Sydney’s eyes are unblinking and empty as her gaze meets mine.

“She’s in the garden. Mommy is in the garden.”

Chapter 16

Sydney

I START SHAKING NOW THAT I’VE SAID IT OUT LOUD—I FEEL like I might shiver myself right out of my seat.

I can’t believe I’ve told him. I wasn’t supposed to tell anybody. Why him?

Mostly because he was there, but maybe because he looks so concerned. Maybe because I’m fucking lonely, and he told me that I’m beautiful and held my hand.

No.

It’s because this secret has been turning me to ash from the inside out and I’ve hit the I’m not feeling so good, Mr. Stark threshold. If I hadn’t told him, I would have been lost.

Theo is still holding my hand, and I expect his grip to slacken but it gets tighter. “Hey. Whoa. What do you mean she’s in the garden?”

“Um.” My throat tightens painfully and I try to breathe through it so I can speak the words that have tied this house I love so much around my neck like an albatross. “She got really sick and—and she didn’t want to be a bother anymore. The money she’d gotten from the people who stole the house was gone so fast with all the medical bills. Her health insurance was shit. My savings went like that.” I snap, or try to but my hands are shaking too much. “We were watching her favorite movie in her bed. Con Air. Con Air! God, Mommy has such bad taste in movies. If I would have known—”

I suck in a breath, caught off guard as I think about the last night with her. How I’d snuggled up next to her too-thin body and kept cracking jokes about how bad the movie was—how she hadn’t told me to stop interrupting, like she usually did.

“That’s an underrated classic,” Theo says calmly, like this is a first date and we’re making small talk. “I grew out a mullet after watching it.”

I sniffle and swallow the tears and the snot and the pain. “She told me she loved me when the credits rolled. She told me that if she died before we were able to get the house back legally, I couldn’t let anyone know because she wouldn’t be able to rest knowing she’d failed me, and any kids I had, and any kids they had. Generational wealth all lost because of one mistake.

“I found her bottle of painkillers empty the next morning. And she was . . . she was . . . There couldn’t be a death certificate, right? Then they’d know. I buried her in the garden that night.”

It hurts thinking about her face so still, her body so . . . empty. About wrapping her up in her favorite blanket.

I jam my fingertips against my forearm and rub—I remember how cold and slack she was beneath my fingers. I can’t stop feeling that memory.

Theo breaks the silence. “You moved her by yourself?”

“Yeah.” He doesn’t need to know about Drea. After that night, we never mentioned it again. And I told her if anyone ever asked, I would never, ever take her down with me, would deny it even if she tried to confess. But it’s been so heavy on my soul. And Drea’s, so I thought. But there’s that check. That check with the name of the company that tricked my mother in the “issued by” area: Good Neighbors LLC.

The lawyer told me that sometimes companies like this give money to a person who helps them convince their marks to sign the house away. But Drea couldn’t have . . . she’d never . . .

Theo stands up and his sneakers squeak on the tile behind me. Maybe he’s going to call the police.

I hear the fridge door open and the snikt of a bottlecap being twisted off. He places a bottle of water in front of me, sits back down, pulling his chair slightly closer to me. His right arm is along the back of my chair, and his gaze is locked on my face.

“Drink the water.” He waits until I pick up the bottle and take a sip, urges me to take another, then says, “So your mom . . . died. And you buried her in the community garden?”

I nod, waiting for him to tell me the thing that keeps me up at night: what an awful, evil daughter I am. How I failed her. Buried her like a dog, and didn’t even give her soul the chance to have her memory honored and celebrated. I’m not religious, but I wonder all the time if I’ve somehow damned her along with myself.

“Where in the garden?” Theo asks.

The words fall out of my mouth. “Behind the shed. There’s a strip of sunflowers. She’s under them.”

I can’t bring myself to look at him in the long silence that follows, but glance at him from the corner of my eye when I hear him shift in his seat.

