At least until the satellites aligned and I got twenty text messages at once, which was exactly what happened as I made my way back toward the roses. Okay, not twenty, but it felt like it.
Hey, it’s Sanchez.
I hope you’re doing well, Soph. I know the last year has been really difficult for all of us. I’ve wanted to reach outbut it’s sort of felt pointless. You went through it. I went through it. But I think in the end Harriett was happy you were there. I’m glad you were.
My feet slowed to a stop. Sanchez. Harriett’s fiancé. We didn’t really see eye to eye on a lot of things—anything, actually. He was too loud, and he didn’t like that I was too blunt and told him he was too loud. It was Harrie who kept us from killing each other, and when she was gone we realized Harrie was the only one who kept us friends, too. Harrie loved his too-loud laugh, and the way he hyped up every party he walked into. He was either always running as fast as he could go, or he was stagnant; there were no other modes for Sanchez Belo.
And knowing Sanchez, there was only one reason why he would be reaching out now, almost a year since she died. I didn’t want to read the rest, but I did anyway, dread growing in my stomach like rotten roots.
I know this is sudden, but I wanted you to hear it from me first before you saw it on socials. I found someone. She makes me deliriously happy—something I never thought I’d feel again. We’re engaged, and we’re telling everyone tomorrow. I know it’s fast, but sometimes that’s how life happens.
I have to move on.
I hope you find a way to move on, too.
Harriett would want that.
I stared at the text messages, the words blurring.
No, he was wrong. Harrie would want to live. She’d want a husband and a white picket fence and kids. She’d want a bestselling novel and her name in the Romance section between Heather Fawcett and Carley Fortune. And she’d want to keep her promise.
Thatis what she would have wanted.
But she wasn’t here to want it anymore.
And her fiancé of five years got engaged to someone else in less than eleven months.
I should’ve just turned my phone off and gotten back to work, but instead I opened up socials and pulled up his Instagram feed. I hadn’t looked at it since a few weeks after the funeral, mostly because he just kept posting. Photos of their dogs. Photos of the apartment he moved out of a few months ago. Photos of travels and new food andlife …and just like all those months ago, I couldn’t understand how he could just …continue. Keep the same heading, the same course—forward.
I didn’t have to look very far into his feed to find photos of the woman in question. She and Sanchez looked happy in all the places you expect someone to be happy—at dinners, on vacations, during birthday parties and holidays. His entire feed was a life, moving on.
Ifthiswas moving on—burrowing yourself so far into a stranger you were no longer yourself—then I didn’t want to.
I refused.
A soft summer wind rifled through the wildflowers, carrying with it the scent of sweetness and earth—
There was a creak of rusted hinges. At first, I didn’t payany attention, staring at the latest photo of Sanchez and his new partner, both smiling during a dimly lit concert. She looked a little like Harriett, dark hair and wide eyes, but that was where the similarities ended.
I felt sick to my stomach as I swiped back over to his text messages, my feet carrying me toward the Rose Court by themselves.
How do you know what Harrie would have wanted?I wanted to text, wishing more than anything that I could ask that one question—
That was all I needed. Just one.
How do you know that moving on was what she’d want? How do you know what she would think? How do you know she wouldn’t hate being left behind? How do you do it?
How do I?
The wind pulled harder this time, picking through the wildflowers as I walked past them to the Rose Court, spinning their petals into the sharp goldening sky. There was a rattle, like a breeze against a door—
A door?
I glanced up from my phone, whirling around to the sound. And there, against the soft heather-gray stone wall, was the blue door. It sat so perfectly in the sunlight as if screamingI’m here. Don’t ignore me.
As if I could.
Somehow, the mystery of the garden felt easier to untangle than the texts in my hand, so I deleted them and pocketed my phone. Then I took a deep breath to sturdy myself and crossed the wildflowers to go inside.
