He turned away, carding his fingers through his hair, a habit I began to realize he did to ground himself, but it didn’t work this time.
“I think maybe you’re afraid of something,” I went on quietly.
He walked away a few feet, as if the distance made my words easier to manage. The rigidness of his shoulders had returned, the tenseness of his body that made him blockier. All sharp corners and edges. I feared I’d overstepped, because he didn’t say anything for a long time, to the point where I was wondering if I should just leave, or if he’d want me to say good-bye as I did. I’d started to go get my shovel to leave when he finally spoke.
“It’s the memories here, mostly. Everywhere I turn, I see someone I could’ve been if I had stayed, but I couldn’t stay. Not after …” He pursed his lips, unable to talk about the fire. “I’ve fucked up so many times, Sophie, and that was the last straw. I ruined the one place that accepted me, and … I refuse to do that again. So the more distance I put between that boy and me, the better off I am. I’ve worked so hard to be someone else. Someone competent and worthy and important. Here I’m just …” He picked at the dirt under his nail. “I’m just that screwup kid again.”
I imagined what that kid looked like. Younger than the teenager in the photo. Messy red hair and a too-wide smile and a zillion freckles and muddy knees. My chest felt tight as I imagined that kid who tried his best. “Maybe that screwup kid isn’t so bad.”
His hands stilled. “Don’t say that,” he whispered.
“Why not?”
“Because I’ve worked too hard to get rid of him.” He stared down at his hands, and the dirt on his fingertips. “He wasn’t any good for anyone.”
That wasn’t true.
I leaned over and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Don’t be so hard on him. He turned into a good man.”
He shot me a look of utter heartbreak. “I’m not a good man, Sophie.” Then he stood and walked away.
At the end of the week, I brought a basket of strawberries, because I remembered what Oliver had told me about how both he and Rus loved them, and after that jarring conversationabout his past, I wanted to make it up to him. I was no closer to finding the door. I’d combed through the Hedges and half the Rose Court, so I knew it had to be somewhere on the eastern side of the estate—like he’d said—but other than that . . .
I wasn’t going to fail. It wasn’t an option.
Rus was in the process of planting the seeds I’d given him, so when I showed up through the door, he came over to meet me. The sun had made the day hot, but in the garden it was still crisp and cool—never changing. The star jasmine, cosmos, and asters that he had planted were already sprouting by the gazebo, and the creeping thyme had started to, in fact, creep along the path in purple swaths. He motioned to the basket with a checkered blanket atop it. “What’s that?”
“Hungry?” I asked, and showed him the strawberries underneath the blanket.
A strange look flickered across his eyes before he schooled his thoughts and said, “Are those fresh?”
“Straight from the vegetable garden. Care for a break?”
“Tempt me even more, why don’t you,” he said in reply.
So we unfurled the checkered blanket and smoothed it out on the floor of the gazebo, the basket of strawberries between us. I wanted to apologize for our conversation last time I was here, though we had both done the very adult thing and had ignored any discomfort, but every time I tried to bring it up again, something stopped me.
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know why he didn’t think he was a good man. I mean, it wasn’t like I couldn’tfind outby myself—I had googled him a few nights ago and came across exactly what I thought I’d find: the digital footprint of a man who had been lured into the world of litigation, someonewho was argumentative and calculating and—well—good at his job.
Verygood, apparently.
His social media was sparse, but the photos that he did post were of vacations to Turks and Caicos, to the Greek isles, to little villas in Spain. I put together that the postcards in Eula’s bedroom seemed to match his travels, and when I went to check my hunch, I was right. He’d sent her postcards from all the different places he’d been. For someone so bent on escaping Lilymoor, he certainly thought of it often.
I had half a mind to message him on socials, but what exactly could I say? That in a few weeks he’d be trapped in a garden he couldn’t escape? Maybe he’d believe it, since he so readily accepted the garden’s magic when I found the journal. But then if he took me at my word and didn’t come to the bicentennial, I wouldn’t ever meet him.
It was a fact I had already turned over in my head a thousand times. My finger had hovered over the message button, and in a secret between me and the kitchen table and the Magic 8 Ball, I swiped away and went to bed.
I told myself he wouldn’t believe a random person’s outlandish story, anyway.
“Oliver said you liked strawberries, so I thought I’d treat you,” I said as Rus sat down on the checkered blanket beside me.
“So …” He picked a strawberry and twirled the stem between his fingers thoughtfully. “HowisOliver?”
“Good. He’s staying until after the bicentennial. Eula said he can go whenever he wants, but I don’t think he wants to.”
“He’s probably hiding out from work.”
I thought about all the times he disappeared into town. “I don’t think so. He just seems to be worried about Eula and wants to be around to help prepare for the bicentennial.”
