Chapter 1 - The Box Grandma Was Desperate To Take
Every year on September fifth, I grew lilies for the sister I had never known.
Her name was Lily Parker.
Mine is Logan.
We were twins.
At least, that was the sentence I had been raised with.
You were twins. Lily died when you were born.
No photographs of us together existed.
No stories about her first cry.
No tiny handprint beside mine.
Just a marble plaque inside the private memorial greenhouse on our Connecticut estate:
**Lily Grace Parker
Beloved Daughter
September 5**
No death year.
That had always bothered me.
Mom said it was because Lily “never really got a chance to have a life.”
Grandma Margaret said memorial plaques did not need explanations.
So I stopped asking.
Instead, I planted flowers.
When I was six, Mom helped me put three lily bulbs in a corner of the greenhouse.
By fifteen, I had filled an entire bed.
Every birthday, I cut one white lily and placed it beneath my sister’s plaque.
Except that morning, somebody had already cut everything.
Every stem.
Every bloom.
The bed looked butchered.
I found the black box beneath the fallen stalks.
Small.
Rectangular.
Matte black.
My hands were shaking before I even touched it.
A white label was attached to the lid.
LILY PARKER
Below it:
SEPTEMBER 5 — TODAY
That was when Grandma walked in.
She saw the box.
And whatever calm she normally wore around me disappeared.
Now I lay trembling on the cushioned garden bench beside the destroyed flower bed, clutching the black box against my chest.
Grandma leaned over me in her gray wool coat.
“GIVE ME THAT BOX! YOUR SISTER DIED FIFTEEN YEARS AGO!”
I tightened my arms around it.
“No.”
“Logan.”
“No!”
My eyes burned.
I looked down at the label again.
“THEN WHY DOES IT HAVE LILY’S NAME AND TODAY’S DATE ON IT?”
Grandma froze.
Only half a second.
Then she leaned closer.
“STOP DIGGING INTO THINGS YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND!”
That sentence changed everything.
Not it’s a mistake.
Not someone is playing a cruel joke.
Not give it to me so I can figure it out.
Things I didn’t understand.
Which meant there were things to understand.
I kept my eyes on her and slowly slid one hand beneath the edge of the bench cushion.
Mom had installed a large red estate-security alarm button there the previous year after someone repeatedly cut the memorial lilies during the night.
Grandma noticed my shoulder move.
Too late.
I pressed it.
CLICK.
Her face changed instantly.
She looked toward the greenhouse doors.
Then the windows.
Then me.
I hugged the unopened black box tighter.
“Mom installed cameras after the flowers were cut last year.”
Grandma’s eyes lifted.
The handheld security camera above the greenhouse entrance blinked red.
Recording.
The anger vanished from her face.
She looked afraid.
Really afraid.
And that was the moment I stopped wondering whether somebody had made a mistake with a label.
My grandmother knew why Lily’s name was on that box.
May you like
She knew why today’s date was printed beneath it.
And whatever happened to my twin sister fifteen years earlier had never been as simple as death.
