The Secret Code of Father’s Plants

After my fathers casket was lowered into the earth, my best friend, Nora, wrapped her arms around my shaking shoulders.

Before he passed, Arthur told you not to forget to water the plants, she whispered, her voice thick with sympathy. Kate, he wanted you to keep going. He wanted you to live a good life.

My blood ran entirely cold.

My father had a severe pollen allergy. We had never kept a single green thing in our house, let alone flowers or plants.

Years ago, he and I had agreed on a secret code. If either of us were ever in immediate, life-threatening danger, we would use the phrase "water the plants" to signal for help.

My father had died in a tragic car accident a week ago.

How did Nora know our code?

When my father first suggested setting up an emergency signal, I had laughed in his face. I told him life wasn't a thriller movie, and we didn't need secret codes.

He had simply smiled, telling me it was better to be safe than sorry.

We both assumed we would never have to use it.

Yet now, those very words had just slipped from the lips of my closest friend.

Nora had been my rock. Ever since my fathers accident, she had practically abandoned her own sick daughter, staying by my side day and night for the past two weeks to keep me from falling apart.

"Kate? Are you okay?"

Noras gentle, concerned voice broke through my spiraling thoughts.

I pulled myself back to the present and forced a weak shake of my head. There was no way Nora had anything to do with my father's death. She had no motive, no reason to hurt him.

Perhaps my father had managed to tell her the code before he died, hoping she would warn me that his accident wasn't an accident at all?

I clenched my fists, forcing a fragile smile onto my face.

"I'm okay, really." I squeezed her hand. Her palm was burning hot, making my icy fingers ache. "Nora, you've been with me for so long. You should go home. Mona must miss her mom."

Nora held on tighter. "My mother is watching Mona. I'm not leaving you alone like this."

Her touch, which had always brought me comfort, suddenly made my skin crawl.

I quietly slipped my hand out of her grip, fabricating a quick excuse. "The insurance company called. They need me to sign some paperwork for my dads life insurance policy back in my hometown. I have to make the drive today, so..."

Before I could even finish, Nora cut me off, her voice laced with a strange, hurried relief. "Oh, in that case, you should definitely go right away!"

I stared at her.

We had been friends for ten years. I knew every shift in her expression, every nervous tic.

Nora, what are you in such a hurry for?

The drive to Blackwood Creek was long and winding. Noras odd reaction replayed in my mind like a broken record, distracting me so much that I missed the exit for the highway service station.

By the time the low fuel light flashed on my dashboard, I was forced to pull into a rusty, isolated gas station at the base of the mountain pass.

"Heading up the mountain, kid?"

The old attendant shook his head, waving his gloved hands. "Can't go up. There was a nasty rockslide a few days back. Debris everywhere. A car went over the edge, and the state troopers still have the pass closed off for the investigation."

My grip tightened on the steering wheel.

That car belonged to my father.

I took a deep breath, smoothing my expression as I stepped out of the car. "Sir, it's been a week. Why is the road still closed?"

"I hear the detectives are treating it as suspicious," the old man sighed, leaning against the pump. "Two lives lost in one night. They have to be thorough."

"Two lives?"

My eyes went wide. I reached out, grabbing his sleeve before I could stop myself. "The police report said there was only one vehicle involved. How could there be two deaths?"

The attendant startled, blinking at me in confusion. "Well, yes, only one car went over. But that evening, a young female cyclist stopped by here to escape the storm. She ended up hitching a ride in that very car."

A cold sweat broke out across my back. The world seemed to tilt.

The forensic report from the crash site had been absolute: my fathers body was the only one recovered from the wreckage.

Where was the girl?

Was she alive? Who was she?

Driven by a sudden, sickening instinct, I pulled up a photo of Nora on my phone and held it up to the old man. "Was this the girl who took the ride?"

The attendant squinted at the screen, then immediately shook his head.

"No, definitely not her. The cyclist was broader, heavier, and had short, cropped hair."

I lowered my phone, letting out a breath I didn't realize I was holding, though the knot in my chest only grew tighter.

The attendant finished filling my tank, but instead of asking for payment, he gestured toward the small brick office. "Kid, step inside for a second. I want to show you something."

I hesitated, watching him walk toward the door. Under the dim, flickering security light of the station, his face seemed cast in shadow.

I took a cautious step back, my eyes tracking his movements with sudden suspicion.

The old man caught my hesitation and let out a dry chuckle. He didn't push. Instead, he disappeared into the office, rummaged around for a moment, and returned with a tablet.

"Here," he said, handing it over with a hint of pride. "This is the security footage from that night. The system usually overwrites the files every seven days, but since there was a fatal crash, I figured the police might want to see it, so I backed it up."

My suspicion instantly turned into a deep sense of shame. "Thank you," I muttered quietly, taking the screen.

He waved it off dismissively. "Don't apologize for being careful. In this world, you can't even trust the people closest to you, let alone a stranger at a dark gas station."

The footage was timestamped exactly twenty-eight minutes before the estimated time of the crash.

On the screen, my father's car pulled up to the pump. A moment later, a heavy-set woman with short hair and a massive hiking pack approached his window. After a brief exchange, she loaded her bicycle into his trunk and climbed into the passenger seat.

I replayed the short clip half a dozen times. Aside from confirming the girl wasn't Nora, there was nothing else to see.

The attendant leaned over, looking at the screen. "Look, I probably shouldn't be sharing this, but if it helps you, I can send a copy to your phone."

