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Maeve’s shoulders sag. “In that case, I’m sorry, Will. Some addictions are beyond my scope.”
“Why?” The intensity of the question heats the space between us. Maeve sits up straighter, her eyebrows drawing together. “I mean, he needs help. I’m willing to pay anything.”
Maeve twists my mother’s ring on her finger. She cocks her head to the side to study me. “Why did your jaw clench just there? When you mentioned payment?”
“It didn’t.”
“You have a problem with me accepting payment for the services I provide?”
“No, I—”
“Do you have a problem when Annette charges for coffee?”
“She doesn’t claim—”
“Doctors charge for medicine. Sometimes the cures work, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they harm. My teas are no different.”
Maeve’s cavalier attitude to the idea of her teas doing harm makes my entire body clench. “You’re not a doctor.”
“The truth,” she says, continuing, either oblivious to or unbothered by my reaction, “is that I’d prefer to do what I do for free, but that’s simply not realistic. I need money to eat and care for my plants. Our society is structured in a way that I’m forced to buy into the capitalist system, even if I don’t want to. And don’t get me started on how undervalued women are, especially women who provide the kind of services I provide. We’re more likely to be burned at the stake than offered union benefits.
“Let me show you something.” Maeve stands abruptly and heads out the door. She grabs a box of gummy bears on her way out.
She leads me to her infamous tree near the front of her property. Thick roots grip the soil and disappear beneath the ground. Its wide branches extend out from the trunk, almost as if the tree were cupping something at the heart. Hundreds of names mark the tree—some carved so long ago, they’ve blackened. Hope’s name is there, freshly carved, as are Bailey’s and Ashley’s. And my mother’s.
“Each of the names on this tree belongs to someone who came to me with a wound. A heartbreak, a loss, a devastation, and they needed help, the same way they would for a broken arm. I gave them that help. That’s worth something, and every person with a name on that tree knows it.”
Ashley said Maeve had carried this tree from Tucson. I knew then it was impossible. Now, I’m sure.
“I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“You didn’t. I won’t force you to trust me, Will. But if you change your mind, I’ll be here waiting.”
From the corner of my eye, I catch sight of Hope working in the garden with a set of pruning shears. Following instructions. Completely in Maeve’s thrall.
“I have something for you, while you decide,” Maeve says. Her extended hand tears my attention away from Hope.
“What’s this?” I say, taking the small flowerpot and smooth, blue rock—identical to the one I gave Hope at Adventure Land—that Maeve seemed to produce from thin air.
“The rock is a token from me for your father. For the next time you go to Adventure Land. The flower is a blanchefleur. You might know it as the hundred-leaved rose,” she says. “It’ll help you find the place you’re supposed to be.”
“How?” The single word is soaked in disbelief, and Maeve’s resulting smile is a thing of feline glee.
“It only starts growing once you’ve found home. As long as you care for it, that is.”
21
HOPE
It was stupid to get my hopes up. Of course, the locket wasn’t waiting for me at the local jewelry store. Of course, the owners—who’ve known me my whole life—would have called me years ago to tell me they had something of Brandon’s for pickup. Of course, they’d be offended I’d think otherwise.
I had known all of that. Why had I suddenly convinced myself otherwise? Why had I let myself start to hope?
The glares of the jewelry-store owner and his wife heat the back of my neck long after I turn the corner into the heart of downtown Kingsette, where the bars that dominate the street have set up outdoor tables and music pours out of open windows. It’s not quite as charming as Newport, but a close second, according to the pamphlets in Kingsette’s visitor center.
A few women sitting at a table across the street yell out my name, and I force a smile. Another table full of off-duty nurses calls out too. I wave and pretend not to hear the invitation to join them.
In another life I might have gone over. In another life, I would have had a drink and gossiped and compared notes about marriage and mortgages while killing time before meeting Tessa to hear a potential band for Noah’s party. That other life was easy, stable. It made sense.
