Where Darkness Blooms, page 18
When Whitney turned around, she saw what had made Delilah run in the first place: Jude snuggled up a little too close to her boyfriend. She grimaced. “Jude!”
Jude looked back at her with her big doe eyes, and that made Whitney want to rage even more. She marched down the Hardings’ porch steps. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Jude pulled away from Bennett. Her eyelashes fluttered. “We were just talking.”
Whitney glanced between them. Neither would look her in the eye. “Oh yeah? It really looks like this is just ‘talking.’”
“I went to her first,” Bennett said, holding up his hands defensively. “Jude was just here for me.”
“So was your girlfriend, Bennett!” Whitney waved back toward the porch. “She was less than ten feet away and you went to Jude instead. What is wrong with you? Why are you doing this?”
Jude opened her mouth to say something, but Whitney held up a finger. “No. I don’t want to hear whatever it is you’re about to say. And I don’t care that he came to you. Delilah should come first.” She jabbed her finger into her sister’s chest. “We come first.”
“Whitney, I—”
But Whitney didn’t stick around to listen to her sister’s excuses. She spun around and marched away from the Harding house, back toward Main Street. Whatever happened at the hospital had opened up a crack between them, but what Jude was doing with Bennett had shattered what was left of their relationship. Whitney had never been this furious at Jude in her entire life. She’d never been so ashamed to call Jude her sister.
As she walked, her boots slapping the pavement, tendrils of guilt poked through the fury. When did this whole thing between Jude and Bennett start? From the way they looked at each other, it seemed like they’d fallen for each other some time ago. Whitney knew the way Jude loved; she put her whole heart into it.
And Whitney had been too grief-stricken to notice.
She shook her head. No. This wasn’t her fault. This was Jude’s fault for betraying Delilah. For betraying them all. Whitney would talk to Delilah when she got back to the house, apologize for Jude. Hopefully it would be enough.
She turned the corner and was greeted by a web of yellow tape.
It stretched across the front of Bishop Nursing Care Center, blocking off the walkway leading to the front door. From here, the building looked mostly intact besides a couple of shattered windows.
Even so, panic pressed on Whitney’s lungs. She lifted the tape and ran straight into the Nursing Care Center. “Alma!” she yelled. “Are you in here?”
There was no answer. The lobby looked the same as it had when Whitney had left in a hurry. Same plaid sofa, same dishwater gray carpet, same Formica counter in the corner.
But Alma wasn’t sitting behind it. No one was.
“Alma!” she yelled again. She wrung her hands until they were raw. Alma had to be okay. Nothing could happen to her. She opened her mouth to yell again when the door to the rest of the center swung open. Alma entered, face glistening and shirt damp with sweat. She jerked to a stop. “Whitney?”
“Oh, thank god,” Whitney let out in one breath. “I saw the yellow tape and—”
Alma’s face softened. “You thought something happened to me?”
Whitney swallowed. She took a tentative step forward until she was close enough to see the beads of sweat dotting Alma’s collarbone. “Yeah. I was … I got really worried.”
Alma glanced at Whitney’s lips and then back to her eyes. “It’s just the power grid,” she said slowly. “The storm knocked it out, and we’ve got medics parked around back trying to help the patients on oxygen. Plus, it’s so freaking hot in here without air conditioning.”
Whitney scanned the lobby, the wall of aggressive yellow tape and flowers pressing in on the cracked windows. The last thread she had to Eleanor had been completely taken from her when the weather vane snapped. This place, and the notebook tucked into her bag, were all she had left.
“Is Susannah okay?” Whitney asked, squeezing her hands together so tightly that her knuckles turned white. Please let her be okay.
“She’s okay,” Alma said, shifting toward the desk. She pulled open the bottom drawer and began to thumb through files. “I just have to contact their families to let them know what happened, and the computer’s pretty much fried.”
Alma’s fingers skimmed through the manila folders until they found purchase on the one she was looking for. She slid the folder out and began to flip through it.
