Chapter 22 komorebi #2
“You’re standing in it,” he replied.
Oh. I looked back at the overgrown greenhouse, the charred bones of the building, the scars of the fire on the brick wall.
He kicked a bit of glass on the ground. It was skittering into the tall grass.
“The summer after Uncle Henry died, Eula was out of town for the weekend and Rus and I wanted to throw a party. You know, a real rager.” He said it with the kind of wry sarcasm of someone who very much knew the word was ironically outdated.
“So we made a bonfire in the Grove. Invited everyone we knew in town. There was a girl Rus wanted to impress, you know.”
“And you?”
“I was dating a guy back in Portland. And anyway, we were dumbass teenagers trying to act cool. It’d been a dry summer, and we didn’t take any precautions.
A spark got away from us and immediately torched the greenhouse.
It would have been fine, but Uncle Henry had a workshop in the back, too, and it caught fire with everything else.
All his journals, his sketches for the gardens, his someday plans …
” He rubbed at the back of his neck, looking more and more uncomfortable standing here. “And it all went up in flames.
“Rus tried to save the greenhouse. He was burned pretty badly but could’ve gotten himself killed.
He took the blame for it all, too. He insisted on it.
And it wasn’t fair. He’d tried to do something while I just stood there looking dumbfounded.
I could’ve done something. I should have done something.
But I didn’t, and then he left and hasn’t been back to Lilymoor since. ”
From everything I knew about Rus, that surprised me. He didn’t seem like the kind of person to give up on this place, especially after that moment in the garden yesterday, when he talked about his time with Henry. He really loved Lilymoor.
“But Eula doesn’t seem like the kind of person to hold a grudge . . .”
He shook his head. “No, but the rest of our family did. His grandma hated that he’d torched Uncle Henry’s greenhouse.
I don’t think she ever learned the truth, and his parents don’t know, and mine certainly don’t.
They think he corralled me into it.” He rolled his eyes.
“I think I hate that the most. That I let him take the blame, and I promised not to tell, so even if I wanted to set the record straight, he’d hate me anyway.
So what would it matter if I set everyone straight or not? ”
“You were kids. It doesn’t make the fire okay but you were young and learning and trying to figure out the world and dealing with grief even if you didn’t know the right outlet—it’s human.
We all make mistakes.” I returned to where Oliver still stood and gently took his hands.
It was forward, and bold, but whenever I felt lost in my own feelings, it was nice to have something that grounded me—a hand, perhaps.
In response, he threaded his fingers through mine, too.
I squeezed them tightly. “That’s how we grow. ”
He looked down at our conjoined hands and rubbed his thumb over my thumb knuckle. “You’re pretty wise for a gardener.”
“Mmh, gardeners are pretty wise,” I replied.
He huffed a laugh. “You know what the worst part is?”
“Weeding?”
He laughed. “I miss him. Rus and I were friends for a few years after the fire. We kept in touch. But then we had a fight, and by the time I realized that I missed him, we’d changed.
People don’t tell you that when you miss your best friend, it’s like …
” He let go, and waved his hands, searching for the right words.
“Like losing an eye,” I said.
“Yeah! Like losing an eye. The world looks a little different after.”
A little different? No, it looked only half there, like an entire part of the world was just …
gone. Colorless—as if the dream finally ended, and I woke up in black-and-white.
My hands tightened into fists, my fingernails embedding into my palms. Something to concentrate on beside the eye that wasn’t there.
He gave me a pondering look. “I guess you know, then, too?”
“I can imagine,” I lied. It was easier than telling him the truth, and then getting that grievous look, and hearing I’m sorry for your loss over and over and over again. I’d rather not. “You could always just tell him you miss him.”
He bit back a grin. “I appreciate how no-nonsense you are.”
“I just don’t believe in wasting time.” I shrugged. “Life is too short.”
“Grudges are too long,” he replied. “No, if I ever see him again, the first thing I’m going to do is punch him in the face.”
