"Was it Lily? Did she send you that stupid post?" He dragged a hand through his hair. "You saw it and you couldn't wait. You had to come and make a scene."

"I'm not making a scene. You're the one shouting."

"I'm not shouting."

"You're shouting in a cemetery."

He looked around, like he'd just noticed where he was. An old man two rows over was watching us with his hat in his hands.

Damien lowered his voice but it was worse.

"You don't come here. In two years, you have never for once come here. And the morning after Amora gets back, you just happen to show up at her sister's grave with flowers?"

I looked down at the lilies. *Her sister's grave.* He thought these were for Lyra. He thought I'd come to perform.

Behind him, Amora was walking over slowly. Her heels sank into the grass and she lifted them carefully, one at a time, like a deer.

"Damien. Stop it."

Her voice was gentle and musical. She put a hand on his arm and he let her.

"Don't be cruel to her," she said. "Look at her. She's upset. Of course she's upset." She turned her eyes wide, brown  and soft on me. "I'm Amora. I'm so sorry we're meeting like this. I'd have wanted it to be anywhere else."

I didn't take her hand. She hadn't offered it anyway.

"I understand," she went on. "Honestly, I do. If my husband was out all night, I'd follow him too."

"I didn't follow anyone."

"Of course not." She smiled, like we were sharing a secret. "It doesn't matter. We're all adults. Damien just brought me to see my sister. That's all this is."

*That's all this is.* With his jumper on her shoulders yesterday, probably with her head on his arm.

"Then why is he so angry?" I asked.

Amora blinked. Damien's eyes narrowed. "Don't do that."

"Do what?"

"Turn this around. You're the one who's here. Explain it."

I looked at him. At his hard mouth, and the shadow on his jaw where he hadn't shaved, and the strange jumper.

I could have said it. Five words. *My parents are buried there.*

I could've pointed at the yew tree and watched his face fall. But he'd been standing twenty feet from them, laughing. And he hadn't even looked. He didn't deserve to be told.

"No," I said.

His head snapped back. "No?"

"I don't owe you an explanation. You didn't give me one last night."

Amora drew in a soft breath. "Oh, Selina. Please. Let's not."

"I'm not talking to you."

"Selina." Damien's voice dropped. "Apologise to her."

"For what?"

"For walking up to her sister's grave like it's a stage. For whatever you came here to do."

"I came to put flowers down."

"For a girl you never met."

"You don't know who I've met."

The old man two rows over had put his hat back on. He was walking away quickly, toward the chapel, not looking back.

Amora touched Damien's sleeve. "It's fine. Really. She doesn't have to—"

"She does."

Damien looked at me, and I saw something in his eyes. Something I'd never seen. It wasn't anger but something raw underneath. It seems like I'd stepped on a wound he'd covered up for years and forgotten was there.

"Lyra was nineteen," he said quietly. "She died in that car. Right next to me. And you think you can walk up here and use her?"

My throat closed.

*That car.* The same car. The same night. The same black marker on the hospital board.

He didn't know. He actually didn't know.

"Damien," I whispered. "You don't—"

His hand closed around my wrist but not gently.

The lilies tipped sideways in my arms. One stem snapped. White petals fell on the gravel between our feet.

"Come here," he said.

He grabbed my wrist and dragged me toward the other grave.