corner presented some charming or bizarre piece of statuary: a bench with frog legs, a malicious-looking Cupid, a lily-petal birdbath, and a surprising number of dog statues, like the ones on the gateposts. Well, it was a hunting lodge, wasn’t it?
She continued past a pergola of weathered wood, so overgrown that it had been completely invisible from the house. A leering satyr peered out from the bushes; a fat stone rabbit huddled under a holly bush.
She marveled at the size of everything, often slowing on the path and craning her neck to look up: the walls of camellias were as tall as a house and those odd drooping trees—weeping cherry—were a good five stories high, gigantic ghosts with their slim trailing branches. Some passages were so narrow she could hardly squeeze through; others almost looked as if they’d been pruned in the last few days. And the constantly changing fragrances were subtly intoxicating … the spicy bite of pine, a sudden waft of roses, then lavender, then honeysuckle, then mint—
There was movement in the corner of her eye and she turned to look, staring for a long time over the garden. After a moment she saw it again, a flash of light. Her heart started to beat faster as she remembered the black-clad figure.
The imaginary black-clad figure, she reminded herself.
You can turn back …
Instead she moved toward the light.
She passed a bench that rustled suddenly and she spun toward it—to see a large snake slithering off it. It dropped heavily to the ground and wound off sluggishly. Somewhere far away there was the rumble of thunder.
Laurel took a breath and rounded the curve of path. She faced a stone circle with a silver reflecting ball, mottled with age. The clouds moved above, exposing the sun, and the ball burst into brilliant light.
So that’s all I saw?
Laurel stopped and breathed in … enjoying the silent stillness. Then faintly, she heard water rushing. She turned toward the sound in surprise. A fountain? But who would be keeping it up?
Curiosity drove her to wind farther through the twisting paths, following the sound of water through white birches and towering pines, passing under an occasional trellis or archway, finding stranger plants as she progressed: bushes with a hollylike leaf and malevolent-looking fingers of berries, and other shrubs with lush berries that were too red not to be poisonous. The sound of water became louder, unmistakable.
She rounded another curve and stopped still.
In a clearing before her was a three-tiered white fountain, with three white benches placed in the curved circle around it.
The fountain was completely dry. Nothing but dust and leaves in any of its bowls.
Laurel swallowed. The air around her was still, silent.
The wind in the pines. That’s what I was hearing, she told herself—and knew it was not so.
She felt watched from all sides, and suddenly she had broken into a sweat and chills. She whirled from the fountain, about to run …
And found herself staring up at the gazebo she’d been seeing from her window.
It was looking up at the gazebo that did it, the whiteness of it, with the tangled rosebushes climbing up the lattice, the dry fountain behind her.
It’s my wedding day, she realized with a shock. This is the day we chose, the one on the invitations that never went out. And instead of standing with Matt under a gazebo in the Palisades, overlooking the ocean, she was alone in the dead gardens of a haunted house.
The thought crashed in on her, buckled her knees, made her head swim.
She lurched to the side of the fountain and sat, feeling waves of nausea, and the telltale prickling of hives rising on her chest.
And she felt a black despair welling up, that she would dry up like the fountain, wither like this garden, that she would never live, never love, never leave.
Never leave.
Somehow she made it back to the house, and went straight to her room, where she slept for the rest of the day, not even stirring when someone knocked softly on the door calling her name.
Go away. I’m dead… .
At some point it started to rain, and at another point she was sure someone was in her room, standing over her with a clipboard in hand, but both times she turned over and fell back into a dark and dreamless sleep.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
The sky outside was fading to dusk when she finally forced herself out of bed. She had been lying awake for a long time, with no desire to