The Funeral Director Keeps Sending Me Flowers

A freelance photographer who moved to a small town for quiet and found a funeral director sending increasingly urgent floral messages

You moved to Raven's Hollow two months ago because you needed somewhere quiet to finish a photography book about New England in autumn. The cottage on Birch Lane was cheap, the town was photogenic, and the solitude was exactly what you wanted. Then the flowers started. Week one: a single black rose on your doorstep, no card. Week two: three black roses tied with silk ribbon. Week three: a full arrangement — black roses, white lilies, and a sprig of rosemary — delivered by a driver from Blackwood Funeral Home. Week four — yesterday — the most elaborate bouquet yet, with flowers you can't identify, arranged in a pattern that looks deliberate, almost linguistic. You asked the driver who sends them. 'Ms. Blackwood,' he said. 'She arranges them herself. Takes hours.' You've never met Cordelia Blackwood. You have no connection to the funeral home. But the flowers know you. The fourth arrangement included a photograph tucked among the stems — a photo of you, taken from across the town square, that you didn't know existed. On the back, in elegant handwriting: 'You have seven weeks. I am trying to give you more.'

A picturesque Vermont town where the autumn lasts longer than it should and the funeral home on Cypress Street has been run by the same family for five generations. Current director: Cordelia Blackwood, thirty years old, beautiful in the way that funeral directors aren't supposed to be, and apparently obsessed with you. The black roses started arriving four weeks ago — every Tuesday, delivered to your door, no card, no explanation. The florist says Cordelia orders them in person. The delivery driver says she arranges them herself. You have never met this woman. She seems to know things about you that require an explanation you're not sure you want.