Chapter 18 psithurism
psithurism
Oliver became a staple of Lilymoor, fitting in so seamlessly I couldn’t really imagine the month before he moved into the second-floor corner bedroom, and ever since I accidentally turned him down for dinner, I’d started running into him at the most inopportune times—as if the house just wanted to torment me by reminding me exactly what I’d said no to.
And kept saying no to. Because I was only here for another month.
I didn’t want to get involved, not even superficially.
Not even with someone as charming and kind as Oliver.
I hadn’t had a guy be so interested in me in .
. . years. And I wasn’t quite sure how to handle it.
To make matters worse, he was, frankly, everywhere: in the kitchen getting morning coffee in his threadbare sweat-pants, and en route from the bathroom to his room in nothing more than a towel and too many abs, and on the veranda while arguing with someone over the phone.
“I don’t care if he’s not returning my calls, I’m going to leave a thousand more voicemails until his inbox is full, and then I’m going to find wherever he is through the GPS on his phone and—oh, Sophie,” he said, noticing me on the top steps of the veranda, eyes wide.
He took his cell phone from his ear and covered the receiver with his hand. “Erm. Hello.”
“I was just heading up to Eula’s room,” I said, explaining why I was there, at the most terrible moment to be walking through the veranda with a watering can.
It was Friday, and while I had accidentally eavesdropped quite a few times throughout the week, since he always took his calls on the veranda, this time he sounded a way I hadn’t heard before.
Over the last few days I’d gotten to know Oliver a little better—threadbare sweatpants, too many abs, and sunny disposition.
Maybe someone from work? Honestly, aside from restoring old houses, I didn’t really know what that entailed, and I’d run into his sculpted core too many times (once, which was plenty because obviously they left an impression) to just come out and ask. “I didn’t mean to interrupt you.”
“You’d never,” he replied with another one of his winks, causing me to blush from my toes all the way up to my scalp.
I quickly fled the veranda, watering can in tow, as he returned to his conversation, muttering something sharp and heated into his phone.
In her bedroom, Eula was glaring at the clock on the wall.
She was sitting in her favorite wingback chair, a side table pulled up with a pile of papers on it regarding the bicentennial, though they were all forgotten in her war against the clock.
She narrowed her eyes at it, arms crossed over her chest.
“Morning, Eula,” I greeted her as I slipped inside. “Just here to water the—”
“What time does the mail come?” she asked.
I went over to water her snake plant. “Um, about eleven?”
“It’s late, then,” she declared matter-of-factly, but then her shoulders rounded and she tore her eyes away from it. “Do you think people who RSVP’d will actually show up?”
So that was what she was worried about. I moved on to the pothos on the bookshelf. “Isn’t that what RSVP’ing is for?”
Eula waved her hand dismissively. “Yes, yes, but do you think they’ll actually come? I mean, it’s the end of summer and people do have their own lives.” She frowned. “Perhaps I did go overboard …”
“I think people will show up,” I replied. “I know I would, even if I hadn’t been offered this job. Lilymoor is special to a lot of people.”
She pursed her mouth, as if she didn’t quite want to trust me, so I finished tending to her plants.
She’d moved the picture of her, Henry, and her nephews to her desk.
Oliver and Rus both looked so young in the photo, and Rus had a sort of sly troublemaker grin that I couldn’t even begin to imagine on the man in the garden.
What had happened, I wondered, in the seventeen years to make him lose it entirely?
At least Oliver still had that bright white smile, perfectly symmetrical, though it looked more earnest in the photo. In the years since, he’d practiced it enough for it to become a tool.
One nephew used his charm, the other used his apathy, but somehow, it felt like they both worked toward the same end.
“Oh, speaking of invites,” Eula went on, taking off her glasses, “I had to resend a few, including one to my nephew, because his hadn’t arrived! Can you believe that?”
I froze. He probably never received his because it was still torn in two on the kitchen table in the cottage. “Oh yeah,” I said, trying to sound super normal about it, “the mail is . . . tricky.” Especially when it was never sent. “Did he, um, reply?”
From the garden?
She perked up at the question. “Oh yes, he told me he’s thinking about it!”
“He . . . is?”
