Chapter 28
I didn’t go home.
I didn’t think.
I just walked until my feet ached, until my phone buzzed with low battery, until the weight in my chest felt too heavy to carry alone.
And then—I called the rideshare.
I didn’t even glance at the driver when he pulled up. Just climbed into the back seat and gave him the address I’d known by heart for as long as I can remember. The house beside the nursery. The one with the pale green shutters and a porch swing that never stopped creaking, even in winter.
I couldn’t breathe right until we crossed the bridge. The water shimmered beneath us, the marsh stretching wide and empty on either side. I used to think nothing bad could happen on Johns Island. That it was some kind of sacred, sealed-off place where time slowed and families stayed whole.
But that was a lie.
One of many I’d told myself .
The air shifted the second we turned onto the gravel drive. The tires crunched over the stones, the trees casting long shadows across the road. Magnolias bloomed near the fence line, and the old welcome sign leaned just slightly to the left.
My chest squeezed.
It was the same.
But something felt wrong.
The car rolled to a stop, and I climbed out before the driver could even say goodbye.
The house loomed in front of me—weathered and soft around the edges.
I half-expected my mother to be on the porch, pruning a potted fern or wiping her hands on an apron.
But the swing was still. The steps were empty.
I walked up anyway.
The front door was unlocked.
“Mom?” I called. “Dad?”
A pause.
Then the sound of movement—soft, slow footsteps, followed by my mother’s voice. “Zara?”
She appeared at the end of the hallway, wiping her hands on a dish towel. Her face lit up with surprise that quickly melted into concern.
“What are you doing here, honey?”
I opened my mouth. Closed it again. The lump in my throat made it hard to speak.
“I just needed to see you,” I finally said. “Can I stay for a bit?”
Her eyes searched mine, and something flickered across her face—worry, maybe, or fear—but she nodded. “Of course. You don’t even have to ask.”
She pulled me into a hug, and I sank into her arms like I was twelve again, scraped up and scared after falling off my bike. She smelled like lavender and something warm from the oven.
I held on longer than I meant to.
When she pulled back, her eyes softened. “You want some tea?”
“Sure.”
She padded back toward the kitchen, and I followed, my steps dragging.
The house was quiet, but not peaceful. It felt brittle, like if I touched the wrong thing, it might all collapse.
We sat at the table—me gripping a mug of chamomile, her pretending not to study me too hard.
“Is it him?” she finally asked.
I didn’t answer right away. “It’s everything.”
She waited, patient and still, like she always had when I came home too wound up to speak.
“I learned something,” I said. “Something about his past. Something I didn’t want to know.”
Her expression didn’t change. But the way she exhaled told me she understood.
“You still want him?”
I looked down into my tea. “I don’t think I can.”
She reached across the table and laid a hand over mine. I swallowed, hard.
We sat like that for a while, the silence stretching long between us, until I caught a glimpse of something out the window.
Something that made my blood run cold.
I stood.
Walked to the back door.
Pushed it open.
The nursery stretched out behind the house, just like always—rows of potted trees, hanging baskets, wide gravel aisles under a canopy of shade cloth. But the closer I looked, the more I saw.
Weeds.
Dead patches of grass.
Cracked irrigation lines.
The trees were overgrown. Some of them sagged in their pots, roots breaking through the plastic.
I hadn’t been out back the last time I was here.
Mom had ushered me to the porch where her friends waited, all smiles and small talk.
I hadn’t thought much of it at the time—just figured she was being hospitable.
But now, standing at the edge of the deck, I realized it had been intentional.
Strategic. Mom hadn’t wanted me to see this.
My feet carried me down the steps before I could stop them. I walked past the old Adirondack chairs, past the hydrangea beds, down the center aisle of the nursery I’d grown up in.
What I saw made my chest cave in.
Whole sections were abandoned. Empty pots stacked like tombstones. The soil dry and pale.
This wasn’t neglect.
It was something worse.
It was surrender.
“Mom?” I called, turning back toward the house. My voice came out sharper than I meant.
She met me halfway. “Zara?—”
“What’s going on?”
She opened her mouth. Closed it again.
“Tell me the truth,” I said. “Don’t lie to me. Not about this.”
Her shoulders dropped.
Her face crumpled—not all at once, but in slow, shattering pieces.
Like she’d been holding herself together, and now it was all unraveling.
Her mouth opened, but her voice caught in her throat, and she looked away like she couldn’t bear to see my reaction.
I watched her swallow hard, her jaw working to hold something in—pride, shame, maybe both.
When she finally spoke, the words came out so quietly, so broken, I almost didn’t catch them.
“We’re losing it,” she said softly. “The nursery. The house. Everything.”
It hit me like a gut punch.
“How?”
“It started during the pandemic. Fewer contracts. Less traffic. We thought we could recover, but the loans—” She shook her head. “They just kept stacking up. And now? It’s too late.”
My vision blurred. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
She flinched. “Because you had enough on your plate. Your career was taking off. You were doing so well. We didn’t want to weigh you down.”
“You should have told me,” I whispered.
“We thought we could fix it. We thought we’d turn it around before you noticed.”
I looked around at the place that had raised me. The place I used to run through barefoot, hiding in the fig trees and talking to the lilies like they were friends.
“Does Dad know I’m here?”
