My heart skipped. Did she remember, finally? I sat up a little straighter in the rocking chair. “You have?”
“Yes. I’m afraid I felt I was rather dismissive to you about it all. You see, it’s a bit of a sore subject, in my regard. Henry was always working on things, all the way up until he died,” she said, touching her necklace thoughtfully. “So I imagine you probably stumbled upon one of his half-finished projects. He had a lot of them. I’m sure you’ll find even more.”
“Oh. That … certainly explains it, I guess,” I replied, even though the garden hadn’tlookedabandoned for very long. Maybe I was just mistaken. “I’m sorry if I caused you any pain bringing it up—”
She quicky snatched her hand from her necklace. “Oh, of course not, dear! Don’t think anything of it.” She leaned over to pat me on the knee. “But also don’t worry about fixing it up. You havemuchtoo much to worry about, anyway. Though, that reminds me, my lawyer sent over an amended contract for you. It’s back there on the table.” She motioned behind her to a packet on the sideboard flush against the veranda wall. “It now includes some flowery language about my retirement as well as the bicentennial.” She waved her hand in the air. “All this legal nonsense makes my head hurt.”
I pushed myself to my feet, slipping my sun hat back on, and went over to the new contract. There was a pen placed atop a folder, along with—
A stem of lilacs?
I brought the tiny light purple flowers to my nose to smell. Their scent was soft and sweet, like jasmine and almonds combined. Lilacs were the language of old love.Syringa vulgaris, funnily enough. I twirled the stem between my thumb and first finger as I flipped through the amended contract, the changes in bold. They just cited Eula’s retirement and—more interestingly—that if any new work arose I would be paid accordingly. I wasn’t sure what else Icouldbe asked to work on, so I took up the heavy pen and signed at the bottom.
“Did your lawyer go out and pick this from the garden?” I asked, coming back around with the stem of lilacs. “I thought our lilacs had already bloomed.”
And now were, tragically, in the damp part of the Wild-flower Garden.
“Oh no, he sent those,” she replied. “I asked him what would fit well in a bouquet, but I really don’t think purple is the mood.” Why would she ask a lawyer about flowers? I decided not to keep up with Eula’s reasoning. “But speaking of lilacs,” she went on, “Wykofski told me you’ve been having issues with the wildflowers, too? Something about a leaky pipe?”
I let myself think for a moment longer, twirling the lilac between my fingers. “I’m not sure what it is, actually. Wykofski said there weren’t any pipes under that part of the Wild-flower Garden, so I have no idea what’s making the beds so soggy. Has it always been like that?”
“No, it hasn’t,” she replied severely. “It only started flooding recently, and never when it rained.”
“That’s what I was going to ask,” I muttered thoughtfully. “There could be a spring below the beds, but when I dug, it didn’t look like the water was comingup. Sort ofover. Seeping from the wall.”
“The stone wall that faces the Willow Grove?” When I nodded, her eyes narrowed. “Ah.”
“Is there anything between that wall and the Grove?”
“No,” she replied, “there’s nothing there.”
“Well, it’s a puzzle. I should probably get to solving it—andthe vines, before they choke out the entire hedge maze,” I added.
She shook her head. “I fear I’ve put too much pressure on you.”
“I don’t mind. There’s always an explanation. I just have to find it,” I said, pushing myself to my feet. My heart rate had gone back to normal, and I needed to at least get some of my daily chores done before I tried to solve the impossible. I adjusted my sun hat to block the light and said I’d see her later.
“Good luck, dear!” she called after me as I left down the stairs, dodging the construction of a chair lift, because if Eula was anything, she was impossible to keep contained. And if stairs couldn’t stop her, I wouldn’t let a few vines and a flooded flower bed stop me, either.
That afternoon, I twirled the lilac between my fingers as I headed back toward the Wildflower Garden. Sunlight spilled yellows and oranges across the blooms like a wave of paint, warm and bright. The wind shifted, so strong it attempted topluck my sun hat off. It creaked and cracked through the branches, whispering softly. There was the smell of brine and fish in the air, along with the heavy scent of rain. A summer storm must have been creeping up the coast, though I didn’t hear any thunder yet.
The year Harrie and I visited, she mused about what it would be like to be here when a storm rolled in. She said it was probably beautiful and terrifying. Everywhere I turned, there were memories of her. In the Hedges, in the Spiral, in the Lily Walk. We’d only been here for a single afternoon, but the memories were so vivid, they seemed to have multiplied over the years.
At first, coming here, I thought it would be awful to have so much of Harrie everywhere I turned, but at least it didn’t remind me of the Harrie from the hospital. Pale, and weak, and tired, hooked up to IVs and heart monitors and oxygen masks. Long before the end, we knew the chemo wasn’t going to work fast enough to save her, even as she tried anyway.
“Asaltshaker,” she had announced. “I’ll put myself in a saltshaker so you can season the earth with my corpse when I’m gone.”
“Harrie!” I’d admonished in a hushed tone, glancing around the room, though the door was closed so the nurses couldn’t hear. “You can’t say that!”
“Why not? It’s my body,” she rasped, “my choice.”
I rolled my eyes. “The flowers would die. I’d have to lower the pH and sodium levels. It’d be a pain.”
She smiled, though it was tired. She had become so, so tired over the last few weeks. “There’s that plant biology degree coming out.”
“Ha.”
“Hmm. If not a saltshaker, then what?” she went on, lounging back in her bed. She was all skin and bones by then, her hair short and fuzzy. I missed her pigtail braids. “What would you want me in? A locket? A bracelet?”
