The Kitchen Dishes

She wasn’t crazy. But people were talking about Rosie like she had lost her mind. Her honest reputation had turned against her as the towns folk swallowed up rumor after rumor.

‘Did you hear about that girl Rosie? She’s broke into her own house to collect insurance money.’

‘I heard she’s taking advantage of that Good Samaritan, Carter. He lets her sleep in his house! Poor man’s being robbed blind.’

‘Her mind is messed up… she’s got multiple voices up there talking and she can’t figure out which one to listen to.’

It had been two weeks since the store clerk and market cashier had identified her as the one leaving sunflowers on parked cars and buying brown hair dye. Rosie didn’t dye her hair, she never had. But the clothes the woman had been described as wearing belonged to her, except she hadn’t seen them since her house had been burglarized.

She’d even had instances where she thought she might be crazy, though she was pretty convinced she wasn’t. A crazy person wouldn’t wonder if they were actually crazy, would they? she often thought.

Last week she was in the kitchen at Carter’s place, he was out, and she’d made some eggs. She’d put the pan in the sink to let it cool and went to eat her breakfast in the den. When she came back into the kitchen, the pan was back on the stove. I probably didn’t put it in the sink, Rosie thought.

She thinks someone is in the house undoing all the things she does… what a nutcase. I’ll tell you who’s putting the dishes back on the stove- voice number two in her head.

A few days ago, in the guest room closet where she kept her remaining wardrobe, Rosie saw her navy blue blazer hanging alone. It was that blazer that the clerk and cashier witnessed the look-a-like wearing. And now it was hanging in the closet like it was never stolen.

That girl Rosie tried to tell the cops her jacket was stolen from her house… it’s been in her closet the whole time! She’s got a screw loose, just like her mom. Doesn’t the saying go, ‘the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree?’

That rumor was partially true. Rosie’s mother, Claire, had cracked a few years ago and was living in a nursing home outside of town. Rosie had since fallen out of grace with her mom and hardly ever went to visit.

This morning though, she had a missed call from the nursing home and a message to call them back.

“Ms. Lawrence, we called this morning because your mother kept insisting she needed to tell her daughters something. Do you have any siblings?” the woman from the home asked. “She seems very insistent that she has two daughters.”

“I’m an only child. She’s probably just remembering something her mother said. Mom had a sister that died in a car accident when they were teenagers,” Rosie said. She could tell the nurse was calling from her mom’s room because of her voice in the background.

“Let me talk to Rosie! I have to tell her something. It’s important!” Claire often grew impatient with the staff and frequently requested to speak to Rosie directly.

“Hi Mom, how are you feeling today?” Rosie asked when the nurse put Claire on the phone. “Are you doing okay? The nurse said you had something to tell me.”

“I’m fine. I should have told you this sooner and I’m so sorry, Rosie,” Claire said. “I see you on TV and you look so worried.” Today her mom sounded coherent and lucid. Other days she sounded lost and confused.

“Mom, I’m okay. The police are just looking into who broke into my house. Remember when the nurses told you about that?”

“Yes, yes I remember. I have a brain, you know. It still works.” The irritability in Claire’s voice was growing and Rosie could tell her mom was about to slip into her twisted reality. “Rosie?”

“Mom.”

“Tell your sister I’m sorry. I should have kept her too.”

“I don’t have a sister,” Rosie said. I knew she was talking about her memories, Rosie thought. “You had one, Mom. Her name was Beth.”

“You have a sister, Rosie. She’s your twin. I named her Jane.”

The Rumor Mill

When Carter found a sunflower on the hood of his truck, which sat parked at the hardware store, he suggested to Rosie that they see if Irene would let them stay the night at her place. Usually only bartenders were welcome at Irene’s, but tonight was different. Watchful eyes had sent the rumor mill slowly turning down Brewery Boulevard creating a common knowledge that wherever Rosie went, Carter went too.

The two walked to Irene’s front door, while police searched Carter’s truck for possible evidence. Rosie didn’t know about the sunflower trail just yet though he’d have to tell her later.

“You know where the spare room is, Rosie,” Irene said. “Carter, you’re welcome to sleep on the couch. Call me old fashioned, but I don’t do mixed gender sleeping arrangements under my roof.”

Rosie laughed. She hadn’t laughed in weeks. She was stressed and nervous and vulnerable. Though she was grateful for Carter letting her stay at his house, they hadn’t found much to talk about. But tonight she would have Irene to break the awkward silence.

She had walked into the spare room and she could hear Irene and Carter talking in the kitchen. And from what she could make out, Carter was telling Irene about the investigation. The door was cracked open, so Rosie leaned against it for a better listen.

Carter had said something about sunflowers and police searching his truck.

“But they don’t have a suspect, do they?” Irene said. “Sometimes I see the story on the news, but it never says if police have anyone they’re investigating.”

“No, there isn’t one,” Carter said. “I just don’t get it. It’s like the Rosie’s attacker wants us to find out who they are by leaving this trail, but it’s not enough to lead the police down a path worth pursuing. It’s a giant tease.”

“How has Rosie been holding up? Bartenders talk and we’re concerned about her. I’ve heard she hasn’t spoken a word to anyone in public in weeks. It’s like she’s lost her voice.”

