“What happened to her?”
“It’s my fault,” Lily says quickly. “I should’ve done better by her.”
“Done better how?”
Her words have me a little baffled. I can’t imagine how Marigold failing her trials would be Lily’s fault.
She doesn’t answer, just bites her lip.
“Lily,” I say softly.
And just as I expected, the dam bursts.
“Before you, Sol let us be more involved with the trials. Marigold was hesitant about hers when her turn came up.” Lily hugs herself, eyes darting from the door of the shed to the misty mountains beyond the cabin. “It was my responsibility to reassure her, and I didn’t do a good job. She didn’t wanna do the last trial. She wanted to leave. I tried to talk her out of it. Did everything I could, but …”
Mybreath is trapped in my lungs. This is the most anyone has ever spoken about Marigold. Certainly the first time anyone’s mentioned that they’d tried to stop her leaving.
Lily swallows, and I see a sheen of tears beginning to rim her dark eyes. “She wanted to leave, and that wasn’t an option. So we had to stop her.”
The end of that sentence hangs in the air between us. A chill runs down my spine.
“Where is she now?” I ask.
“I went into the shed to talk to her so many times,” she murmurs, more to herself than to me. “Tried to talk sense into herso manytimes, but she wouldn’t listen. She just kept yelling at me. Saying all this awful stuff about Sol, even though he’d helped her. She didn’t understand how much good Sol was doing for us. She didn’t understand how much danger she’d be putting us all in if she left, and I tried to tell her. I tried so hard, but she didn’t listen. She was supposed to stay in the shed until she saw reason, but one night she pushed past me when I came to see her and …”
She doesn’t finish the sentence. I think I see a flicker of worry in her tear-filled brown eyes, and I wonder if she’s having asudden realization of how much she said. Or how little it actually took to lure the truth out of her.
My fingers tense, my muscles gone rigid as some of the pieces fall into their hideous places.
Again, I ask, “Where is she now, Lily?”
But, again, I get no answer. Tears are streaming down Lily’s round cheeks. I feel a sudden pang of guilt for pushing her to talk, despite the fact that I’m certain she’s been secretly desperate to do so for a while now. The pain this is causing her is obvious, especially when she glances at the shed once more.
The shed that she’s always seemed so afraid of, so haunted by. Now I think I know why. In a way, it is haunted for her. By the memory of a girl she couldn’t save.
“This is why Sol doesn’t let us talk to each other about the trials anymore,” she says. “Because it’s better for us to be independent, but also so we ain’t dragged down by someone else’s weeds.”
Weeds.
That’s what Violet thinks Rose is. Now I understand the comparison to Marigold. And I know it might be—terrifyingly— more accurate than she or Lily even realize.
“Ishouldn’t have told you all this,” she says, choking out the words.
“It’s okay,” I tell her, though I’m not actually sure it is. “I won’t say anything.”
“I ain’t gonna ask you to keep secrets,” she says. “Just finish your trials, Iris. No matter what Rose says, remember that Sol is the one who cares about you. He took you in. He’s going to help you bloom. He’s not going to steer you wrong.” She shakes her head. “I need water. Can you finish up out here, hon?”
I watch her go, feeling confused and unsettled. Where did Marigold end up if she wasn’t allowed to leave? What did Lily and Violet do? Does Sol know? I’m sure he does. Violet doesn’t keep anything from Sol, as far as I can tell, but that thought causes my stomach to coil into tight, unpleasant knots.
I walk toward the rakes, pick them up, and step into the shed myself. It’s empty right now. Everyone else is doing their various tasks around the yard or inside the cabin. Poppy’s cassette player is sitting on the workbench, a stack ofThe Lord of the Ringstapes beside it. I carry the rakes to the corner and prop them up near the shovel and the other gardening supplies.
I close my eyes and try to imagine some other faceless girl here.Try to imagine her conversations with Lily. I wonder what her trials were. I wonder if she sounded like Rose, skeptical and uncomfortable with Sol and what was being asked of her.
My eyes snap open then, because I don’t want to go down that dark path. I don’t want to imagine a world in which Rose is trapped in this shed because she wants to leave. Surely there is more to the story. Surely Sol would never do that to her.
When I step out of the shed, the sun has begun to sink behind the wall of rounded, foggy mountains. The back door to the cabin is open. Zinnia’s thick black curls blow in the breeze as she stands out on the steps.
“There you are,” she says. “Are y’all done in the garden?”