I looked up, meeting his eyes, which were now filled with a quiet, heavy sympathy.

"Your dad used to stop by here every time he drove up this way," the old man said softly. "You have his eyes."

My throat tightened, and I could barely whisper a thank you.

As he turned to walk back to his office, he left me with one final, unsettling thought. "I've run this station for thirty years, kid. We've never had a rockslide on this pass. The rain that night wasn't even that heavy. It just doesn't make sense."

With the mountain pass closed and the sky turning pitch black, I had no choice but to check into a dingy roadside motel at the base of the mountain.

I tossed and turned on the lumpy mattress, watching the gas station footage on my phone until the battery finally died. My father looked completely normal in the video. Giving a stranded cyclist a ride in a storm was exactly the kind of man he was.

The girl looked ordinary too, her bike tires caked in mud, her face obscured by the hood of her raincoat.

It was a perfectly mundane video.

When dawn broke, I packed my small bag and decided to hike up the closed mountain road on foot.

The paved road was steep but well-maintained. After an hour and a half of walking, the bright yellow police tape marking the crash site came into view.

It was the sharpest hairpin turn on the entire pass.

A section of the heavy steel guardrail had been completely pulverized, marking the exact spot where my fathers sedan had plunged into the ravine below.

The road was marked with white chalk outlines and scattered gravel.

I looked at the rocks clustered near the edge. There weren't many of them: eight rocks in total, ranging from the size of a fist to the size of a washbasin.

I frowned.

Even if these rocks had fallen directly onto the car, they weren't large enough to cause a fatal accident on their own.

The hum of an approaching engine broke the silence.

I stepped onto the shoulder as a marked police cruiser came down the mountain, pulling to a halt just past the barricade.

The man who stepped out of the driver's seat was a familiar face: Detective Robert Collins, my father's childhood best friend, a man who had known me since I was in diapers.

In the span of a single week, he seemed to have aged a decade.

He looked at me in surprise, his uniform cap pulled low. "Kate? What are you doing out here?"

"I needed to see it, Uncle Robert," I said quietly.

Robert was a veteran homicide detective, and he was the lead investigator on my father's case. He didn't need me to explain why I was here.

He sighed, lifting the yellow tape to let me through.

Robert pointed to the chalk markings on the asphalt, then toward the shattered guardrail.

"The rain washed away most of the tire tracks, but the forensics team managed to reconstruct the pattern using specialized lighting," he said, his brow furrowed in frustration. "The data shows your father was speeding. In fact, he didn't even tap the brakes as he entered this curve. That goes against every driving habit he had."

His voice grew quiet. "Your father was the most cautious driver I knew. He never sped, especially not in a storm."

My eyes stung with tears.

When I was a little girl, I used to complain that he drove like a turtle. He would always smile and tell me that speed didn't matter, as long as we made it home safely.

A man like that would never drive recklessly on a slick mountain pass.

Unless something had forced his hand.

I pointed toward the ravine. "Uncle Robert, what about the other person in the car? Did she survive?"

Robert stared at me, his face freezing. "Kate, I think the stress is getting to you. Your father was alone in the vehicle. We found no evidence of any passenger."

The mountain wind whistled through the trees, making me shiver.

Thankfully, Robert trusted me. Once I showed him the gas station footage on my phone, his entire demeanor shifted. He drove me straight to the county sheriff's department, pulling in his colleagues to trace the short-haired woman.

Initially, everyone had assumed my father's death was a tragic accident, chalking Robert's obsession with the case up to grief. But with the video evidence, the department quickly swung into action.

"Detective Collins! We reviewed the highway cameras," one of the officers called out. "There's a toll camera three miles before the crash site. The passenger was definitely still in the vehicle at that point."

"We have an identity!"

Within two hours, the system had flagged her. Her name was Gwen. She was a touring cyclist who had passed through the county a week ago.

Unfortunately, she was already three states away.

Robert called her on speakerphone, allowing me to sit quietly in the corner of the office to listen.

"Yeah, I remember that night," Gwens voice came through the line, sharp and irritated. "That old guy agreed to give me a lift to the lodge at the top. But halfway up the mountain, his phone rang. He listened to whoever was on the other end, went completely pale, and then literally forced me out of the car in the middle of a torrential downpour."

She let out a bitter laugh. "My bike chain was busted, and he just left me stranded on the side of the road. I was furious. But then I saw the news about his crash the next morning, and I realized I'd dodged a bullet."

Gwens tone was entirely casual, devoid of any real sympathy.

Robert asked her several detailed questions, but she had nothing of value to offer. To her, it was simply an annoying detour on her trip.

Robert rubbed his face in frustration, leaning back in his chair.

I sat frozen, staring at the video on my phone, replaying it over and over.

In the background, two deputies were whispering. "According to the cyclist, the victim kicked her out because of an emergency call. But if they were both going up the mountain, why waste time forcing her out of the car? It doesn't make sense."

My eyes snapped down to the timestamp at the bottom of the screen.

My father had left the gas station at exactly 8:32 PM.

The crash was recorded twenty-eight minutes later.

The distance between the gas station and the hairpin turn was barely four miles. Even in a heavy storm, that drive shouldn't have taken more than ten minutes.

What did he do during those missing eighteen minutes?

I stood up, my hand shaking as I grabbed Robert's arm. "Uncle Robert, look at the time."