“She’s quiet. We don’t really talk much. Unless she’s working, she’s at the house,” Carter said.

“I saw her last week at the market, but when I called her name she looked at me, turned and ran. She dropped her basket all over the floor. It was a side of her I’ve never seen before.”

Rosie chose this moment to come out of the bedroom. She wasn’t going to pretend like she hadn’t just been eavesdropping. They had been talking about her, after all.

“I didn’t go to the market last week.”

“Oh Rosie, I didn’t think you could hear that,” Irene said, sounding startled. “I guess my idea of whispering is conversationally loud.”

“And what did you say about sunflowers? This is the second time tonight someone has mentioned them; those flowers and me being somewhere that I wasn’t.”

She recounted the events at the store where the cashier recalled her buying hair dye and sunflowers hours earlier. Carter shared the photographs of sunflowers at the break-in, the phone booth and his truck. The trio went down to the station.

“We found a tracking device near the tail pipe,” Officer Garcia said. “We think it’s been there for a while because it showed signs of weathering. The suspect might have used it to locate your vehicle at the hardware store to place the sunflower and at your home address to find your phone number.”

“The cashier said a woman had bought sunflowers a few hours ago, did you talk to her?” Rosie said.

“We did. And surveillance videos from the hardware store show a female placing the sunflower on your truck,” Officer Brown said to Carter. “The store clerk said he did see someone outside, but thought it was most likely the owner of the vehicle. He also said he recognized the woman.”

“So we know who it is, then,” Carter said. “We know who’s after Rosie.”

“We’re close, but I don’t think we’re there just yet, Mr. Jenkins,” Brown said. “The cashier’s and the clerk’s description of the female suspect seem to draw up the same person, which could be a good thing. But the clerk said he recognized the woman as a bartender from the boulevard. He said the woman was Rosie.”

The rumor mill started spinning.

The Sunflower Trail

The phone went dead before Carter could say hello.

He reached for his cell phone and dialed the police station. Rosie was still in the other room.

“This is Carter Jenkins. I need to speak with Officer Brown immediately,” he whispered so Rosie wouldn’t hear him. The receptionist put him through.

“This is Officer Brown speaking. What can I do for you Mr. Jenkins?”

“I need to know who just called my house. It was a woman’s voice. I think she knows about Rosie.”

Carter told Rosie he was headed into town. Despite his best efforts to keep her at home, she insisted on tagging along to get groceries. He said he was going to hardware store, but he was headed to the station.

The call had been traced to a payphone on Brewery Boulevard, around the corner from McNulty’s, where Rosie worked. But when the forensic team arrived, the phone had been completely wiped clean. The phonebook lay closed on the small ledge, with a sunflower marking a page.

“The phonebook was marked in the J’s,” Carter was told. “It was on the page of your home number listing.”

“Someone is after her,” Carter said to Brown. He had shared this idea with the officer before, but Brown didn’t like his work being done for him. There wasn’t hard evidence that proved Rosie was being targeted or whether she was in any real danger. Burglaries, though rare in town, did happen, but were usually done at random.

“I can’t prove your theory, Carter. It doesn’t connect,” Brown said, sitting down at his desk. “Her house was broken in to, but we have no suspects. You have this mysterious group from the bar and yet questioning of the bartenders hasn’t brought out any suspects there either. I’ve got men working on finding my lost officers, but those imposters Rosie met haven’t proved any kind of connection to the grand scheme of things.”

Carter was growing frustrated with the dead ends Brown laid out. They were missing a link.

“Boss, take a look at this.” A photographer, camera hanging heavy around her neck, interrupted the silence that had taken over Brown’s office. “This is about the Lawrence case. There was a sunflower in the phonebook this evening, right,” she said, showing Brown the image on her digital camera. “I swear there were sunflowers at the break-in.” She put a cardboard box on the desk and pulled out photo enlargements of the scene at Rosie’s house. “Yeah, right on the doormat like someone dropped it on the way out, you see? And here’s another one— in the closet in the master bedroom. I remember thinking this one was a weird place to keep a flower. Who keeps flowers in a closet?”

“Thank you, Becky. Please leave those photos here and print the ones on your camera. I’ll need to add those to the file,” Brown said. He turned to Carter after Becky left the room. “Looks like we might have a case.”

At the same time, Rosie was getting groceries down the street. When she had reached the check-out line, the cashier stared at Rosie for just a second too long.

“Did you forget something?” the cashier said.

“No, I’ve got everything, thanks,” Rosie said, loading her items on the conveyor belt.

“Oh, I just meant because you were here an hour ago. But you were wearing a different outfit.”

“I haven’t been here in a few weeks. You must be mistaking me with someone else,” Rosie insisted politely.

“So you didn’t buy brown hair dye and a bouquet of sunflowers?” The cashier didn’t seem convinced that Rosie wasn’t the woman from earlier.

“I’m sorry, but that wasn’t me. I don’t know who you’re talking about, but I would really like to pay and leave, if you don’t mind.” Rosie was growing irritated.

“Well, then you must have a twin.” And with that the cashier bagged up Rosie’s items without another word.