Page 48 of A Secret In The Garden

I glanced around for my mom but didn’t find her in the room.

My dad looked so worn and old, nothing like the image I’d held in my head for years now. Even the little crackle of familiarity in his eyes looked different and off. I didn’t know this man—I barely knew him when he was here.

“Jasper.” Sowerby’s voice broke the silence, laden with a mixture of welcome and warning. “Your father… He has apparently come to take back ownership of his estate.”

“My estate,” I corrected.

Eliza took a subtle step back, her body language speaking volumes—professional yet uncomfortable, caught in the crossfire of a family drama she didn’t fully understand. Her botany had brought her here, and her friendship—or whatever it was with me—kept her from leaving, but now she seemed desperate to fade away into the background.

My father took a hesitant step toward me. “I saw the papers with you threatening a business colleague. Your mother saw the state of the conservatory, the addition,” he said, his voice rough with emotion. “Are you just going to ignore the legacy of what we built because you’re bitter? We’ll be damned if we let you ruin what we built because you can’t handle it. Has it finally gotten to you? Is that what’s happened? What’s in the addition? It’s illegal, isn’t it?”

The legacy? The legacy that you poisoned when you took out half the fucking town? What the fuck was he talking about? A bitter laugh threatened to escape me. Legacy. What a cruel word, considering how easily they had turned away and abandoned it and me.

“What do you want?” The words left my mouth sharp-edged and cold, like the blades he used to make. I watched as they struck him. They seemed to slide into his features, carving lines of pain into his already-weathered face.

Sowerby shifted uncomfortably; his loyalty was once to the stranger in front of us. Sowerby had been more of a father to me than this man ever was.

Darius Blackwood remained still—watching, waiting, hope and fear dancing in his eyes. I wondered what his next move was going to be. I let him marinate in the discomfort, refusing to offer anything but hate.

Eliza’s presence was both a comfort and a constraint. She was a buffer, preventing the full eruption of decades of my carefully suppressed anger. She watched our interaction, her curious mind likely analyzing the emotional landscape as meticulously as she did the beds of the gardens. She knew enough about family conflict, and I both hated and was grateful she was now in this with me.

The presence of the manor and the conservatory—my mother’s beloved glass sanctuary. I hadn’t even wanted to touch it, but now its renovation wasn’t just about restoring a physical space; it was about confronting the fractured pieces of our family’s history, about moving on from being forgotten and left to die. Eliza was clearing the slate of desertion my mother had left behind. Of course they would come in and ruin something else.

My father took a step, his hand half extended—a gesture of reconciliation or a plea for understanding, I couldn’t tell, and I most definitely didn’t care. “Jasper, I⁠—”

“Don’t,” I interrupted sharply, my voice slicing through the charged atmosphere. “Just…don’t.” After everything that had happened, he was lucky my hands weren’t around his throat right now.

The manor seemed to hold its breath. Dust motes danced in the streams of failing light, witnesses to this fragile moment.

Outside, the weather took a turn, and the wind began to scream against the windows. Blackwood Manor had always been more than just a house—it was a keeper of stories, of pain, of unresolved tales, and now the authors of the most horrifying ones had returned.

The silence hung thick. Each breath was laden with decades of pain. I watched my father, his frame seemingly diminished by the years, hovering near the window like a stray cat we had cornered. In another situation, I would have felt bad. But I didn’t. I was furious.

“Where is she? Where is Mother?” The question escaped my lips before I could stop it. Her absence was as palpable as the tension that surrounded us.

“It’s illegal weapons, isn’t it? In that addition? I keep tabs on you. I know what you are about,” he said with a haunted look.

“Where’s Mom?” I repeated.

Darius’s hands trembled slightly. “She couldn’t come. Not yet.” His voice cracked, revealing a vulnerability I wished he hadn’t shown. The more I was in his presence, the more I noticed a difference in him—a fragility that suggested something more than just the weight of his past mistakes.

Eliza took a subtle step toward us. It was a welcome distraction. Our connection—electric and unresolved—hummed beneath the surface of family dramatics. I could feel her eyes studying me, watching how I’d navigate this. I wished I knew myself what I was going to do.

“Not yet?” I repeated, my voice dripping with skepticism. “I suppose she’ll just send another tear-streaked letter that I won’t respond to. Tell her to save her fucking tears and leave me alone.”

“She—” my father started.

Sowerby, who had been quietly standing by, suddenly interjected. “Jasper, your father⁠—”

But I cut him off with a sharp gesture. “No, I’d like to hear it from him.” My gaze bore into Darius, challenging him. Darius shifted uncomfortably, his eyes darting between me and the landscape outlined in the window. “The letters…they were attempts to explain. To reconnect.”

I laughed, a harsh, mirthless sound. “Sending letters doesn’t make up for disappearing when I was fifteen. You didn’t even bother leaving me with someone. You just—you just left!” I shouted, having lost all ability to control my temper.

Eliza fidgeted in my peripheral vision. I knew my voice was powerful and intimidating. Her presence seemed to temper my rising anger. I didn’t want to yell with her here. I didn’t want her to see me lose control.

“I know we made mistakes,” Darius said softly. “Unforgivable ones. But we—I couldn’t stay. I couldn’t.” He rubbed his hand over his face and collected himself. “Now, I’m sorry to have to come back in this way, but the estate belongs to me. I don’t want it to fall apart too. You must leave it alone. Blackwood Manor is rightfully mine, and I demand it back. I’d hoped to avoid coming back here, but if I am found out then I am found out—if it means Blackwood Manor remains as it should be. You can all leave peacefully, but the house is ours.”

Something in his tone—a tremor of desperation, a hint of underlying panic—caught my attention. This wasn’t an attempt at reconciliation. The fucker only came back to get the manor back. He came to take the only thing he’d left me with.