The cemetery sexton’s office hadn’t escaped unscathed, either. The windows of the small cottage where Mr. Smith kept his office had been safely shuttered in preparation for the storm, but that hadn’t spared the house’s roof from being crushed in half beneath the weight of the large Spanish lime tree that had fallen on top of it … the Spanish lime tree that used to litter its fruit all over the cottage’s backyard, and in the branches of which Hope had once huddled in fear of Mike, the cemetery’s (now former) handyman, when he’d tried to kill me.
Worse, everywhere I looked, I saw people … people who’d wandered into the cemetery through the wide-open gates, carrying rakes and hoes and other pieces of gardening equipment, probably to clean up their loved ones’ graves.
“Oh, no,” I couldn’t help murmuring with a groan. “No, no, no … ”
A sickening sense of foreboding grew in the pit of my stomach. If winds could twist solid metal the way they had the cemetery gates, and blow over a tree as thick and sturdy as that Spanish lime, how could a structure as old as John’s tomb escape without damage? It was so old — the red bricks that made up its walls so decrepit — would it even be standing? And what about our tree — the poinciana under which we’d met and kissed, its blossoms forming a scarlet umbrella above our heads?
I pedaled more quickly, my heart booming so loudly in my chest I could no longer hear the sound of the chain saw, or even the sirens. I couldn’t even hear the crunching of sea grass and palm fronds beneath my bicycle’s wheels as they passed over them. My only thought was that I had to see how badly John’s crypt had been affected by the storm, if the poinciana tree was even still there …
… And then I rounded the corner and saw that it was.
Well, most of it was.
Every single blossom was gone from the tree. They lay upon the ground like an undulating carpet of scarlet silk.
The tree had also lost a large limb. It had fallen across the roof of the crypt, causing part of it to cave in.
I was relieved to see that was the only damage. The redbrick structure still stood, the word Hayden bold as ever in block lettering above the entrance to the vault.
Standing in the middle of the carpet of red poinciana blossoms was a man. His back was to me. The sun was so high in the air and shining so brightly that, since I wasn’t wearing sunglasses, it was difficult for me to determine his identity.
For a second my heart lifted, because I was certain it was John, returned from his journey to fetch the boats my father had found for him. Even now, the passengers in the Underworld were probably being boarded, order was being returned to the realm of the dead, and my father was back at my mom’s house.
Of course John was waiting for me on a carpet of red poinciana blossoms. It only made sense that this would be where I’d find him. Later we’d have to deal with my grandmother, and the fact that I’d killed Thanatos, not to mention Mark Mueller. But for now, John and I would reunite in the place where, so long ago, we’d first met.
Then, as I got closer, I realized the man standing on the carpet of poinciana blossoms wasn’t John after all. He was too small and too thin to be John, and was wearing a hat. John would never wear a hat.
Besides, this man was sweeping the poinciana blossoms away from the front of John’s tomb with a broom. John would never do this … except, of course, to sweep them up to spread them in front of my mom’s house.
Then, as I got even closer, I recognized who the man was. I felt silly for not doing so before. It must have been wishful thinking on my part to ever imagine he was John.
“Mr. Smith,” I said, a myriad of emotions washing over me — relief, happiness, confusion, and, yes, a twinge of disappointment that he wasn’t John. I leaped from my bicycle, letting it fall to the ground, and rushed towards him.
“Mr. Smith, what are you doing here? I’m glad to see you, but still, there’s a Fury after me. They know I killed Mr. Mueller — or that John and I did, anyway. John’s alive, by the way. I saved him. Anyway, it’s complicated, and Chief Santos is trying to stop the guy who’s after me, but you should really get out of here if you don’t want to get shot or have to stick around answering questions forever, or whatever.”
The cemetery sexton turned around. He’d been standing with his back to me. I guess he hadn’t heard me coming.
Funny, this had always been a bit of a bone of contention between us (until he got to know me better, of course). Mr. Smith had never liked the way I’d used “his cemetery” as a public thoroughfare, whipping around it on my bike, “endangering” mourners, and showing “no respect for the dead.”
That’s what he’d used to say until he found out the real reason I’d always been hanging out in “his cemetery” … John.
“Pierce,” Mr. Smith said, looking down at me. The brim of his straw fedora shaded his face a bit, but I could see I’d startled him. “Where did you come —” Then he noticed my bike lying on the ground. “Oh, I see. What were you saying about Chief Santos?”
“He’s right behind me. They’re going to have trouble getting through, though, because of this guy with a chain saw … oh, whatever, it’s a long story. It’s really weird, all day total strangers have been going out of their way to —”
I broke off, realizing with a start why the eyes of the young girl in the Daddy’s Little Princess shirt had looked familiar to me. She had eyes like Mr. Smith’s … even though hers had been blue, and Mr. Smith’s eyes were brown. Still, they both had a strange sort of knowingness to them and were filled with kindness.
Now that I thought of it, the guard’s eyes at the gatehouse at Dolphin Key had looked the same way. So had the eyes of Yellow Vest, back at the dead sapodilla.
“Mr. Smith,” I said, squinting in the sun. “Something weird is going on. Do you have any idea why a bunch of total strangers would risk their lives or jobs to help another total stranger?”
The cemetery sexton’s kind eyes narrowed beneath his hat brim. I saw him glance towards the ravens whirling around above our heads. He whispered something.
“What?” I wasn’t sure I’d heard him correctly, but I almost thought he said the word fates.
He glanced back down at me. “Nothing. Only that there might be hope after all,” he said.
“Hope?” I shaded my eyes to look up at the sky, excited, thinking he meant my bird. “Where?”
“Not that kind of hope,” he said, with a tiny smile. “Only that all might not yet be lost.”
I lowered my head to look back at him. “Mr. Smith,” I said. “I think maybe you should sit down and have some water. You’ve been standing out in the heat for too long.”
He nodded. “Maybe I have. I see you’re not wearing a bicycle helmet.” But he pointed at my chest, not my head. “As usual.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Maybe you didn’t hear me before, but I had more important things to worry about, such as running from the cops and not being shot. Mr. Smith, why are you sweeping all these poinciana blossoms from the front of John’s tomb? He likes them. And don’t you have more important things to do? A tree crashed through the roof of your office, in case you didn’t notice.”
“I noticed,” he said. “I’m extremely observant, unlike some people I might mention.”
“Nice,” I said. “Nice way to talk to me considering everything I’ve been through, saving John’s life and this island and all of that. No need to thank me, even though it turned out Thanatos was Seth Rector, and I killed him. Not that that matters to you, evidently. But whatever.”