The Flower Girls by Margaret Blake

but when he stood he read, without reference to a paper, a favorite poem of Jasmine’s—Christina Rossetti’s “Remember”— “Remember me when I am gone away…” as if anyone who’d known her would ever forget Jasmine. Poppy tried to fight back tears but they came, sad and lonely. Her body didn’t heave with sobs; there was just this horrid sad melancholy.
    Later—after she’d lain a wreath of spring flowers and Seth his of pale cream roses by the side of the grave—they went back to the house. Mrs. Carrington had laid a table with sandwiches in the morning room; hot coffee was quickly brought. Seth indicated that the Carringtons stay and eat with them. Poppy was glad of their presence. Their glumness seemed appropriate and when Mrs. Carrington gave her shoulder a brief squeeze, Poppy felt she could easily burst into those heaving sobs she’d avoided at the church.
    “They’ll never find out, will they?” she said to Seth when the Carringtons had gone.
    She could tell he knew what she meant; they would never discover who had murdered Jasmine.
    “I don’t know, I don’t think we should give up hope that they will. Sometimes these things take an awful long time.”
    “But if it were random…some horrid man giving her a lift…” Poppy spread her hands.
    “You know it had to be more personal than that.”
    “I don’t know anything.”
    Seth came to her and then folded her into his arms. “You’re brave; you know that…” he murmured against her hair. “We can get through this.”
    “Yes…” She rested her head against his chest.
    Oh, Jasmine, she thought, dripping tears onto his crisp white shirt, why did you not stay safe and happy with this man, why did you chase something different…
    Later she wondered out loud why the police hadn’t attended. Seth said they had—the younger detective. He’d sat at the back of church and stood away from the graveside. The police did that to see if they could spot anyone strange or see anything that might give them a clue to Jasmine’s killer, but of course they probably hadn’t anticipated that no one would turn up.
    * * * *
    Seth’s book was finished, he’d been to London, and there was no longer any need for her to stay. She contemplated returning to the States but now wasn’t the time to make that announcement. Besides she’d not decided what she would do. She felt as if she were in limbo and wondered if she would ever feel normal again.
    “I have to leave soon,” she said.
    “You do?”
    “Of course, I can’t stay here. I have to find work, a place to live…”
    “You can live here,” he said.
    “I can’t do that.” She blushed, put down her head in case he read how much pleasure the idea of never leaving gave to her.
    “I don’t know why not but whatever you do don’t rush, take your time. This has been a dreadful couple of months, you need to recuperate.”
    “I’m fine,” she replied and smiled at him.
    “How about we go on holiday? I own a small villa in the south of France; the weather will be perfect this time of year.”
    “You and I?”
    “Why not? The villa has three bedrooms and quite frankly I’d like to get away for a bit.”
    “It isn’t grand?”
    “It isn’t, I assure you.” He stood, strolled nonchalantly towards the window, stared out for a mere second or two and then came back, standing over her. “It’s where my mother lived, when she left here. It belonged to her father. He lived there when he retired and when he died he left it to her. When she ran away she ran there. There was someone she knew still living there. A childhood friend, they got together. But she didn’t run away with him, rather my father drove her to leave. He could be— difficult .”
    Her thoughts turned to Jasmine, thinking this was something else she would have liked. Married to a man who not only lived in this beautiful house but had a villa in the sunny south of France. No wonder her sister had talked herself into loving