Whitney glanced into the drawer. The top edge of one of the folders was visible.
Robert J. Dingal
Everything in Whitney went completely still. She stared at the penciled-in name. The name of the man from Eleanor’s notebook.
“Alma,” said Whitney carefully, “does Robert Dingal stay here?”
“What?” Alma looked at the file and then back to Whitney. “Oh, no. Those are files of past residents. Deceased.”
Whitney bit her lip. “Listen, I know you’re not supposed to do this, but I really need to see what’s in that file.”
Alma’s eyes narrowed. “I want to keep my job, Whitney.”
“I know, I know. But please, just hear me out.” She took a breath, then reached for Alma’s hand. Heat radiated through her fingertips all the way to her cheeks. “This place … it’s weird, right? Haven’t you ever thought about how it feels kind of like … like we’re trapped in here?”
To Whitney’s surprise, Alma didn’t pull her hand away. Instead she looked Whitney in the eye and said, “Yes.”
“I think … well, I’m trying to find out where it all started—the weird windstorms, the sunflowers, all of it. And I think it starts right here, with the Dingal family.” Whitney threaded her fingers through Alma’s before she could say anything. “I need to see what’s in there so we have even a chance of getting out of here.”
“Before we end up like Eleanor,” Alma said softly.
Whitney swallowed. “Yeah. Before we end up like Eleanor.”
Alma stilled, listening, but the only footsteps were outside the building. “Okay. But we have to hurry before anyone sees us.” She gently untangled her fingers from Whitney’s and pulled out Robert Dingal’s file.
Together, they flipped through the contents. It was mostly just patient notes, scribbled half thoughts about medications, bedtimes, and recreation activities. Apparently knitting hadn’t been one of Robert Dingal’s preferred activities. He’d throw the plastic knitting needles every time someone placed them in his fragile hands.
Alma stopped at his birth certificate. She pushed it toward Whitney. “Look at the birth parents.”
Whitney’s eyes slid across the delicate handwriting on the old certificate, the cloudy gray photocopied edges.
Mother’s name: Mary Katherine Dewey
Father’s name: Edward James Dingal
“Edward was his father,” she said slowly. “This confirms it.”
It wasn’t that the information surprised Whitney, but feeling the weight of the words on her tongue made her pause. It was real. Eleanor had known something about the connection between the Dingal family and how this town came to be, and Whitney had it right here, in front of her. And even more than that: the Dingals had still been here up until very recently.
Alma flipped to the next page and held the faded, yellowing paper close to her face. Whitney leaned closer. It was almost impossible to read the penciled-in markings in the dim light of the lobby, but she could just barely make out the typed font at the top of the page.
Visitor’s Log.
Something fierce and shaky pumped through Whitney’s veins as she scanned the page. This was it. There had to be something here. The people who’d visited Robert Dingal had to have some kind of familial connection to him, or at least be like family.
“Whoa,” Alma whispered, her long fingers sweeping down the list.
It was a short log, really. There were only three people who came to visit Robert Dingal.
The first was his wife, Eloise. She only came to visit a handful of times, in the very beginning, her handwriting careful and poised as she signed her name on the whisper-thin lines. After a few visits, she never came back.
The rest of the list was filled with a name that Whitney recognized. That made her blood run cold.
“Harding,” Alma said softly.
Harding.
Phillip Harding and William Harding. Bennett’s dad and uncle.
Whitney ran her finger along the list beside Alma’s. She felt the heat radiating from Alma’s skin as they stood side by side, so close that Whitney could smell the undertones of her grassy body wash. She quickly blinked the thought away.
The brothers took turns visiting their father in the Nursing Care Center for years, until his name stopped appearing on the log. That must have been around the time Phillip decided to pack up and leave town. It was only William after that.
William Harding.
William Harding.
William Harding.
