But then I smell something. Two things, actually.
Aftershave. One that’s familiar and foreign at once. I’ve smelled it before, and it’s linked to a long-ago memory. One that doesn’t belong here.
“Matteo, is that you?” I don’t know why I ask when I know it’s not.
My phone vibrates with a text message, and I jump at the sensation in my back pocket. I fumble to grab it, but it slips from my hand, falling to the floor. I bend to pick it up and look at the screen.
Matteo: Just walked into the club and you won’t believe who’s here!
As panic begins to rise, I get a second text. It’s Matteo again.
Matteo: My hot barista.
Any other night, I’d grin at the emoji he took the time to add, but tonight isn’t that night. Angry rain beats against the windows as if it, too, wants me out. I type a quick reply telling him to have fun and hurry toward the library doors, intending to grab one of the umbrellas available for students to borrow on my walk home.
That’s when I pick up that other scent. The one just masked by the aftershave. The one that makes me a little nauseous.
Ashes of roses.
Dead roses.
Tomorrow is my birthday. The box of dead roses won’t arrive until then.
I can’t see the library doors from where I am, but I hear them open then close. Someone comes in or goes out.
The hair on the back of my neck stands on end, and my hands grow clammy. The lights flicker twice, then come back on.
I hurry toward the front desk, and I’m almost there when I see it.
A single rose petal.
Black?
They’re supposed to be red. They’ve always been red.
Is it my imagination or do I smell that musty, faint scent of damp earth? Of rot.
“There you are,” Barbara announces from behind me.
I yelp and whirl around.
She lets out a small scream too. Her hand moves to her own chest and a moment later, she laughs. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost, Cristina.”
My mouth goes dry. I try to swallow, try for a laugh, wanting to sound casual, but it comes out strange. Choked.
It’s just my imagination, I tell myself. The smell. The petal. It’s not my dead rose.
She tilts her head and comes closer, taking the heavy tome from under my arm.
“You work too hard, dear. Go have some fun. These dusty old books will be here when you get back.”
“Thanks, Barbara.”
She smiles, and again, I wonder how old she is. In her late sixties or early seventies? Even with her face lined as it is, she’s still so elegantly beautiful.
“Um…did someone get roses?” I ask.
“Yes, in fact. A bouquet arrived earlier. No note. Just a gorgeous bouquet of long-stemmed black roses.”
“Black?”
“They’re stunning. I’ll show you.” She ducks behind the counter toward the office door and then goes through it.
I’m relieved as I walk to the counter and pick up the fallen petal. Not dead. Just a petal that dropped off. That’s all.
“Beautiful, right?” she asks as she returns carrying a crystal vase with the roses. “I snuck them into my office,” she says with a wink.
“Good for you.”
“No note, so I thought why not? Strange count, though. Eight,” she adds as she sets the vase on the counter and adjusts the position of one rose.
My blood turns to ice. “Eight…roses?”
She looks at me and nods, her over-sprayed hair immobile. “But eight is better than none.”
“And there wasn’t a note?”
“No. Strange especially because I know the florist, and these roses are very expensive.” She wipes something off the counter. “Will I see you tomorrow?”
“Um…no, it’s my birthday. I have plans with my family.”
“Well, you have a happy birthday, sweetheart.”
“Thank you. Good night, Barbara.”
3
Cristina
As I hurry down the dimly lit stairwell, one hand grazes the iron railing while the other grips the umbrella handle. That scent of aftershave lingers here in the hall too, but it could be anyone. The library building is a busy one.
It’s the anticipation of that box of roses that has me anxious. There should be eight tomorrow. Eight and a note that reads 0 years.
I wonder if whoever sends the flowers will bother writing a note at all.
The first box came when I was almost eleven years old. I had been living in the city with my uncle and cousins, Liam and Simona, for almost nine months by then.
When the box was delivered, I remember standing at the living room window watching the sun go down over Manhattan. I love the view from this apartment. Even when I was very young and my parents would bring my brother and I to visit my uncle’s family, I’d stand at the window of their beautiful apartment that took up the whole floor and watch the sun set over what felt like the whole of the city.
I didn’t think anything strange about a delivery so late. What was strange was that the package was for me.
At first, all I felt was excitement because I recognized the box. It was the same florist my dad used to send flowers to my mom.
Now I was getting my first delivery of flowers, but something was different.
Wrong.
I still remember the smell.
I hurried back to the living room and set my fancy box down on the coffee table undoing the ribbon while ignoring the nanny’s calls for me to wait.
By the time she stood over me, the lid was off, and I was peeling back layers and layers of fine black tissue paper. When my mom received flowers, those sheets always smelled wonderful.
My flowers, though, they didn’t smell so wonderful.
The opposite.
And I had that feeling I sometimes get in the pit of my stomach when I remember the man who told me monsters don’t hide in the dark.
When I finally peeled back the last layer of paper and saw the single dead rose inside, I thought how much the box resembled a coffin.
How much it resembled the coffins my mother and brother had been buried in.
I lifted it out, and the petals fell away, some into the box, some on the floor around my feet. When I turned my gaze up to my nanny, she had her hand over her mouth.
She didn’t look upset.
She looked terrified.
“It’s dead,” I said, holding it up to her
“It’s just dried,” she’d said in a small voice.
I didn’t think there was a difference. What was the point of having dead or dried flowers if you could have happy, living ones? I was preparing to explain this, not paying attention, when I pricked my finger on a thorn.
I sucked in a breath and turned in time to see a fat drop of blood, then another, splat into the box, half on a petal, half on that black paper. A second drop fell onto the polished white marble floor.
It was then I saw the small card inside. I lifted it out and read the two words.
Eight years…
“That’s strange,” I said. “Are they from Uncle Adam? Why didn’t he wish me a happy birthday? Maybe it’s on the other side—”
Suddenly, my nanny slapped the flower out of my hand, and I gasped. It wasn’t so much that it hurt but the shock of it. She’d never raised a hand to me before. I’d never even heard her yell, not at me or my cousins at least.