Dead Ever After

last time I’d noticed them, maybe a week ago, they’d looked scraggly and in dire need of water and fertilizer. The one on the left had seemed on its last legs (if a plant can have legs). Now all three plants were lush and green-leafed, sagging against their frames with the sheer weight of the fruit. It was like someone had dosed them with an elevated version of Miracle-Gro.
    With my mouth hanging open, I rotated to check out all the other flowers and bushes in the yard, and there were plenty of them. Many of the Stackhouse women had been ardent gardeners, and they’d planted roses, daisies, hydrangeas, pear trees . . . so many blooming and green things, planted by generations of Stackhouse women. And I’d been doing a poor job of keeping them in good trim.
    But . . . what the hell? While I’d been sunk in gloom the past few days, the whole yard had taken steroids. Or maybe the Jolly Green Giant had paid a visit. Everything that was supposed to be blooming was laden with brilliant flowers, and everything that was supposed to bear fruit was heavy with it. Everything else was green and glossy and thick. How had this come about?
    I plucked a couple of especially ripe and round tomatoes to take in the house. I could see that a bacon-and-tomato sandwich would be my lunch choice, but before that I had a few things to accomplish.
    I found my cell phone and checked my list of contacts. Yes, I had Bernadette Merlotte’s number. Bernadette, called Bernie, was Sam’s shapeshifter mom. Though my own mother had passed when I was seven (so maybe I wasn’t the best judge), Sam seemed to have a good relationship with Bernie. If there ever was a time to call in a mom, this was it.
    I won’t say we had a comfortable conversation, and it was shorter than it should have been, but by the time I hung up, Bernie Merlotte was packing a bag to come to Bon Temps. She’d arrive in the late afternoon.
    Had I done the right thing? After I’d hashed the issue over with myself, I decided I had, and I further decided I had to have a day off. Maybe more than one. I called Merlotte’s and told Kennedy that I had the flu. She agreed they’d call me in a crisis, but otherwise they’d leave me alone to recover.
    “I didn’t think anyone got the flu in July. But Sam called in to say the same thing,” Kennedy said with a smile in her voice.
    I thought, Dammit.
    “Maybe y’all gave it to each other?” she suggested archly.
    I didn’t say a word.
    “Okay, okay, I’ll only call if the place is on fire,” she said. “You have a good time getting over the flu.”
    I refused to worry about the rumors that would undoubtedly start making the rounds. I slept a lot and wept a lot. I cleaned out all the drawers in my bedroom: night table, dressing table, chest of drawers. I pitched useless things and grouped other items together in a way that seemed sensible. And I waited to hear . . . from anyone.
    But the phone didn’t ring. I heard a lot of nothing. I had a lot of nothing, except tomatoes. I had them on sandwiches, and the minute the red ones were gone, the plants were hung with green ones. I fried a few of the green ones, and when the rest were red, I made my own salsa for the first time ever. The flowers bloomed and bloomed and bloomed, until I had a vase full in almost every room in the house. I even walked through the cemetery to leave some on Gran’s grave, and I put a bouquet on Bill’s porch. If I could have eaten them, I’d have had a full plate at every meal.
    ELSEWHERE
    The red-haired woman came out of the prison door slowly and suspiciously, as if she suspected a practical joke. She blinked in the brilliant sun and began walking toward the road. There was a car parked there, but she didn’t pay it any attention. It never occurred to the red-haired woman that its occupants were waiting for her.
    A medium man got out of the front passenger seat. That was how she thought of him: medium. His hair was medium brown, he was medium tall, he was medium built, and he had a medium smile. His teeth, however, were gleaming white and perfect. Dark glasses hid his eyes. “Miss Fowler,” he called. “We’ve come to pick you up.”
    She turned toward him, hesitating. The sun was in her eyes, and she squinted. She’d survived so much—broken marriages, broken relationships, single motherhood, betrayals, a bullet wound. She was not of a mind to be an easy target now.
    “Who are you?” she asked, standing her ground, though she knew