Greta sighed. She had been introduced to Ramona’s friends before. They seemed great. Great and utterly unattainable, like the effortlessly cool people at the parties they’d once attended together.

“I know,” she said.

“So go.”

Greta looked around the house she’d rented for the last year since returning to Owl Island. It looked nearly the same as it had when she’d moved in—a furnished favor from a friend of Tillie’s—except for her plants. Greta’s joys, they hung from every window frame and reached for each bit of sunlight they could.

In the second bedroom were her treasures: the carnivorous plants. Her pitcher plants, Venus flytraps, carnivorous bromeliads, and cobra plants. They were helped along by three humidifiers that ran constantly, and she kept the room balmy enough for the tropical species with a heater set to seventy-two degrees.

She walked among them, stroking a pitcher here and inspecting a saw-toothed mouth there. In Maine winters, especially, they required careful attention.

“I can’t. My plants.”

“Get one of your ten thousand sisters to take care of them.”

Greta’s nostrils flared. The last thing she wanted was to have anything to do with her family.

“Can you hire someone?”

“It’s nearly Christmas, and everyone’s busy with their own stuff.”

She heard Ramona’s sigh that clearly said You’re making excuses, and I don’t approve.

And maybe she was right.

“Look, I’ll…um…I’ll ask around and see if maybe someone can take care of them.”

But she knew the only person she could ask was Ash, and he already had his hands full with more than anyone should have to tend to with the shop and his mother.

“You do that, babe. Call me if you need some sense talked into you. Again.”

Then the line went dead, and Greta sat down very carefully on the floor amid the Venus flytraps, wondering if she sat there long enough and still enough maybe they would just consume her slowly and put her out of her misery.

Chapter 2

Truman

The Garden District was alive with revelers, its grand houses touched with holiday cheer in everything from the subtlest to the most extravagant displays.

Truman Belvedere held the wrapped gift carefully as he strolled past Lafayette No. 1, pausing as he always did to appreciate the roots creeping through the stone walls to meet the ivy that adorned them. The way the tree boughs bent in to shade the sidewalks, beckoning pedestrians inside the cemetery. How the late afternoon sun fell slantways on the graves, offering up the names of the deceased to any who gazed upon them.

Truman loved this cemetery and had visited it often in the eight years he’d lived in New Orleans, beginning with his time at Tulane.