“Whywereyou out?” I asked, and he grumbled something under his breath, massaging the bridge of his nose as if it could somehow rub away the hangover behind his eyes. “I mean, not that you can’t be. It’s just …”
“You’ve never seen me drunk before?”
“I’ve never seenanyonethat drunk before. You were practically sloshing,” I said, and he grumbled a laugh.
“Istillfeel sloshy.”
I poured myself a cup of coffee and came to sit down at the kitchen table with him. “Is everything okay?”
He was quiet for a long moment, massaging his hangover, before he opened his eyes and turned his bloodshot gaze to me. “I don’t remember.”
“That’s a mood. Are you sure you don’t want some—oh, there you go.” I watched him rise up out of his chair and lurch toward the hall bathroom. He barely made it before he got sick. What onearthhad prompted him to get that drunk?
I found out that afternoon when I stumbled on a RSVP response on the foyer table. It had been ripped open, as if in a hurry. I could only imagine that it was Oliver, and that after reading the RSVP, he’d grabbed his keys from the bowl he always put them in and left for town.
So while it hadn’t been my fault that he’d almost stripped to One Direction last night, I felt guilty all the same.
Because Cyrus Beck had responded.
I already knew he was coming, so I’d forgotten about his incoming RSVP altogether, but this just seemed to solidify the importance of finding that garden. A simple, clean check mark in the “Will Attend” box. Now there was a certain weight to it all. Hewascoming. The train was barreling down the track.
And I had to do my part to divert it.
There were footsteps up on the second floor, so I quickly tucked the RSVP back into the envelope and returned it to the table, but it was just Juliette coming down the stairs.
I said, “You know, I was thinking—that band last night? At the Wharf?”
“Wykofski’s band?”
I nodded. “What about them for the party?”
Juliette paused halfway down the stairs. “I . . . hadn’t thought about it. They’re not, like, conventional.”
“Neither is Lilymoor,” I pointed out.
“And itwouldsave me the trouble of finding a new quartet . . .” she mused, then turned around on the stairs again to go back up. “I’ll go ask Eula! Sunny, you’re a genius!”
No, if I were a genius, I’d know how to get Rus out of the garden. But as it was, I feared I was only making things worse.
At one point, it stopped raining just long enough for me to take a lap around the property before the bottom fell out again. I could’ve darted for the main house, but everything I’d read about running in the rain said that you got more wet the faster you went, so I didn’t. Besides, I was the kind of weirdo who liked walking in the rain. The water was cool on my skin and slipped off my short hair.
Wykofski was sitting in a rocking chair on the veranda by the time I dragged my waterlogged self up the steps.
“Sunny! You’re a bit wet,” he said happily in greeting. “Feels good, eh?”
“My shoes don’t,” I replied, and sat in the rocking chair beside him. I peeled off my socks before my toes got pruny.
“Eh. I love it when it rains.” The old wooden chair creaked as he rocked in it back and forth. “I like the smell of it—it’s fresh, like nature’s laundry.”
I guessed that was one way to describe it. “It does smell good,” I admitted. I had hoped that the break in the clouds meant sunlight, but all I could see in the distance was dreary gray. We wouldn’t get more sunlight today.
He rocked a few more times, beginning to hum theMoonlight Sonata.
I turned to him with a thoughtful look. “You’ve been here awhile, right?”
“About eight years,” he confirmed.
I couldn’t believe I was asking this, but of all the people who worked here, I was sure Wykofski would be bothered the least by the question. “I know you weren’t around all those years ago, but did you ever stumble on a secret project of Henry’s? Maybe a garden he was working on before he died?”
