I backed toward the main door as if turning around would give a pack of zombies a chance to come for me. I closed the door behind me and headed for the double doors leading out of the green wing.

As I retreated to the safety of the normal hallway, I realized I was still holding the journal. I barely had time to stash it in my bottom drawer before Laura and Agatha came home, earlier than expected. Laura called me downstairs and asked me to fix lunch, which I did, and then Agatha and I ate in mutual silence.

The eerie sensation that had come over me in that room stuck to my skin like tar.

CHAPTER

24

“YOU’RE SO QUIET today,” Laura said, shoving the pointed end of her trowel into the roots of the bushy green plant. She used the other hand to gather the stems together and pull, until the mass of lavender came out of the ground. As she crushed the leaves in her glove, their scent filled the air.

Like screams, I thought.

She handed the plant to me and I tossed it onto the growing pile. We were thinning out the herb garden, which had become an overgrown jungle.

“Lavender,” Laura said, “is wonderful for bees. And the oil is lovely. So relaxing.”

She yanked another handful out of the ground.

“So . . . why are we getting rid of it?” I asked.

“No matter how nice something is, you can’t let it run roughshod. The other herbs suffer when we let the showy ones take over.” She indicated a small spray of tattered yellowish fan-shaped leaves on limp-looking stems. “Do you see how the cilantro has been stunted?”

“Too much shade?” I asked.

“Overshadowed,” she said. “And crowded out.”

“I know about Lily,” I said.

I hadn’t meant to say it. It just came out.

Laura froze.

“She was your sister, right?” I asked. “And she died? Is that why you told me you’re an only child?”

No answer. Sensing I was in very dangerous territory, I began to flail for something appropriate to say. “I’m really sorry for your loss. I know exactly how it feels to lose a sister.”

Then I waited—for the explosion, the tears, the anger, the stony, disapproving silence.

But she looked at me. “Thank you, Margot,” she said. “As ever, your empathy and kindness are appreciated.”

Well, that seemed a bit of an overstatement, but who was I to say?

She finished rinsing the trowel and then carefully dried it with the rough cotton towel that hung on a hook nearby. After replacing it in its position on the pegboard, she turned to me.

“May I ask,” she said, “how you came to learn about my sister?”