Or be so sure, so achingly sure, when it did.
There was the softest hint of a scar that wrapped up his forearm. It was barely noticeable unless I knew where to look. I reached up and traced it, and he gave a shiver.
“I hadn’t noticed this before,” I muttered.
He tugged down his sleeve below the elbow again. “It’s nothing,” he said. I watched him quietly as he rocked me back and forth in the swing. Finally, he admitted, “It’s a reminder from the fire. A souvenir.”
My fingers slid slowly over the faint ridges of the burn. “You tried to save the greenhouse?”
“Of course. And the scar reminds me that I failed. A lot of things here at Lilymoor remind me of that.” It was why he never wanted to come back—a feeling I understood deep in my bones, and one that if he had met me a few months ago, I might have agreed with. “You are the first thing in a long time here that doesn’t remind me of my mistakes.” Then he knelt to me and took my hands, threading my fingers through his. Mine were so small in comparison, but pressed together they had similar stories, similar calluses, similar fingernails clipped down with dirt underneath them. “You helped me remember that I didn’t use to hate this place. I used to love it. I used to think I could spend the rest of my life here at Lilymoor.”
My heart felt full at the words, my chest aching so deeply, I wasn’t sure I even breathed. “And now?”
“I keep dreaming of what you’d look like in every light—in morning light, and evening light, and in darkness. I want to know how the moonlight plays across your face at night, and Iwant to see you in winter and spring and autumn. All of it. Not just some perfect summer evening. I want to see them all,” he said, squeezing my hands tightly. “Would you leave with me instead?”
My throat stung. I swallowed thickly, concentrating on our entwined fingers. I already knew, deep down, that he wouldn’t stay. That once he left this garden, he would never come back again. I replied, “Maybe if you stay at Lilymoor, you can learn to love it all again. I’ve seen you come to life tending to this garden, sitting in its magic. Youlovethis place, I know you do—”
“And places can never love you back, sunshine,” he interrupted, letting go of my hands. My fingers suddenly felt chilled from his absence. “If this place is magic, then why didn’t it protect the greenhouse? Why didn’t it protect my uncle?Me?” He shook his head, his lips pursed together so tightly they almost looked white. “Sure, this place is magic, but if all it does is trap you, I’d rather it leave me out of its schemes. All of them. I’m sure Oliver told you about the party, but did he tell you that while it was his idea, the bonfire was mine? Eula had warned us not to start any fires. It’d been a pretty dry summer, all things considered.
“I knew it was a dry summer, too—I’d worked the gardens since school let out. Iknew.All it took was a spark. Oliver and I saw it almost immediately. I told him to go inside and call 911, and I went to try to put it out.” He pulled himself back to his feet with the help of the swing. The branch above creaked. “After, I decided to take the blame. We had beer and weed and shit, and I was sort of the troublemaker in the family already so … it made sense. Since I was a minor, I had to do somecommunity service and got a civil violation on my permanent record. Eula paid the fines and told me that it wasn’t my fault.” He pursed his lips. “I don’t hate this place because of the fire, Sophie. I hate this place because it reminds me of the person I can’t be anymore,” he said, and looked away. He felt the burn scar on his forearm, as if it grounded him. “And I wouldn’t want to be. The fire gave me perspective. Purpose.”
I thought about that kid, soot stained and sitting in the back of the ambulance with a burn on his arm, looking up at the smoke as it blended into the night sky. “But you ran away from the one place where you could be yourself,” I said.
“And maybe it was a good thing I did leave. I changed my entire life after the fire. I studied hard. I worked. Ibecamesomeone. I’m a partner at one of the biggest law firms in Portland, Sophie. I’m important. Do you think that kid twenty years ago could’ve done that? No.” He shook his head. “No, he didn’t see past the garden wall. He didn’t want to.”
“But that kid was happy.”
“I’mhappy.”
“Are you?” I challenged. “Really?”
He shook his head. “You just don’t understand.”
“No, I think I do,” I corrected, thinking back on these last few months—the last year, really—since Harrie died. Always walking a tightrope of caring, but nottoomuch. Always balancing on this paper-thin margin of contentment and apathy. Loneliness was a comfort. Yes, I knew this sort ofhappinesswell. “But you deserve real happiness, Cyrus.”
“I don’t think I do.”
“Then you’re wrong. We deserve good lives even if we don’t think we’ve earned them. And . . . maybe a good lifedoesn’t look the way you always thought it would. You’re different now, but so is this place. Gardens change. They’re supposed to. There are seasons to it all. New eras, new flowers, new storms that threaten to uproot it all. That’s why I love them so much, because if a garden can change and still be beautiful, why can’t we? You made one mistake as a kid. You didn’t make a lifetime of them.” I stood, abandoning the swing, and closed the distance between us. I didn’t want him to mistake my meaning. He cast an unsure glance my way, and my heart squeezed because even if he didn’t quite believe me yet, he trust me enough to try. I took his face in my hands, my thumbs featherlight across his lips. “I think you can forgive yourself, Cyrus. You said that places can’t love you, but they can’t hold grudges, either. Only people do. And the only person keeping this one alive is you.”
He took my hands in his and kissed my palms, leaning into my touch. “Then how come I’m stuck here in this garden if it doesn’t hold a grudge, sunshine?”
That was a very good question. “I mean normal gardens. I don’t really know about magical ones.”
“So itcouldhold a grudge, just to clarify,” he replied, and there was a coy glimmer in his eyes.
“What if the garden just missed you,” I wondered aloud, “so it wants to keep you?”
“It’d be a fool, then, to keep me and let you go.”
“I would trade,” I admitted, “if I could.”
It was so poetically unjust that the one place that felt like a balm to me ended up stinging him in ways I couldn’t imagine. But I also knew how hard it was to let go of a sadness that kept you grounded like an anchor. After all, who was I if Ididn’t mourn Harrie? What purpose did I have—what was the point of my sadness—if I didn’t grieve every second of my life? I didn’t know, but here in this garden, I saw glimmers of her, just as I saw glimmers of Cyrus without his scars. I wondered if they’d fade more in time, if they’d disappear in the sunset, if they’d ripple like ridges in the morning sun. I wanted to know. I wanted to see him in every season, in every year—
And I was going to find that door. The real one.
Even if I had to dig up every boxwood and knock down every wall—
I would.
