If I really was taken, then how could that person who I’ve subconsciously slapped Gio’s face on not have come looking for me in all this time?
Unless I was never meant to be found.
Unless I was taken to be erased.
Maybe that’s why I could never remember what happened to me.
Maybe these vivid dreams are, in fact, all memories, broken into jagged little shards so sharp that they cut when I try to grasp onto them.
I don’t know what’s real or imaginary anymore.
What if I was a mistake someone had to clean up?
A lesson meant to hurt someone else?
What if Giowasthat someone?
But no, that couldn’t be. He would have said something if he recognized me. If we had what I had with the man in my dreams.
I dropped Jackson off at school in a daze this morning, made him breakfast because Gio had to run, then smiled for his teacher like everything was normal when she greeted us outside the school.
Because with Gio in our lives, Jackson and I have started to actually get out of bed on time.
Then, with those doubts about my reality swirling in my brain, I took the train into town and opened the shop. Because normal is what I need right now.
Even if it’s a lie.
The white lilies arrive just after nine in the morning—a truck full of them pulling up in the back parking lot.
It took four men to unload them, and I had to put them in the cold-storage room rather than the cooler because they simply wouldn’t fit.
I knew they would show up today.
I marked the calendar as soon as I got the confirmation—and I put off calling Mr. Tanaka until the moment his funeral flowers arrived.
A thousand white lilies now sit in the back room of my shop—the kind that smell like peace but feel like cold stone and silence. Death wrapped in velvet petals.
And once more, I feel a nervous quiver in my stomach when I think about my phone call with my creepy customer.
When I called the number he left, it only rang once.
“Your order’s in,” I said, trying to keep it professional—even if I wished he would change his mind at the last minute and ask me to ship them to a different address.
He laughed softly, the sound gritty and dark—the kind of laugh that made my stomach knot. “Right on time.”
I hung up without another word—before I could even ask when or how he intends to pick them up—and now, the anticipation of his arrival is only intensifying the pain behind my eyes.
It’s nearly noon, and so far, the morning’s been quiet—too quiet when all I want is to get his transaction over with and get him out of my life.
The bell above the door jingles, light and familiar. But the air shifts the moment the customer steps in. It’s Mr. Tanaka—and he’s not alone this time.
Three men, all with distinctly Japanese features, come in with him.
They’re broad, quiet, passively formidable as their eyes scan the shop.
One of them carries a long box cutter clipped to his belt.
Another has the unmistakable bulk of a holster under his jacket.
