Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Lila
" L ook, they still grow here." I point to a patch of bluebells nestled against the old oak tree. The morning dew sparkles on their delicate petals, making them look like something from a fairy tale. "Remember how we used to pick these?"
Graham crouches beside me, his fingers gentle as he touches a bloom. "You'd weave them into crowns. Drove your grandmother crazy, taking all her best flowers."
"She never really minded." I start gathering blooms, choosing the strongest stems. The festival display needs to last several days. "She pretended to scold me because she thought you were a bad influence."
"Wasn't I?" There's a hint of his old grin, the one that used to make my teenage heart race. Still does, if I'm being honest.
"You were the one heading to baseball practice while I was stealing flowers." The memory rises, sharp and sweet. "I'd leave them in your gym bag. Did you ever actually find them all?"
His laugh is soft. "Coach Turner used to give me hell about the petals falling out of my mitt."
We work in companionable silence for a while, the rising sun warming our shoulders. A meadowlark calls from somewhere nearby, its morning song achingly familiar.
"I missed this," I say finally, the words slipping out before I can catch them. "After you left. I'd come up here sometimes, make flower crowns, pretend..." I swallow hard. "It's silly."
"It's not silly." Graham's voice is rough. He sets down his handful of flowers, turns to face me. "Li, I'm sorry. Not just for leaving, but for how I left. For not calling, not writing..."
"You were chasing your dreams." I focus on arranging the flowers in my basket, needing something to do with my hands. "Baseball was everything to you."
"Not everything." He reaches over, touches my wrist gently until I look at him. "You were the first person I wanted to call when I made the minor leagues. And the first person I couldn't face calling when I blew out my shoulder six months later."
The pain in his voice makes my chest tight. "Graham..."
"I was ashamed. Twenty-two years old and already a has-been. Ended up working for Janet's father—my ex-wife's dad—in his landscaping business because I had no backup plan." He runs a hand through his silver-streaked hair. "By then, it felt like too much time had passed. You were married, building your life here..."
"While you were building yours somewhere else." I try to keep the old hurt from my voice, but it creeps in anyway.
A bee bumbles past, drawn to the flowers in my basket. We both watch it, letting the moment stretch.
"You know what I remember most?" Graham asks suddenly. "The day you got your acceptance letter to that fancy horticultural program in Seattle. You were so excited, had it all planned out."
"That was a lifetime ago." I start gathering more flowers, needing to move. "Dreams change."
"You stayed for your grandmother."
"She needed me." I straighten up, meeting his eyes. "Some of us choose to stay when people need us."
The words hang between us, heavier than I meant them to be. Graham flinches like I've struck him.
"Your mom was already gone," I say more softly. "I know why you had to leave, Graham. I understood even then. I just wish you'd let me be there for you. Through all of it."
He's quiet for so long I think he won't respond. "I wish I had too." He picks up a bluebell, twirls it between his fingers. "I used to imagine running into you somewhere. Some random city, both of us older, wiser. I had whole conversations planned out in my head."
"And now here we are." I gesture at the meadow around us. "Right back where we started."
"Not quite where we started." He tucks the bluebell behind my ear, his fingers barely brushing my temple. "We're different people now."
"Are we?" I touch the flower, my skin tingling where his hand had been. "Sometimes I wonder."
The meadowlark calls again, closer now. Graham picks up his share of the wildflowers, careful not to crush them. "You still want to make the world more beautiful," he says. "And I'm still following you around, carrying your flowers."
The simple truth of it makes my eyes sting.
I'm reorganizing the shop's small library of gardening books when it falls out. It’s a folded piece of notebook paper, edges soft with age. My heart skips before I even open it, because I recognize the careful way it was folded, like origami. Graham always did have patient hands.
Li, it starts, and I have to sit down on the wooden stool behind the counter.
I know we said we'd study for Baker's history test tonight, but meet me at our spot instead? Sunset. I have something important to tell you.
-G
P.S. You're prettier than any flower in your grandmother's garden. Even the roses are jealous.
"Oh my." Hazel's voice makes me jump. I hadn't heard the bell over the door. "That looks like something worth keeping."
I try to fold the note back up, but my fingers are trembling. "An old note. It's nothing."
"Mmhmm." Hazel sets her festival planning binder on the counter and peers at me over her reading glasses. "And that nothing has you looking like you've seen a ghost."
"Not a ghost." I smooth the paper, remembering that night. How the sunset had painted the sky the color of wild peaches, how Graham had promised we'd always be together, how entirely I had believed him. "Just the past."
"Ah." Hazel pulls up the other stool, the one customers sit on while I wrap their bouquets. "Would this have anything to do with a certain silver-haired landscaper who's been turning our community garden into something out of a magazine?"
Heat creeps into my cheeks. "The garden is coming along nicely."
"That's not what I asked, dear." She reaches over and squeezes my hand. "I've seen the way you watch him when you think no one's looking."
"I don't—" But the protest dies on my lips because Hazel's known me since I was born. She probably knew I was falling for Graham before I did, back in high school. "It's complicated."
"Love usually is." She picks up the note, reading it with a soft smile. "He always did have a way with words when it came to you. Even if he couldn't say them out loud half the time."
I think of this morning in the meadow, the gentle way he tucked that bluebell behind my ear. "He's different now. More open, maybe."
"Time has a way of teaching us what matters." Hazel hands the note back. "The question is, what are you going to do about it?"
"Nothing." I tuck the note into my apron pocket. "I can't go through that again. When he left—" My voice catches.
"When he left, you were both children trying to be adults." She opens her binder, but her eyes stay on me. "Now you're adults who sometimes forget it's okay to hope like children do."
"What if he leaves again?"
"What if he doesn't?" She pulls out the festival schedule, all business now. "What if this time, he's exactly where he wants to be?"
I touch my pocket where the note rests, thinking of the way Graham looked this morning, surrounded by wildflowers, silver in his hair catching the sun. How his hands still move with that same careful patience when he's working in the garden. How he remembered about the coral bells.
"Now then," Hazel says, mercifully changing the subject. "About the opening ceremony. I was thinking we could set up the main display right where Graham's putting in that new stone path..."
I let her words wash over me, making appropriate sounds of agreement. But part of my mind is still in that meadow at sunset, believing in forever with my whole heart.
The note crinkles in my pocket when I shift, and I wonder if maybe Hazel's right. Maybe it's time to stop letting the past predict the future. Maybe it's time to hope again.
But first, we have a festival to plan.