Chapter 29
Sawyer
If Morgan in the nursery was something to behold, Morgan in the botanical garden is overwhelming.
While we walk every section of the Huntington Gardens, her face lights up in a million ways. I wish I could memorize every look of hers—her sunflower smile, her lily solemnity in front of the large ponds, her orchid eagerness. I could stay in each moment forever without ever seeing enough.
Naturally, Morgan looks like she feels the same for the plant life surrounding us. We continue slowly from section to section, Morgan considering every garden’s composition while I follow, content to observe everything with my horticulturally inexperienced eye.
Even though it’s early in the morning, it’s getting hot in Pasadena’s inland hills.
The sun shines directly overhead, uninterrupted by oceanic fog.
The garden isn’t crowded yet, though. Peaceful silence greets us when we enter the desert garden, where our path entwines with stout cacti and large rocks.
While it’s pleasant enough, the squat, unshowy plants have nothing on the dramatic rose garden I saw on the website. Honestly, I’m kind of underwhelmed.
Not Morgan. Her eyes light up with cactus cheer.
I have to smile. “I suppose you work a lot with desert flora here,” I venture.
“I try to,” she replies immediately. “They’re great for the environment, of course. And look at them!”
I do. I really do. I squint with my whole soul, searching for hidden spiny wonder.
Nope. Still…cacti.
“They’re beautiful,” Morgan gushes, her eyes roving over the desert display.
I follow her gaze, trying to see the unimposing cacti the way my companion does. It’s her gift, no doubt. I make sculptures out of clay. Morgan makes spectacles out of succulents.
Morgan seems to notice my struggle to muster enthusiasm for the low-lying desert foliage. She raises an undaunted eyebrow. “Not impressed?”
“It’s lovely, of course,” I reply diligently.
Morgan rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling when she elbows me as we continue down the path. “Lovely,” she repeats, “but…?”
“They’re so prickly,” I say, struggling to explain myself. “So isolated.” They look oddly lonely. I remember the massive cactus at the nursery weeks ago, statuesque in solitude. A proud lone giant.
The cacti here look no different. Even surrounded by others like them, they seem somehow standoffish. The garden is so sparse, so empty of lushness or life, I feel suddenly sad in a way I can’t explain.
Morgan grins. “Well, sure,” she replies. “It’s how they survive the impossible. It doesn’t mean they’re not still beautiful.”
Now her eyes find mine, her gaze indicative, and I realize she doesn’t just mean the cactus.
In fact, I’m very lucky Morgan Lane likes prickly, lonely living things. I’m lucky Morgan sees a garden in a desert, a home in a haunted house. A life in a wasteland of loss.
I decide I need to see things the way she does. If I did, maybe…maybe my life would look more like the Harrisons’. More like community, companionship, and even hope.
If I can believe in ghosts, I can believe in the power of Morgan’s gold-dusted gaze to remake the world.
“Look,” she says.
Morgan wanders to where she’s pointing, where a flower springs from the dusty landscape. The pink-hemmed petals look innocently joyful, like they know nothing of the harsh climate surrounding them.
“Even the desert has roses,” she comments. “We’re here at a good time for them, too.”
If I’m going to see the world the way Morgan does, I need to practice. I need to start sculpting my gaze the way I shaped hundreds, maybe thousands of misshapen pots in school workshops, honing my craft.
The desert surrounding me is strong, I decide. Not dangerous or isolated. It survived the unsurvivable, with pockets of unexpected color if you look closely for them.
I kneel down next to Morgan. Next to the desert rose. “You’re very clever,” I concede.
Morgan’s lips remind me of the petals. Defiantly happy. She shrugs. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she replies. But when she stands, leaving the flower flourishing in the desert, she winks.
We dust off our knees and continue our unhurried progress, eventually exiting the desert garden.
The mouth of the path returns us to the main road, where the shaggy limbs of enormous trees reach for the sun.
Only their gentle rustle fills the receding morning.
“So, if I’m a cactus,” I say, challenging Morgan, “what are you?”
When she laughs, delighted, my stomach swoops.
I feel like I’m seeing colors I forgot light could make.
“That’s tough,” she says, contemplating the question seriously.