“Well, I think that’s nicer than being in a cemetery somewhere with a bunch of strangers. You buried her someplace she loved.” He sighs deeply and smooths both hands down his beard, but then nods. “It’s illegal as fuck, but I’m not exactly one to judge that. I can’t imagine how hard this has been for you, going there every day, not able to tell anyone. How unfair it was that you were pushed to make that decision.” His gaze rests on me, and there’s no judgment among the various emotions in his eyes. “I’m sorry, Sydney.”

It’s the last sorry that breaks me. He’s said it a few times, but this one finally sinks in. I’ve gotten so used to apologizing for being too weak to carry my own burdens—I don’t know if anyone’s ever apologized to me for how heavy they are, even if they couldn’t do anything to lighten the load.

I put the water bottle down and drop my head to the tabletop, one swift motion to hide the fissure of pain his words open in me. A silent sob chokes me up, but the bands of fear and panic that have been squeezing me for months fall away.

I can breathe. I take in a deep shuddering breath, and when I exhale it’s like a dam breaking.

He rubs my back and lets me cry; the tears pool on the table and cool against my heated face, but I don’t stop.

At some point he slips his arm through mine and half carries me to the couch as I sob and sob and sob, but for the first time in a long time, it feels something like relief. I keen into his chest, and he just cradles me.

I don’t even care if he reports me to the police after this, really. Right now, it feels good to be held without judgment, without feeling weak or evil or like I let Mommy down, even if just for a few minutes.

I don’t know how much time has gone by when the sobs taper off, but he’s still holding me, still rubbing his hand over my back.

“The people who scammed her out of the house don’t know,” he says. His voice is rough and low.

“No. They keep calling to check in and I keep making excuses. But I’m starting to feel crazy, like they’re watching me. Like they’re gonna find out and then come and take everything. And the garden, today . . .” A wave of full-body terror seizes me as I remember the breathing on the other end of the phone.

No. They would have just arrested me, though that seems inevitable.

“If they start digging for a foundation. They’ll find her. It’ll all be over. The house will be taken. I’ll be in jail.”

The well of panic I’ve just cried out starts to fill again.

“Okay. Okay. Don’t worry about that for now. It usually takes a while for a place to get building permits and all that jazz.” He’s still speaking as if this is a perfectly normal situation, and it helps to calm me. Maybe it isn’t normal, but it is what it is.

“I don’t think these people are exactly bound by the rules,” I say. “The deed they had was approved, but it was fake. I know it was. The supposed new owner of the plot got so mad when I questioned him, like how people blow up when they’re trying to hide something and want to scare you from the truth. And there’s nothing I can do.”

We sit in silence. Theo’s heart is beating fast even though he seems outwardly calm, and I remember him grinning at me and telling me his own secret.

Theo is a liar. A grifter, with possible ties to the mob. He’s a man I’ve known for just a few days.

I’ve entrusted him with the one thing that can destroy what’s left of my life and possibly take out Drea, too.

“Please don’t tell anyone,” I say, not nearly as upset as I should be because my body is limp like a wet washcloth. I’ll probably be angrier with myself tomorrow. But I’ve felt so heavy for so long, and now I’m light, like I could float away from all these problems for just a little bit.

“Go to sleep, Sydney.” Theo brushes his hand over my braids, then exerts pressure, holding me against him. It’s this stillness that makes me realize I’m shaking.

“But—”

“Just go to sleep,” he says gently.

I do.

WHEN I WAKE up a few hours later, I’m stretched out on the couch and the throw blanket from Target that usually rests on one of the arms is tucked around me. I sit up, head throbbing and face swollen, and find another bottle of water, some Advil, and a cold compress from the freezer sitting on the coffee table. They’ve been there for a while, judging from the condensation.

I consider that maybe this was a farewell gift before he went and called the police—though, maybe they would have been here by now? Unless they’re at the garden . . .