She hesitated. “He’s in the greenhouse.”
I nodded once and walked that way, my heart pounding in my throat.
The gravel path to the greenhouse crunched underfoot, loud in the quiet. The sky had started to shift—gray clouds rolling in from the coast, heavy with the promise of rain. My fingers brushed against a cluster of dying ferns as I passed, brittle and brown, and I felt something fracture inside me.
I hadn’t cried yet. Not when I’d watched those videos of Ronan. Not when I saw the woman he’d once called Lady broken on the floor.
But this? This was different.
This was my parents. My family. The roots of everything I’d ever known.
I reached the greenhouse door and pushed it open.
Heat met me first. Then the dense, earthy smell of soil and water and life. Or what used to be life.
My father stood at the back of the space, bent over a propagation table. His hands were deep in a tray of soil, wrists streaked with dirt, his mouth set in a line I recognized too well—tight, focused, hiding everything he didn’t want to say.
He didn’t look up when he spoke.
“You heard.”
“I saw,” I said quietly.
He nodded once, as if that was enough. As if it explained anything.
“It’s bad,” I added.
“Yeah.”
The word hung in the air, brittle and final.
I walked toward him, slowly, taking in the greenhouse I’d once thought of as holy ground. My sanctuary. The place where I first learned what patience looked like. What resilience smelled like. What it meant to nurture something and hope it would bloom.
Rows of seedlings wilted under fluorescent grow lights. The irrigation system let out a weak, irregular hiss. Plastic trays were cracked. Labels smudged. Even the tools—once cleaned with the same reverence some people gave their altars—were rusting on the counter .
I looked at my dad, really looked at him, and for the first time, he seemed old. Not just older. But tired. Smaller. Like he’d been shrinking under the weight of this secret for years.
“You should’ve told me.”
His jaw clenched. “You were finally happy. Writing. Living your own life. We didn’t want to take that from you.”
“But it’s mine, too. This place. It’s part of me.”
He glanced at the withering hibiscus near the corner, its leaves yellowed and curling. “It used to be.”
That broke something in me. A sharp crack, right down the center.
I remembered running barefoot through these aisles with my fingers trailing the leaves. Sitting in the soil beside him while he taught me how to graft apple trees. Listening to my mother hum to the orchids like they were children in need of lullabies.
This nursery wasn’t just a business.
It was identity. Legacy. Home.
“I used to brag about you,” I said. “To everyone. My friends, my professors, my readers. I told them my parents were the kind of people who made things grow. Who built something with their hands and their hearts and never gave up.”
His mouth twitched. “We didn’t give up.”
“Then what happened?”
His shoulders sagged. “The world changed. We couldn’t keep up. Bigger companies undercut our contracts. Climate shifts ruined entire seasons. And when the banks came calling, there was nothing left to offer except the land.”
My breath caught. “You’re selling?”
“We don’t have a choice. ”
I stumbled back a step, like the words had shoved me.
He went quiet again, his hands bracing against the edge of the table like he needed it to hold him upright.
And I—I couldn’t process it.
The nursery had always been more than a patch of soil and a few greenhouses.
It had been the heart of Johns Island. The place where everyone came for seedlings and advice and gossip.
My parents were pillars. Anchors. They donated trees to schools.
Hosted workshops for kids. Kept tabs on every elder who lived alone and made sure their plants survived the frost.
They weren’t just business owners.
They were woven into the fabric of this place.
And now … they were unraveling.
“You taught me everything,” I whispered. “How to nurture something. How to stand firm when everything’s stacked against you. How to believe in what you build.”
My dad looked up finally, and his eyes were glassy.
“And now you know what it feels like to lose it.”
Devastation rippled through me.
I sat on an overturned soil bin, my legs too shaky to hold. The air felt thick. Too warm. Like the grief was taking up all the oxygen.
“What happens next?” I asked.
“Either we sell quick or give it back to the bank. Hope they don’t bulldoze it.”
My heart fractured all over again. “You think someone will turn it into condos?”
“One developer already has plans drawn up.”
I pressed my hands to my mouth to keep the sound in. It didn’t work. A sob clawed out anyway.
He walked over and crouched in front of me, his weathered hands resting on my knees .
“I’m sorry, baby girl. We didn’t want this. We fought like hell.”
“I know,” I said, and I meant it. “I just—I thought we’d have this place forever.”
“We thought that, too.”
I stayed there for a long while, knees drawn up, trying to breathe through the weight in my chest.
Because it wasn’t just the loss of land or buildings or money.
It was the loss of everything I believed was unshakable.
If this could fall … what couldn’t?
My dad stood eventually, his hands going back to the soil. A reflex. A habit. One he couldn’t quit even as everything he’d built slipped through his fingers.
I watched him for a while before slipping out the greenhouse door and heading back toward the house.
Mom was on the porch, her eyes rimmed in red, a cup of tea forgotten in her hands.
I sat beside her and took her hand. Neither of us spoke.
There were no words big enough for grief like this.
Just silence. And air thick with endings.
Eventually, she laid her head on my shoulder. “I’m so proud of you, Zara.”
My throat ached. “I’m proud of you, too.”
Even now. Especially now.
Because my parents had spent their lives building something beautiful with their bare hands. And maybe it was ending—but that didn’t make it any less worthy.
I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to this place.