Red Lily (In the Garden 3)

But another wave bowled him over.

He saw her, gliding through the water, her white gown billowing, her hair floating out in tangled ropes. Her eyes were wide with lunacy, her hand reaching out, curled like claws.

He felt them close around his neck, squeeze, though he could see her still, feet away, suspended in the water over her own bones.

He struck out, but there was nothing to fight. He clawed toward the surface, but she held him down as inevitably as the bricks and stones that had carried her to the bottom.

She was killing him, as she’d planned to kill her own child. Maybe that had been the plan all along, he thought dimly. To take a Harper with her.

He thought of Hayley, waiting for him on the surface, of the child she carried. Of the daughter she’d already given him.

He wouldn’t give them up.

He looked back down at the bones, tried to find a glimmer of that pity. And he looked at Amelia, eternally mad.

I remember you. He thought it with all his will. Singing to me. I knew you’d never hurt me. Remember me. The child that came from your child.

He groped for his diving knife, sliced his palm with the blade. As she had once sliced hers in madness. His blood dripped and clouded in the murky water between them, and drifted down toward the filthy bones.

That’s your blood in me. Connor blood as much as Harper. Amelia to James, James to Robert, Robert to Rosalind, and Rosalind to me. That’s why I found you. Let me go. Let me take you home. You don’t have to be alone or lost anymore.

When the pressure on his throat released, he fought the urge to kick straight for the surface. He could still see her, and wondered how it was he could see tears flow down her cheeks.

I’ll come back for you. I swear it.

He pushed up, and he thought he heard her singing, the light, sweet voice of his childhood. When he looked back, he saw the beam of his light spear out from the bottom, arrow to her so she was illuminated in its shaft.

And watched her fade away like a dream.

Breaking the surface, he ripped his mouthpiece away, sucked in air that burned his scored throat. Sunlight sparkled in his eyes, dazzling them, and through the roaring in his ears there were voices calling his name.

Through the dazzle, he found Hayley standing on the verge, a hand pressed to her belly. On the wrist of that hand, ruby hearts glittered like hope.

He swam through the lilies toward her, swam away from death toward life. Logan and Mitch helped pull him out of the water where he lay on his back, drawing in air, looking into Hayley’s eyes.

“I found her.”

epilogue

THE SUN FILTERED through the leaves of sycamores and oaks and cast pretty patterns of light and shadows on the green of the grass. On the branches birds sang, filling the balmy air with music.

Gravestones stood, marble white, granite gray, carved to mark the dead. On some, flowers lay, petals fading, petals fluttering in the light breeze. Tributes to those who’d passed before.

Harper stood between his mother and Hayley, holding their hands as the casket was lowered.

“I don’t feel sad,” Hayley declared. “Not anymore. This feels right. More than right, it feels kind.”

“She earned the right to be here. Beside her son.” Roz looked at the graves, the names. Reginald and Beatrice, Reginald and Elizabeth.

And there, her parents. Their aunts and uncles, cousins, all links in the long chain of Harpers. “In the spring,” she said, “we’ll put a marker for her. Amelia Ellen Connor.”

“You already have, in a way.” Mitch turned his head to kiss her hair. “Burying her son’s rattle with her, his picture. Hayley’s right. It’s kind.”

“Without her, I’m not. Without her, Harper, Austin, Mason are not. Nor are the children who come from them. She deserves her place.”

“Whatever she did, she deserved better than what was done to her.” Stella sighed. “I’m proud I was part of this, of giving her back her name, and I hope, giving her peace.” She smiled at Logan, then over at David and all the others. “We were all part of it.”

“Tossed in the pond. Discarded.” Logan rubbed a hand over the small of Stella’s back. “All to protect, what? Reputation.”