I guess that would have been a good enough reason to leave Lilymoor and never look back. “I can see why you’d miss him.”
“Sometimes,” she replied, “but I make do by chatting on the phone. He’s busy, after all. In fact, I just spoke with him yesterday.”
Yesterday?He said he didn’t have any service in the garden. “You’re sure?”
“Of course, dear,” she replied, baffled. “I’m old and senile, but I’m notthatsenile. You know … I really do think he might come to the party.” She reached over to the side table and took up her cup of tea. It’d been steeping so long, the water looked amber. “I hope he does, at least.”
Except he was already here in the gardens. This was getting very confusing. I had thought at first that Oliver was mistaken, but it seemed as though he wasn’t, and that Eulawasin contact with Cyrus often. Then who was the Cyrus in the garden? They seemed very much like the same person, but no one could be in two places at once.
She took her tea bag out and laid it on her saucer. “Speakingof the bicentennial, have you found an answer to where those vines are coming from yet? Or the problem area in the wildflowers?”
“Well, I know they’re honeysuckles.”
Eula sighed. “I feared as much. There’s a lot of those around the property. That’s just Lilymoor for you.”
Sure, like the voice of your truest love on the wind, and doors that moved. Maybe the vines had roots in the secret garden, too.
All nonsense trapped in a single place.
I must have looked as frustrated as I felt, because Eula went on, “I’m sorry I can’t be of more help, dear. Henry was the one who understood the garden, and by extension Rus. They were the ones who went out and played in the dirt for hours on end. Lilymoor showed her secrets to them, and no one else.” She glanced out of the window at the gardens, a pensive look crossing her face. “Once, when Henry and I first bought Lilymoor and I was trying to trim the overgrown hedge maze, I got lost for a moment. And then there was Henry’s voice in the distance. I followed it until I got out. After that, I put arrows in the maze, and then the statues, which you know about, right?”
“Follow the gazes,” I replied.
Her eyes twinkled. “Ah, yes, you must have seen that in the documentary. That was Rus, spilling a family secret.”
She then leaned forward. “But you want to know the best part about that story? When I finally got out of the maze, Henry had no idea what I was talking about. And then years later, he poked fun at me for getting lost in the hedge maze, whenI’dspent the whole day in Portland shopping with my sister!”
“Was he mistaken?”
“He swore he wasn’t.” She shrugged again. “When I told Henry that I’d only gotten lost in the hedges that one timeyears before, he just laughed. He said we must’ve both heard the voice of our truest love on the wind.Magic.” Eula said the word wistfully, because to her magic was something good. Something hopeful.
She imagined that I’d feel the same thrill, the same longing for a world that wasn’t so cut-and-dried.
But my hands tightened into fists, my tongue tasting the sourness of it all. I didn’t believe in magic—I couldn’t—because how was I supposed to exist in a world where magic was real, and Harriett no longer was? But there was really no other explanation for the secret garden, either.
And that was the sort of truth that made me hate Lilymoor just for a moment, just long enough to excuse myself from Eula’s bedroom before I said something I regretted, and return the watering can to the kitchen. I took a deep, steadying breath by the sink. Exhaled.
At least I had figured out one thing: the reason no one was worried about Cyrus was because Cyrus Beck wasnotcurrently missing.
It seemed like he wasn’t the only one running into closed doors.
When I arrived at the Willow Grove, because of Wykofski’s maintenance of the field, it was simply an overgrown lawn in need of a good mow, an eviction notice to the voles currently running amok, and some fertilizer. The grove was framed by a dozen tall weeping willows, moss hanging from their boughs. It was a beautiful, dreamy place. On the far left side of the grove was a soft heather-gray stone wall, marred with firedamage, though ivy had covered much of it in the last sixteen years.
There were a few vole mounds, but Wykofski had said he’d get to that.
From my pocket, my phone began to vibrate. I took it out and, seeing it was Mom, answered it. “Made it to the beach?”
“Sproouuuut!” she singsonged. In the background was a chorus of my name. Evidently she had absolutely made it to the beach house somewhere on the coast of North Carolina—Vienna? Venice? Something like that—with her and Eddie’s vacation friends. Mom and I never took vacations when I was a kid. We moved so often, she said that our life was just one big vacation anyway.
I failed to see how. Especially the year and a half we lived in a camper.
Mom and I caught up as I walked the length of the Willow Grove, taking note of all the things I had to repair or tend to before we could open the area to the public. Mom was more interested in the bicentennial party of it all and decided that I was in over my head. I hated to admit to myself that she might’ve been right.
“Fivehundredguests?” she said. “Sophie, have you even looked at this Willow Grave—”
“Grove.”
“—yet?”