Somewhere stamped in history, the center began asking for the relationship between the visitor and patient. And that was where Whitney first saw the words that connected this entire web of secrets. The one that Eleanor had been trying to stitch together before she died.
William Harding.
Relationship: son.
Whitney’s chest tightened. She felt like crying. It was right here, the familial connection to this land and the curse Eleanor had sworn was baked into the soil. She’d found what Eleanor couldn’t.
“Mr. Harding is Robert Dingal’s son. He’s a blood relative of the founders,” Whitney whispered. She grabbed her messenger bag and pulled out the green notebook, still heavy with rain. The pages crinkled as she flipped to the last section Eleanor had written in.
The sepia-toned photo of Robert Dingal in front of town hall was still taped inside, although it looked a lot worse for the wear after the storm Whitney had dragged it through. Water rings speckled Robert’s face, but she could still make out the image of the two children beside him.
Phillip and William Harding.
“But how?” Whitney asked. “Why do they have a different last name than their ancestors?”
Alma shrugged beside her. “It’s not all that uncommon, really. I see it a lot working here. A lot of times there’s a generation that decides to take a piece of their ancestors’ names and make it into a new one going forward, especially if they’re part of a generation that was a part of the American West migration.”
“Like they want a fresh start—a new name—to start over?”
“Or they want to wash the blood of Indigenous people murdered for land off their hands.” Alma lifted an eyebrow. “Something like that.”
Wash the blood off their hands.
The words sang through Whitney like a ballad. If the Dingals had blood on their hands, so much so that Phillip and William had changed their last name, then it must be the kind of blood that sticks around. The kind of atrocities that marinate in the soil like rust-colored fossils, waiting to be uncovered. Like rust-colored acorn charms.
“Look.” Alma pointed to the bottom of the visitor’s log. Hovering just below her fingertip was another name.
Bennett Harding.
Relationship: grandson
Caleb’s name was there, too. They had to have been only kids when they visited their grandfather. Whitney wondered if their uncle had dragged them here, or if they’d come on their own. Would old grandpa Dingal tell them stories about the bloodstains on his hands, the lies their family told to keep this land? Or did he tell them more?
Did they know what their great-grandfather Edward had done to acquire this cursed land, and more importantly, did they know how to stop it?
Alma opened her mouth to say something, but she seemed to think better of it and gently pressed her lips together. After a moment, she gazed at Whitney. “What is weird about the Dingals changing their name is that they’re responsible for this town. There’s usually some pride associated with that. Makes me think there’s an awful, dark reason why the original founders of this place would have changed their last name.”
“Like they didn’t want anyone to know.”
Alma nodded. She was close. So, so close. All it would take was one push, one feral gust of wind to blow Whitney’s lips right into hers.
Alma leaned in closer. Whitney’s pulse raced.
Her breath smelled like the echo of cinnamon, and her skin smelled like summer grass and sweat, and her face was so close to her that she could feel Alma’s petal-soft hair cradling Whitney’s cheek like a leafy tendril. She could feel the aura of Alma’s ChapStick brushing against her lips.
The door was flung open. Alma jumped.
“Miss Thompson,” a man in a camel-colored hat said to Alma. He turned to Whitney and said nothing at all. “We’re checking in to make sure everything’s all right up here.”
“Everything’s fine, Sheriff Ableman.” She cleared her throat. “I was just checking the electrical box again.”
“Ah.” Jeff Ableman nodded, never taking his eyes off Whitney. Whitney lifted her chin and stared right back. “Well, it looks like the power should be back up soon. And we’ve got the patients as comfortable as we can until then, so why don’t you head on back home, Miss Montgomery?”
Whitney blinked at the sound of her own name. She’d had plenty of encounters with Jeff Ableman in her past life. In the Before. More than a few times the sheriff and his cronies had driven her across town as she stumbled over her words in the back seat of his beat-up sedan, telling him that he could fuck right off. One time he even told her he’d lock her up in Bishop’s single, lonely jail cell for the night if she didn’t show a little respect around here.
