Page 73 of The Blood we Crave: Part Two

This one time, for May, I will do what I should have done while she was alive.

“I wish you’d ask me to play something that tells you how I’ve been.” I trace the grooves of her name in the stone. “I’d play ‘Clair de lune’ ’cause I know it was your favorite, and I would hope it would tell you that I miss you.”

Death is an unavoidable fate. But if anyone deserved more time, maybe even immortality, it would’ve been May.

“I’ll find who did this to you, May. I was not the perfect grandson, but this? This I can promise you.”

I grieve for her, just as I had grieved for Rosemary. I’m angry that two people who warranted a better ending never got it. It makes no sense to me that people like me could still breathe and people like Rosie and May would never feel their own heart beat again.

Scooping up the flower from its place, I roll the thornless rose between my fingers. Whoever had left this behind must have done so only a few hours ago. Bringing the petals to my nose, I can smell the freshness of the flower, as if it had only been plucked from the bush hours ago.

The floral, sweet aroma burns my nose. The scent plucks at my memory, swirling thoughts around that were buried long ago. My stomach lurches, and suddenly, I drift from my grandmother’s tombstone and enter a memory I’d locked away.

“Roses each have their own unique smell.” His voice is like charcoal. “Just as every woman carries a specific fragrance. Even in death, that deserves to be recognized.”

My fingers are raw, the palms of my hand burned from too much exposure to chemicals. I can see new blisters forming where calluses would eventually grow once they healed. I’d used too much bleach tonight, but I had no other choice.

There had been far too much blood for just one jug.

My father’s gloved hand reaches inside the bucket just to his left before he spreads the contents across the top layer of freshly laid soil. Homemade fertilizer for the brand-new rosebush in the estate gardens.

“This will bloom into a rich apricot color and pale towards the edges,” he tells me, as if I care what color the flower will turn. “And the smell…”

Henry trails off, lifting his head to the sky as if to take a deep breath, recalling a scent from long ago.

“Will smell just like tea.” He presses his hands into the soil. “It’s the first thing I notice about a woman. How she smells, how to pair it with the perfect rose.”

I look down at the white tag in my small hands. “Lidia” is scrawled in messy script across the material. I’d seen many tags just like this, but the name was always different.

Jennifer.

Yolanda.

Nina.

Dawn.

All women he’d turned into his new favorite flower. Women I’d seen hang from the rafters of the garden shed.

I knew nothing about them. Not their favorite color or if they had children. If they were scared of the dark like I was or cut the crust of their sandwiches. They were strangers to me in life and in death.

But I know what their blood looks like. What it feels like in my hands, how it burns my nose, and the smell alone is what wakes me up every night with cold sweats. How is it possible to know the inside of someone’s body so intimately but still know nothing other than their name?

I swallow the lump in my throat, waiting for him to finish. When he’s done, he extends his hand, the inside of his gloves stained pink. Walking forward, I place the name tag in his hand and watch as he tethers it to a small stick poking from the ground.

Henry stands up, dusting his hands and turning to look down at me. The wind blows, brushing my hair in front of my face, and when he reaches to push it out of my eyes, I step back, avoiding his touch.

“These roses are my design.” He looks out into the garden. “But you will be my legacy. My perfect creation, Alexander. Do you remember my very first rule?”

I look down at the ground of freshly laid soil, the last resting place of a woman named Lidia. Her family will never know what happened to her in that shed. They will never know the details of the cleanup or that my father turned her into homemade fertilizer for his rose garden.

They can never give her a proper burial because besides the limb he leaves for the town to find, no one will ever find the rest of her body.

“Never speak about what lies beneath the roses.”

The flower falls from my hand, tumbling onto the wet earth, and I have the sudden urge to vomit. I press my hand into my stomach, bending a knee. I count to three. I take deep breaths. I count to ten. I take deep breaths. I count to twenty-five. I take deep breaths.

But the unshakable nausea persists. Memory after memory slams into the front of my mind with an unrelenting demand to be remembered. A dam had shattered; the box I kept it all in had exploded, and now I’m left with moments I never wanted to recall.

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