She pulled back and her eyes narrowed. “You sound like you’re saying goodbye. Or like you are zoned out of your ever-loving mind. That Mellon guy isn’t some kind of dealer – is he?”
“No way. Just my boss, and he’ll be here in a minute if you want to meet him and make sure he’s OK.”
She took an absent-minded bite of croissant and backed away, looking thoroughly spooked. “I have class in ten minutes. Sorry.” She ate the rest of the croissant in two or three bites, swallowed her meal, and evidently made up her mind to speak. “I’m not sure what’s going on with you. All I can say is be careful. Remember your limitations.”
Her little speech made me laugh again, sadly this time. “Maybe I should be worrying about you. You always told me to trash my illusions and reach for the stars . . .”
“Maybe I’m just saying the same thing a different way.” And with a final wave of her fingers, Colleen left for class.
Mellon appeared not five minutes after Colleen’s parting words of wisdom. “OK, Mellon,” I said, glad to leave her worries behind and ready for business. “What have you got for me?”
His smile, as usual, hid a world of secrets. “A philosophy paper.”
I glanced down at the handwritten paper he held out for me. The paper’s title: “The Walled Garden”.
The words brought me up short and I looked up from the crabbed, scrabbly handwriting overflowing the crinkly lined paper. “I thought . . .”
“Don’t worry. It’s a hypothetical garden.”
I smiled back. “I’ll take that to mean that our secret is safe. So in that case, I have something for you. Something amazing!”
The dancing cool light in his eyes went dark, and he sank down in the chair next to mine. “You went back there, didn’t you? Without me.”
“I couldn’t resist.”
“You went alone.” Something new shone in his face, and I read it immediately and with great pleasure – it was admiration, mixed with a flicker of fear.
Mellon: afraid. My pleasure shaded into amazement. I cleared my throat and straightened the pink lace scarf arranged around my neck. “Yes, alone. I’ve been in worse places alone, believe me.”
He nodded. “You brought something back.”
“Yes! Good student, you know your teacher well. But you’ll never guess what. A map. A . . . map!”
He drew his chair closer to mine, leaned in and whispered, “A map? Of what? And wherever did you find it?”
“I didn’t find it, I made it. And it’s a map of the world beyond the garden wall.”
He drew back with a cry of pain, leaned in and grabbed my shoulders. He gave me a little shake, caught himself doing it, and then almost crushed me in a fierce, all-enveloping hug.
Now there was a reaction I’d never have expected to inspire out of Jonathan Mellon. And here’s the strangest thing: I welcomed that hug. Lost myself in it, in fact. And lost and safe in his arms, I considered what a freaking miracle that sense of safety represented.
“You jumped over the wall!” he murmured against the top of my head. I could feel him swallowing hard. “I can’t believe I didn’t lose you.”
“Of course not. I have the world’s best sense of direction. And if I know how to do anything, it’s to come back no matter what.”
I gently disentangled myself from Mellon’s embrace, took out the folded-up square of paper I kept in the back pocket of my jeans. Unlike him, I took pains to keep my work neat, and the graph paper had a sketched pathway and careful notes covering both sides.
I leaned in and waved the paper. “Look, the walled garden is in the centre.”
I took in the sight of his quick, neat features as he pored over my drawings. While he was distracted, I stole a close-up view of my strange and beautiful new friend’s face. And in that moment, tracing the line of his lips and his jaw with my gaze, I realized I could love this man.
It was crazy, classic-Mireya-crazy. But it also made a certain immutable sense. Because I had never known a man like Mellon, one who quietly moved mountains and revealed worlds without saying a word. One who realized that words are jewels, that if you can work magic, there’s no need to brag about it.
He poked me gently in the shoulder. “You’re daydreaming again. Go ahead.”
I smiled up at him, and he wrapped an arm protectively around my shoulder and rubbed at his jaw with his other hand. I watched him take the map and study it, and a slow realization came to a rolling boil in my mind:
He didn’t know about any of this. All he knew personally was the garden itself – he had never gone over the top. And that knowledge put the fear into me for the first time.