“I love the jacaranda trees that bloom here. Anything that has seasons, I guess. Maybe something that blooms twice a year, like a bougainvillea.”
I startle. “There’s bougainvillea on my back patio,” I say. Of course, Morgan knows this. One cannot overlook the relentless high-winding plant, not to mention the endless sea of papery pink petals it deposits on my flagstones.
“You might have noticed I haven’t torn it out,” she replies.
“It’s beautiful,” I say earnestly. “Though it does make a mess.”
The moment I hear the words exit my mouth, I know how they sound.
Morgan scoffs, pretending she’s indignant. “I call you a beautiful cactus and I’m a messy bougainvillea. I see how it is.”
I only grin. Morgan doesn’t seem to mind being the messy bougainvillea of the two of us. Her pace picks up on our way to the next garden, unhidden excitement in her steps. I follow, and comfortable silence settles over us.
The gardens are wonderfully serene, uninterrupted by conversation or cars honking or city noise.
The soundtrack is entirely natural, with soft undercurrents of stream water rippling under the hush of wind-rustled foliage.
When Morgan points out favorite plants to me, her voice seems part of the collage.
“We had those outside when I lived in Florida,” she says, pointing up. “I would go to work way early in the morning, waitressing in Miami. The sunlight would pass through them right in front of my car.”
The tall, overhanging trees she’s pointing to sway in the Pasadena sun like they’re corroborating her story. Like they remember, too.
Morgan points out more pieces of her past while we walk.
The yuccas, she says, remind her of where she most recently lived, in Phoenix.
Every weekend she would go hiking, except when the weather was perilously hot, which was often.
Instead, she would “hike” to the ice cream place she lived near.
Spiny yuccas stood in the planters of the strip mall where she enjoyed mint chocolate chip waffle cones.
The rose garden reminds Morgan of the flower shop where she worked her first job in high school. The carnations of elementary school science, where she would color their petals by watering them with dye.
I start to understand the human kaleidoscope Morgan is. The garden of memory she cultivates effortlessly. She may have moved many times, but she’s never left those pieces of herself behind.
In fact, with everything Morgan shows me, I start to understand why she moves so much. Morgan isn’t just running, even if she thinks she is. No, her lifestyle isn’t simply because she fears commitment. It’s because she loves change.
She sees the beauty in change. In growth. Change is vital to gardening, her passion. The rose garden we passed hasn’t bloomed yet, but if we were to return here later in the year, we could stand where we do now and see something completely different.
Contemplating the inherent reality of nature, I realize I just considered what would happen if we returned here. Not I.
How’s that for change?
Morgan leads us into the heart of the Huntington Gardens, where huge trees literally reach their hanging foliage to the ground, ensconcing their trunks in rounded canopies of seclusion.
If one loves gardening like Morgan does, I reason, one must love change. It’s a welcome way to live, I think. Learning to love change, when change is everywhere, uniting every living thing. Only death ever stays the same forever.
Morgan slows under the trees’ concealing cover. Their draped leaves surround us on every side, enclosing us in peaceful shade. Right when Morgan looks up, meeting my eyes, the wind blows gently through, rustling the leaves, sending stray petals from outside dancing to our feet.
It feels…paranormal.
When some of the petals catch in Morgan’s hair, she laughs that same dauntless, silver-sunshine laugh. She sweeps her hand through her chestnut locks, picking for petals with mediocre success.
Undeniably drawn to her, I step closer. I reach up tenderly.
Morgan’s breathing stills. Her eyes hold my gaze while I pluck each rose petal. Her lips open in imitation of their shape, her cheeks matching their cream-pink hue.
My heart pounds painfully in my chest. Change is coming. I feel it throughout my whole body. My first kiss with Morgan was confused, impulsive, grief-racked.
It wasn’t perfect, which means it wasn’t enough.
I lean in, cradling Morgan’s head in my hands, perfectly positioned from where my fingers roamed her hair. Now they caress her pinkening skin.
Morgan holds my stare. Her mouth slants up.
When my lips meet hers, she gasps. I think I do the same. Every moment feels like passion in bloom, like something once concealed underground now unfolding into gorgeous color. I’m swept up in the beauty of change—the surreal sweetness of kissing this woman who feels like life herself.
For just one moment, I let it leave me weightless.