Chapter 2 THE DEAD MAN'S FLOWER

The third morning broke cold and bright over Pine Crest.

The rain had finally cleared. The mountain air smelled of wet pine needles and damp earth. Sunbeams cut through the greenhouse glass and warmed the soil where Lyra knelt, repotting a tray of winter seedlings.

Behind her, the floorboards of the back porch creaked.

Lyra didn't turn around, but her hands slowed over the soil. She knew his footsteps by now. They were heavy and slow, and he favored his right side.

"You shouldn't be out of bed," she said, wiping her thumb on her apron. "The stitches are only two days old."

"The air in the house is too still," Jason said.

Two days ago, she had asked his name. He had waited a long moment before he answered. Then he said, "Jason." She had the feeling he'd had to think about it.

He leaned against the doorframe. He wore an old flannel shirt that had belonged to Nana's late husband. It was tight across his shoulders. His face was still pale, but color had come back to his lips. His gray eyes moved slowly over the greenhouse.

Every morning, Lyra checked the cut. It was clean. There was no fever. Nana had stopped saying he should go at sunrise. She had started saying nothing at all.

Jason walked over slowly, holding his side. He stopped beside her potting bench. His eyes landed on a small wooden flat sitting in the sunlight-a delicate plant with star-shaped, pale blue petals.

"Alpine Star," Jason murmured, his voice low. "I haven't seen one of those since I was a boy in the north."

Lyra looked up, surprised. "They only grow near the frost line. Nana brought the seeds down from the high ridge thirty years ago. Most people think they're just weeds."

"They're not weeds," he said softly, his thumb gently touching the edge of a blue petal without bruising it. "They survive where nothing else grows."

He looked at her then. He really looked at her. His eyes were dark and hard to read. For two days he had said almost nothing about where he came from or why he had a knife wound in his side. But whenever Lyra walked into a room, his eyes followed her.

"You saved my life, Lyra," he said.

"Anyone would have." She kept her voice light and pressed fresh soil around a seedling.

"No." He stepped closer. She could smell cedar soap and the sharp smell of the ointment on his skin. "Not where I come from. Where I come from, people step over a bleeding man to get to the curb."

Lyra's breath caught. His face was only inches from hers. Something in him frightened her. It was something heavy and dangerous. But under it she felt something broken. It made her want to touch his cheek.

"Then I'm glad you ended up in my garden," she whispered.

He reached out and wiped a smear of soil from her cheekbone. His fingers were warm and rough, and his touch was very gentle. Her heart pounded. He leaned down until his forehead rested against hers. They stayed like that for one long breath.

"You shouldn't be kind to me," he murmured into her hair. "It's dangerous."

He kissed her then, slowly, as if he expected her to stop him. She didn't.

That night, she did not send him back to the cot by the stove.

In the morning, the kitchen was empty.

Lyra opened the door at dawn. The stove was cold. The blanket on the cot was folded neatly. His heavy coat was gone. The brass key was gone from the counter.

Two things sat on the kitchen table.

The thick roll of hundred-dollar bills lay untouched under a glass mug.

Beside it, freshly cut from the greenhouse bed, lay a single pale blue Alpine Star, its stem resting against a small piece of torn paper.

Lyra picked up the paper with shaking fingers. Three words were written in a sharp, dark scrawl:

Forget me, Lyra.

She pressed the blue flower to her lips. Tears filled her eyes. She looked out at the foggy, empty driveway.

He had left with the stitches still in. They needed another week at least. She stood there and thought about the cut, and whether it was already hurting him.

Nana came in behind her. She looked at the table, then at Lyra's face. She said nothing. She put the kettle on and set a cup in front of Lyra.

Nana looked at the roll of money under the mug. "Put that somewhere dry," she said. "Money like that has a way of coming back for its owner."

Lyra put it in a biscuit tin at the back of the pantry. She did not want to touch it again.

Four weeks passed.

The mountain autumn turned cold. The birch leaves fell in rust-colored heaps. Jason did not come back. But every morning, Lyra woke up sick. The nausea sat heavy in her chest, and her knees shook over the washbasin.

On a gray Tuesday afternoon, she sat on the bench behind the greenhouse. A pregnancy test lay beside her. She had bought it at the pharmacy in the valley and had not told anyone. Two pink lines showed on it.

Pregnant.

Fear hit her first. Then something fierce and warm came behind it. She put her hand over her stomach.

"Jason," she whispered into the cold wind.

That evening, Nana switched on the small old television in the living room for the six o'clock regional news.

Lyra sat at the table folding dish towels. The anchor's voice cut through the quiet:

"...authorities in Aethelgard Bay have called off the search after last Thursday's explosion near the south piers. Dominic Sterling, age twenty-eight, heir to Sterling Logistics, is now presumed dead..."

Lyra dropped the towel.

She turned slowly to the screen. A photograph of a man filled it. He wore a sharp dark suit. His hair was brushed back. His eyes looked straight into the camera.

It was Jason.

"...Police say shots were fired during a meeting on Mr. Sterling's yacht before the vessel caught fire. His wife, Vivienne Sterling, has asked for privacy for the family..."

The room seemed to tilt. Lyra could not breathe. The screen showed a woman in a black veil outside a cathedral. Her face was white and still, like marble.

His wife.

Lyra gripped the edge of the table. Her knuckles went white. Her hands shook so hard that the saucer rattled.

Behind her, Nana had gone very still. "That's him," Nana said. Her voice was thin. "That's the man from our kitchen."

Lyra could not answer. She pressed her hand flat against her stomach. The two pink lines burned in her mind. She stared at the face of the dead billionaire. He was the man who had held her in the sunlight, left a wildflower on her table, and walked back into his world of blood and money.