"Her name is Claire Hendricks," I muttered, scrolling through my phone. "Father was Robert Hendricks, sixty-two, found dead in his home office three days ago."
Teresa snatched the phone from my hands. "Are you stalking our customers now? What's wrong with you?"
"Nothing's wrong. I'm just—"
"Just what? Being weird about funeral flowers again?" She handed back my phone, her expression softening. "Look, I know you have... a thing about them. But you can't go investigating everyone who orders lilies."
If only I could explain. If only I could tell her that the plants in this shop whispered secrets, that flowers remembered things, that right now the fern hanging above us was replaying a conversation it had absorbed two weeks ago from a couple arguing about infidelity.
But I'd learned that lesson at fifteen when I told my high school counselor. Three months of therapy and a prescription for antipsychotics later, I learned to keep my mouth shut.
"I'll finish Mrs. Chen's roses," Teresa said, taking the shears from my workbench. "You go home. Clear your head."
I didn't argue.
My apartment was a jungle.
Every surface held plants—succulents on the windowsill, pothos vines trailing from the bookshelf, a massive fiddle-leaf fig in the corner that wouldn't stop complaining about the temperature. Most people would call it cozy. My ex-girlfriend had called it suffocating before she left.
You care more about those plants than you do about me, she'd said.
She wasn't completely wrong.
I dropped my keys on the counter and went straight to my bedroom closet. The shoebox was on the top shelf, behind winter coats I never wore. My hands trembled as I pulled it down.
Inside were the funeral flowers. Dried, brown, dead for months or even years. Normal people couldn't hear them anymore.
I could.
The chrysanthemums from Mrs. Patterson's funeral: Gone too soon, too soon, only forty-three, the kids, what about the kids...
The roses from the Thompson service: Thirty good years, that's enough, that's enough, don't cry for me...
And the oldest ones, wrapped carefully in tissue paper at the bottom. Carnations. White carnations, brown and brittle now, from a funeral twelve years ago.
My mom's funeral.
I didn't touch those. I never touched those.
Instead, I pulled out my laptop and started digging into Robert Hendricks's life. The news articles were vague—businessman found dead, police investigating, no further details. But the comments section on the local news site was a gold mine.
About time someone looked into Hendricks. My brother lost everything because of his company.
Good riddance. He ruined half the town.
My aunt worked for him. Said he was cruel. Made people disappear if they asked too many questions.
I sat back. So Robert Hendricks wasn't just some ordinary guy. He had enemies. Lots of them.
My phone buzzed. A text from a number I didn't recognize.
Unknown: Stop asking questions about my father.
My heart jumped into my throat. I stared at the screen. How did Claire Hendricks get my number? Teresa wouldn't have given it to her. Unless—
The phone buzzed again.
Unknown: You don't know what you're getting into. Leave it alone.
I should have listened. Should have deleted the texts, thrown away the news articles, forgotten the whole thing.
"But the lily's words kept repeating in my head: He knows, he knows, he knows."
What did Robert Hendricks know? And why did it get him killed?
I typed back: I'm just making funeral arrangements. That's all.
Three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.
Unknown: No you're not. I saw you looking at me. You know something's wrong.
Damn it. She'd noticed.
Unknown: Meet me tomorrow. 7 AM. Riverside Park, east entrance. Come alone.
Unknown: And bring your questions. I have some of my own.
I stared at the messages. Every instinct screamed this was a bad idea. I didn't know this woman. Her father had just died under suspicious circumstances. For all I knew, she could be dangerous.
My eyes drifted to the shoebox of dead flowers.
The carnations at the bottom whispered, the same thing they'd whispered for twelve years: Find out the truth. Promise me. Find out the truth.
My mom's last thoughts, absorbed by flowers, preserved forever in petals and stems.
I'd never kept that promise. Never found out why she really died, even though the plants at the hospital had screamed that something was wrong, that it wasn't just pneumonia, that the doctors were lying.
I looked back at my phone.
Me: I'll be there.
The moment I hit send, the fiddle-leaf fig in the corner whispered: Mistake. Big mistake.
Yeah. Probably.
But I was done ignoring what the plants told me.