“Though this flower blooms only one week a year, I do not believe it is any more precious for it,” he says at last, in formal, old-fashioned Vilosh, handling the stems. My mouth opens and closes as he sighs. “But I do adore it, and I miss it when it’s gone. I am nothing but a soft overripe fruit myself, now, all pulp and old bruising.”

We stand in silence, his eyes still trained on the flowers.

I’m not entirely sure he knows I’m here.

“Mr. Katox,” I say. “I’m … Man—”

“Fruit never drops far from the tree,” he interrupts. He still won’t look at me, but his expression softens from one of reserve into something gentler yet unreadable. “She moves with such muted yet contagious delight around my shop.”

I wonder if he’s talking about me—if he was watching me through the curtain. I’d been tiptoeing with awe.

“Mr. Katox,” I say quietly, “I—” I clear the wobble in my throat. Is he saying he’s seen her? He’s seen Mama? “Mr. Katox, I don’t know if you remember me. Are you saying you’ve seen or spoken to my mother, Mireille Foix Hammick … recently?”

He smiles with only his eyes. Wandering toward another sink, he passes a hanging scape of lilies and outlines their arc of movement with one hand. In that single motion I see a lifetime of reverence for nature.

“I see her everywhere,” he says, and a shiver runs through me, as he plucks a flower from a bundle in the second sink by the throat. “Painted, florid, on signs meant to be grazed by as many eyes as possible. But we haven’t spoken afresh since the day she went silent, like a dormant bulb beneath the dirt, protecting her bloom until spring.” He smells the flower’s freshness and checks the sharpness of the tool in hand. Then he slices cleanly through the base of its neck. It’s violent work, and it sends a chill through me. A dormant bulb beneath the dirt.

“Mr. Katox,” I say, stepping closer to try to catch his eyes. “Wait. You mean you spoke to her the day she disappeared?”

He pauses over the arrangement. I can’t see his pupils behind the thick lenses, but I watch him blink. “A dormant bulb beneath the dirt, protecting her bloom until spring,” he repeats, impenetrably.

Goose bumps bubble up under my shirt, tender to the touch. Katox says the words like they mean everything, but they mean nothing at all. I bite my lip hard to stop the hope from draining out of me.

But if he knew anything, someone—the police, a fan, my father—would’ve learned it before me. A cruel voice whispers in my head: There is nothing you can learn about Mama that someone else doesn’t already know.