We clinked our lemonades together and drank.
“You’re a good gardener,” he said, finishing his drink. “Best we’ve had in years. I’m gonna hate it when you go. Unless you don’t go.”
“I can’t stay,” I said, and started picking flowers fromaround me. The shed had a pretty bad weed problem, and the weeds all turned into wildflowers over the summer, so there was a lot to pick. I rarely came out this way to work, so I busied myself with it.
He gave me a thoughtful look. “Why not? What’s New York got going for you that we don’t?”
It wasn’t New York that I was going to go back to. It was the end of an era for me. The throwing in of a towel. I’d come up to Lilymoor just to put some distance between me and the life I had while Harrie was alive. My boss, Jeff, thought that Lilymoor could shake off my gloom and revitalize me, like a plant at a new window.
But … I thought it had done the opposite.
At that new window, I realized that I was never going to be happy back in New York. I didn’t have any friends in the city, and I didn’t really like that I couldn’t see the stars, and my apartment waswaytoo expensive, and my roommate never did the dishes, and—
It was a good life. I had a job I liked and a boss who was kind and coworkers who weren’t terrible.
But it was a life that felt half formed. A dream unfinished. A sentence without a period. Like the Someday Garden. I just did it because I wasn’t sure what else to do, and it was something that I liked, and something I was good at.
It was a good life.
But I didn’t want it to be mine anymore.
And that felt frightening to realize, because maybe that meant that staying was the right choice. But what if it wasn’t? How could I be sure? I didn’t know, and so sticking to the plan I’d had all summer—working at Lilymoor and then returningto the city to finally admit that I still wanted to quit—felt like the safest course.
“My contract’s only for the summer,” I reminded him, though I didn’t sound very convincing anymore. With a handful of flowers, I went back to sit down in my chair and started twining the stems together. “And if Eula’s retiring and the future of Lilymoor is in the air . . . seems kind of a bad time to decide to stay.”
“Or,” he posed, “it’s the best time to try somethin’ new.”
I laughed. “I like your optimism.”
“Thank you. My ma did, too.” He motioned to the crown. “Hey, how do you do that?”
I braided another stem into the circlet. “My friend Harrie taught me when we were in garden club together. I would always get so sad that we had to pick flowers—that it was healthy for the plant when we picked its flowers—so she taught me how to make crowns.” I finished and showed it to him. The crown was flimsy, more of a circlet that would fall out in half an hour, twined with violets and dandelions and forget-me-nots. “Wanna learn?”
“Hell yeah! Lemme go pick some,” he added, and a few minutes later he came back with an armful of wildflowers. “Do it slow and I’ll follow.”
So I did.
“You take two, and you loop one over the other, and through the middle . . .” I instructed, and he followed me, and then it was just the simple repetition of that over and over again, tucking the stems into each other’s loops, until it was long enough for a crown. Wykofski caught on quickly and saidthat sticking his tongue out of the side of his mouth helped him concentrate better. I laughed. “Harrie used to do that, too.”
“She sounds like a cool person,” he replied. “She going to come visit you while you’re here?”
“No.” I looped a violet around a dandelion and then picked up a pretty pink bee balm. “She died last year.”
It was getting easier to say the more I said it, which felt odd. It should have been hard each time—but the sting of loss was quieter, too. Not that it would ever go away, but it was a pain that was becoming a part of me.
I wondered if I’d ever get used to it.
I hoped not.
“Ah,” he replied, nodding. “I came up here after my ma died. She always wanted to go to Maine but never got the chance. I was only supposed to be here for, like, a year or something, but you know”—he shrugged—“I found I liked it.VacationlandbecameForeverland.”
I grinned at that. “What made you want to stay?”
“That’s easy. It felt like home.” Then he held up his tiny crown. “Aha! I did it! Damnit, come here—wait, Damnit, Damnit, down girl—ah!” He jumped back as the goose, newly anointed with her crown, gave a biting hiss. Then she spread out her wings.
Reggie rolled over on the grass with a grunt.
“Run!” Wykofski cried. “I provoked the beast! I’ll get you your swing by the afternoon!”
