Arthur looked even worse than before. In the jaundiced light of the holding cell, his already worrisome pallor looked even more sickly as his eyes latched on to the envelope containing Lottie’s note to Dad.
Eva had braced herself for lies. She knew there was something hidden just under the surface, something her father and sister weren’t telling her. But no matter how broken things were between her and Arthur, she expected that he at least would be honest with her.
Eva took the note from its envelope and pressed it flat against the bars. “You know what this is?”
“No.”
A crack split in the wall above his cot, spitting dust onto Arthur’s pillow. He popped to his feet to avoid the debris, surprise flashing over his face.
“Why did your mother bring you here that summer?” Eva had to fight to contain the swell of anger rising like a tide inside her chest. “How did she know my father?”
Arthur’s eyes dropped to where she’d wrapped a fist aroundone of the bars between them. Bright yellow lichen grew where her palm touched the cool metal, spreading like a sunlit disease. “Ev, I swear, I don’t know.”
Eva’s anger exploded into blooms. Weeds grew in the cracks in the floor, filling the empty spaces with furious green. Wildflowers ripped into life almost violently. She couldn’t stop the tide of growing things.
Nor did she want to.
With a snarl, Eva thrust the paper into Arthur’s hands. “Read it.”
Tension scored the planes of Arthur’s face, and he cut a glance to the wilderness spilling at their feet and up the walls before giving Charlotte’s letter to her father his full attention.
Eva flicked a look at the clock. They had four minutes before Dane came back.
Arthur frowned. “They wrote to each other?”
“Every week, for years,” Eva snapped. She didn’t believe his innocent little act. There was clearly more to their parents’ history than Arthur had ever divulged. How dare he keep it from her. Eva’s chin trembled.How dare he lie.
Something green and covered in thorns pushed through a crack in the wall as a tear slipped down Eva’s cheek.
“Ev, I didn’t know.”
She didn’t believe him.
Long past feeling guilt over snooping, Eva had torn the greenhouse apart searching for more letters before raiding her father’s office. The volume of letters she found stuffed into boxes and filing cabinets had overwhelmed her. How long had they been in correspondence?
Dad had slept on, his breathing steady but his heartbeat weak.
“You heard what he asked for at the cottage, didn’t you?” Evareached through the bars and snarled her fingers into the front of Arthur’s shirt, dragging him down to her. Her lips curled back. “He didn’t just ask me for honey, Arthur, he asked forLottie’shoney. You must know something about that!”
The clock on the wall ticked in the beats of silence.
“Please,” Eva whispered, not caring how pathetic she sounded, or if she was making a fool of herself coming here, expecting him to have the answers. There was a bitter weed digging into her most tender places, as sharp as the vines now snaking through the brick wall into the jail cell. The pain inside her pushed its own thorns deeper with every minute that passed.
The silence stretched so long that for a moment, Eva felt herself falter. She clocked the time. One minute, at most, before she had to leave. One minute wasn’t enough.
But then, Arthur swallowed hard.
And she knew she was right.
“What?” she demanded as the jangle of keys sounded just outside the door. They were out of time. She shook him by the shoulders. “What do you know?”
“I-I’m not sure.” Arthur’s eyes darted back and forth, seeing something that wasn’t before them now. “But I saw something, the night we…” His jaw worked. “The night I left.”
“Something?”
“You were asleep when Jack got home that night. He wasn’t well,” Arthur said. “When he asked me to check on you, I stayed and watched instead. And, Ev, he did something… strange.”
The door behind them unlatched as someone just outside—the guard, or maybe the sheriff—pushed it open.
