The Rose Refund Revenge

Chapter 2 The Man Who Was Always Grieving

I didn't sleep much that night.

Instead, I sat at my kitchen table with my laptop and went through everything I could find on Julian Cross. It wasn't hard. Men like him didn't expect to be looked up. He had a profile on a business networking site that listed him as a "strategic consultant," which in Bellhaven usually meant he was between jobs and living off someone else's money. His photo showed a man in his mid-thirties with dark hair and a careful smile, the kind of smile that had probably opened a lot of doors for him.

His address was the penthouse on Harbor Ridge, but a quick search of property records showed the unit was owned by a trust. The trust was called the Ashford Family Trust, and the Ashfords were one of the oldest families in Bellhaven. They had a name on a hospital wing and a building at the university and a foundation that gave out scholarships to kids who couldn't afford tuition.

I found Elena Marsh at three in the morning. She was twenty-nine, a graphic designer with a small studio downtown, and she had been dating Julian Cross for exactly two years, according to a tagged anniversary post from eight months ago. Her account was full of him. Dinners at restaurants I couldn't afford, weekends at a lake house, a birthday cake with his name on it. She wrote about him like he was the answer to a question she had been asking her whole life.

And in every photo, he looked comfortable. Relaxed. Like he was already where he belonged.

I closed the laptop at four and slept for two hours, and when I woke up I had a plan.

The next morning I called the wholesaler and ordered three dozen white lilies and a wreath frame. Maren came in at nine and found me in the back room with a pair of shears and a look on my face that made her stop in the doorway.

"You're really doing it," she said.

"I'm really doing it."

She put her bag down and tied on an apron. "What do you need me to do?"

I told her, and she listened without interrupting, and when I was done she nodded once and said, "I'll handle the schedule. Nobody's on the books for this afternoon anyway."

I spent the morning making the arrangement. White lilies, the flower of funerals. A wreath of them, circular and solemn, with a black ribbon that I lettered myself in the same steady cursive I used for love notes. On the ribbon I wrote a name.

Elena Marsh.

It was a lie, but it was a lie that told the truth. Julian Cross had declared her dead. I was going to show him what dead looked like.

At noon I loaded the wreath into the back of my van and drove to Harbor Ridge. The building had a doorman in a navy suit and a lobby that smelled like money. I parked across the street and waited. I had no idea what time Julian would leave, or whether he would leave at all. But I had a wreath and a Bluetooth speaker and a full charge on my phone, and I had never been good at walking away from things once I had started.

At 1:14, a silver car pulled out of the garage. I recognized the driver from the photo. Julian Cross, in a jacket that cost more than my rent, on his way to somewhere he thought he belonged.

I gave him thirty seconds.

Then I walked into the lobby.

The doorman looked up from his desk with a practiced smile. "Can I help you?"

"Delivery for the penthouse," I said. "Floral arrangement. The resident ordered it for his girlfriend."

He glanced at the wreath in my hands. His smile faltered. "That's... that's a funeral wreath."

"It's what he requested."

He hesitated, and I could see him trying to decide whether to call up. But Julian wasn't home, and the doorman was paid to be polite, and I had a receipt with a matching order number on it. I had printed it that morning.

"Elevator's to the left," he said finally.

I thanked him and rode up to the top floor with the wreath balanced against my hip. The hallway was quiet and carpeted, and the penthouse door was a slab of dark wood that probably cost more than my entire apartment. I set the wreath on the floor, propped against the door so it would fall into the entryway when he opened it.

Then I pulled out my phone, connected it to the speaker, and queued up the audio file I had found on a royalty-free site at two in the morning. A slow, mournful organ piece. The kind of music that played at funerals in old movies.

I turned the volume up as high as it would go, pressed play, and walked back to the elevator.

The music echoed down the hallway, swelling and fading against the walls. I could picture him coming home, opening the door, seeing the wreath with her name on it, hearing the music that said someone had died. I could picture his face.

I rode the elevator down and walked out past the doorman, who was staring at the ceiling like he could hear something and didn't know what to do about it.

I got in my van and drove away.