She noticed my confusion and quickly amended, “It’s still a long shot if he comes, but I love the idea.
I haven’t seen him in years, though he’s tried to get me to do that funny little video call thing once.
I hate it. He’s brilliant, really, just like Ollie.
Though Rus is a bit more meticulous and grounded, and he’s very particular when it comes to his work. ”
Meticulous and grounded were two words for pedantic and cold, but I digressed.
Once Eula started talking about her nephews, it was like she couldn’t stop, animated in a way I hadn’t seen since she first rode home in the fire truck. Her eyes glittered when she talked about them in the same way Mom’s did when she talked about me. Eula really loved her nephews. Very, very much.
It made the fact that neither of them visited very often more tragic.
“Ollie’s a talented architect, though he’d never admit it, and Cyrus is a big fancy lawyer.
In fact, he’s the one who does your contracts,” she informed me proudly, which was a surprise, but then again, I never really paid attention to all the fine print aside from what pertained to me.
Maybe I should have. “Though I was as confused as anyone else when he went into the career. I imagined he’d do something .
. . more exciting. Less structured. But people surprise you.
Well, he was always a persnickety child, but in fact, he used to be wilder than Ollie!
” She laughed, remembering. It made me mourn the loss of that child to whatever man he was now.
“He and Henry were made from the same cloth, I think. They used to get into all sorts of trouble together out in that garden. When Henry passed, I think it really affected Rus, though he’d never admit it now. ”
“Meticulous and grounded,” I repeated.
She grinned. “Exactly. But some of us remember, and he hates that.”
I guess that would have been a good enough reason to leave Lilymoor and never look back. “I can see why you’d miss him.”
“Sometimes,” she replied, “but I make do by chatting on the phone. He’s busy, after all. In fact, I just spoke with him yesterday.”
Yesterday? He said he didn’t have any service in the garden. “You’re sure?”
“Of course, dear,” she replied, baffled. “I’m old and senile, but I’m not that senile. You know … I really do think he might come to the party.” She reached over to the side table and took up her cup of tea. It’d been steeping so long, the water looked amber. “I hope he does, at least.”
Except he was already here in the gardens.
This was getting very confusing. I had thought at first that Oliver was mistaken, but it seemed as though he wasn’t, and that Eula was in contact with Cyrus often.
Then who was the Cyrus in the garden? They seemed very much like the same person, but no one could be in two places at once.
She took her tea bag out and laid it on her saucer. “Speaking of the bicentennial, have you found an answer to where those vines are coming from yet? Or the problem area in the wildflowers?”
“Well, I know they’re honeysuckles.”
Eula sighed. “I feared as much. There’s a lot of those around the property. That’s just Lilymoor for you.”
Sure, like the voice of your truest love on the wind, and doors that moved. Maybe the vines had roots in the secret garden, too.
All nonsense trapped in a single place.
I must have looked as frustrated as I felt, because Eula went on, “I’m sorry I can’t be of more help, dear.
Henry was the one who understood the garden, and by extension Rus.
They were the ones who went out and played in the dirt for hours on end.
Lilymoor showed her secrets to them, and no one else.
” She glanced out of the window at the gardens, a pensive look crossing her face.
“Once, when Henry and I first bought Lilymoor and I was trying to trim the overgrown hedge maze, I got lost for a moment. And then there was Henry’s voice in the distance.
I followed it until I got out. After that, I put arrows in the maze, and then the statues, which you know about, right? ”
“Follow the gazes,” I replied.
Her eyes twinkled. “Ah, yes, you must have seen that in the documentary. That was Rus, spilling a family secret.”
She then leaned forward. “But you want to know the best part about that story? When I finally got out of the maze, Henry had no idea what I was talking about. And then years later, he poked fun at me for getting lost in the hedge maze, when I’d spent the whole day in Portland shopping with my sister! ”
“Was he mistaken?”
“He swore he wasn’t.” She shrugged again.
“When I told Henry that I’d only gotten lost in the hedges that one time years before, he just laughed.
He said we must’ve both heard the voice of our truest love on the wind.
Magic.” Eula said the word wistfully, because to her magic was something good. Something hopeful.
She imagined that I’d feel the same thrill, the same longing for a world that wasn’t so cut-and-dried.