Whitney had nodded solemnly until he turned back to the road. And then she’d flipped him off in the rearview mirror.
Her mother would never let him lock her up. She’d never let this mediocre white man hold her hostage just because of a few cuss words and a lot of attitude. And maybe a little drinking.
But now he looked at her as if he’d just realized she existed, like she had been a curly-haired, tattooed nightmare that had haunted him for a while, but the thought had dissipated. His eyes drifted to the notebook splayed open on the counter. “Is that something that belongs to you, Miss Montgomery?”
His eyes didn’t leave the photo of Robert Dingal. The page full of Eleanor’s scribbles.
THEY KNOW.
Whitney’s blood ran cold.
“It’s mine,” she said, flipping the notebook closed.
“Ah,” he said again, pulling his hat tighter around his eyes. “Well, I better have a look.” He reached for the notebook.
Whitney opened her mouth to say something, but Alma was faster. “Wait! You can’t take her notebook!” She shouldered herself closer to the counter. Her hand slapped the waterlogged cover before the sheriff could grab it.
“Miss Thompson, are you defying an officer of the law right now?” Indignant rage flared in Jeff Ableman’s eyes like liquid smoke. It was the kind of rage that men kept nestled deep beneath their ribs, the kind that rose between the bones whenever someone didn’t automatically hang on their words like laundry drying on the line. It was the kind of rage that killed for disobedience, even when you never belonged to that man in the first place.
Alma let out a small, shaky breath. She lifted her chin as she slid the notebook closer to herself. “If that officer of the law is trying to take personal property without a warrant and no good reason whatsoever, then yeah, I am. You can’t just take it because you want it.”
Whitney’s pulse hummed under her skin. This wasn’t just about the notebook anymore; this was about how deep the secrets ran through this town. How the police were never really there to protect her—they only cared about protecting the Hardings. They would lock Whitney up in a dust-laden cell for this transgression, she was sure of it. And for Alma, a Black girl, the consequences were much worse.
Jeff Ableman grew unnaturally still. “Well, Miss Thompson, as an officer of the law, I can confiscate anything I damn well please. Now hand it over.”
“No,” Alma snapped. She held the notebook to her heart. “It’s not yours.”
“Really?” His voice lowered. “You really want to do this?”
Whitney stepped in. “No, it’s fine. She’s just—”
“He can’t do this to you, Whitney,” Alma whispered. She turned back to the sheriff. “Do you really want to do this?”
At that, Ableman let out a barking laugh. “Alma Thompson, you’re under arrest for resisting a reasonable request from an officer.”
Whitney’s mouth dropped open. “WHAT? You can’t do that—”
“I sure can. Now, Miss Thompson, are you going to make this hard or easy?”
Alma looked at Whitney for a long moment, still clinging to the notebook. “It’s okay, I promise. I’ll be fine.” As she said the words, her face crumpled. Even she wasn’t sure she believed it.
“Alma, please. This is nuts! He’s being—”
But Alma gave her a sharp look, as if to say Stop before he takes you, too. Ableman smirked. “That’s what I thought. Come on, you can call your family from the station.” He hooked his hand so tightly around Alma’s arm that Whitney could already see where his fingerprints would leave bruises. He still made it a point to rip Eleanor’s notebook from her hands and tuck it under his arm before heading to the door.
“Stay out of trouble, Miss Montgomery,” he said, tipping his hat.
Alma turned around, her lip quivering. “Come back for me, okay?” she said as the sheriff yanked her forward. “Come find me.”
The door swung shut behind them.
The last piece of Whitney’s old love was gone, and the possibility of a new love had been stolen.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Jude stood on the creaking porch of the Harding house, waiting for everything to come crumbling down around her.
Maybe it already had.
Delilah had seen her with Bennett at Butter only two days ago, and their lives had burned to the ground in the hours since. Jude had been the one to light the match.
