Greenhouse Gore

EPILOGUE

"Did you lay down some flowers for her?" His wife asked. She was carrying a cardboard box whose label indicated it needed to be unpacked in the kitchen.

"I did," John said. He followed his wife through the hallway and assessed the empty rooms that fell on either side of him. It would take a while before his family settled into the home. There were plenty of boxes that needed unpacking and furniture that required moving.

His wife disappeared into the kitchen, but her voice trailed behind her. "When did she die again?"

"I'm not sure. It's been a while."

"Were you at the funeral?"

"No."

"And what was her name?"

"Gina," John said. He turned the corner and saw his wife in the process of placing a dozen glasses onto the countertop. Packing peanuts that'd gotten stuck to the glass came loose and fell either back into the box or the joined the mess on the counter. "Gina Coffin."

He couldn't remember the exact timeline for the events that'd transpired in BV years ago in his absence. Mrs. Coffin had died first, and then his father and it was only after his father passed that John felt he could return to his hometown without the gray cloud that'd been following him since the age of fourteen. In fact, the deaths that occurred in his absence had been surprising. People had dropped like flies.

Blair Baker. Autumn Harley. Diana Green. Eve Rainier. Sabrina Fritz. Raven Harbor. Elizabeth Perovski. Katrina Blanton. Emily Herbert. Jennifer Pinto. Matilda Heath. Lenore Horne. Mary Carson. Agatha Barnett. The gravestones went on and on.

He'd only brought flowers for Gina Coffin, purchased at an old gardening store perched on the outskirts of town. He'd gotten the flowers for free because the store was going out of business and needed to rid itself of the current stock, the older gentlemen working the counter had said. At the cemetery, John quickly thanked Mrs. Coffin for her house but spent a considerable amount of time reading the names engraved into newer headstones, wondering which if his former neighbors would never cross paths with him on the sidewalk. On his way out of the cemetery, he passed by one that only had a single flower before it. He couldn't remember the name of it, but it was white and often grew in clusters. Often, he and his friends would pull the green stem out of the center and drink the sweet nectar from the flower. It tasted like honey.

Upon his wife's encouragement, John decided to relocate to BV after his father's passing and when he was searching for available homes, he was surprised to find the Coffins' house listed. Immediately, he called the realtor and asked for details and within a week, John packed up his wife and their four kids and made the journey back to Barrell Vista. They'd only received the keys a few days before John started at his new position at the hospital. He'd been on his way to his new office in the pediatric wing of the hospital when someone called out his name and he turned around to find his hand being shaken roughly by Dr. Samson.

"Dr. Mobley!" The older man greeted. A mischievous wink ran across his eye but that didn't stop John from noticing the patch of gray hair that began to invade his hair and the wrinkles that emerged from the folds of his skin. "I was wondering when you'd finally come back home and join me here."

They spoke briefly, about the lost years and medical practices. Finally, John found an opening to get away from Dr. Samson when one of his nurses brought him a patient's chart. The two doctors shook hands, Dr. Samson with a calculated rigidness of a surgeon and John with the gentleness of a pediatrician.