“When,” I corrected before I could stop myself, and then gave a start. “I’m sorry. That was rude. I just—I don’t like if. I don’t like the uncertainty of it. The world needs less of that. Besides,” I added, trying to cover myself, “it’ll be cathartic when you punch him in the face.”
He barked a laugh. “You’re right. He’s not dead, just an asshole.
” His annoyance at his ex–best friend was endearing in a way.
There wasn’t rage there—true bridge-burning rage—but anger and frustration and longing.
A bridge on fire, but one that could be mended with enough time and words.
Too bad it was a job for both parties, and it sounded like this Cyrus wasn’t the kind of guy to ever look back. “But I’ll never be that brave.”
“I think you will,” I replied. “You came back to Lilymoor. That was hard.”
The ghost of a smile crossed his mouth. “Lilymoor is always hard to come back to.”
“It is,” I said, my voice breaking a little, remembering the pinkie promise a decade ago. Promise? Promise. “But you’re here anyway. That’s brave.”
“You think so?” He raised his caramel eyes to mine, searching them.
“I do, Oliver.”
He brought his hand up and ran his thumb gently across my cheek, tracing the healing scratch. I closed my eyes and let myself wade into the moment, turning my face into his hand. His thumb rubbed gently against my cheek. “You’re brave, too.”
“I haven’t done anything,” I whispered in reply, looking at him again, studying the way the soft afternoon light played across his face.
We were so close, the world so quiet, that it felt like a wash of watercolors and sounds around us, while we were painted in sharp relief.
There was only me, and him, and the gentle way he traced my bottom lip with his thumb. It sent a shiver down my spine.
“I think you have. I think there’s more to you than you let on.”
“Nothing good,” I supplied.
“I think you’re wrong.” He was so close that if he dropped his hand from my mouth, he could kiss me.
His nose brushed against mine. I closed my eyes, trying to keep my heart steady, trying to keep the burn in my belly under control.
“You undersell yourself. I’ve made calls.
I know you’re talented. In line to be the next department head of the New York Botanical Garden, recommendations a mile long.
So why are you all the way up here, really? ”
Because the world back home felt like a world Harriett should still be in, and every day I went to work, every day I sat at my desk and planned for next season’s flowers, was another day removed from the last time I saw her.
Because my old apartment felt like a moment stuck in time.
Because the city felt lonelier than it ever had before.
Because I felt lost and the things I thought I wanted weren’t fulfilling anymore.
And because I’d made a promise to a best friend who no longer existed.
That was the heaviest reason of all.
“I just needed a change in scenery,” I replied, imagining myself as a plant at a different window.
“I’m glad you chose here.” His words were a breath against my lips.
His nose brushed against mine, his fingers capturing my chin to guide me closer still.
The garden was quiet, and my heart was so loud I swore he could hear it.
“The garden is better with you in it. It won’t trap you. Not like it has me. It wouldn’t dare.”
A place could trap you just as surely as a person could. And it didn’t matter how far you went, or how often you skipped their favorite movie on the TV or skimmed their favorite meal on a menu or hid their favorite book from your shelves—none of it mattered.
If I had to choose between getting stuck in a place or in my head, I wouldn’t know which was worse. Places could haunt you just as surely as people. Memories could trap you just as fast as the ghost of your best friend’s laugh.
I think, though, I would choose a place.
At least a place gave me somewhere to sit with my longing.
“Well, that’s because I’m contracted to work,” I supplied, tearing myself away from him, and he cleared his throat in response. The intimate moment was abandoned, and while I tried not to, I saw the disappointment in his face. I felt it, too.
You should’ve played along, I scolded myself as I followed Oliver. You ruined it.
“When Rus and I saw the fire, he scaled the wall in the Willow Grove and tried to put it out. There’s a spigot over here that he used.
Maybe that’s what’s leaking?” Oliver mused, picking his way through the weeds and wildflowers that grew despite it all.
He didn’t glance back to make sure I was following, as if trying to distance himself from the moment we almost had.
Bitterness crawled up my throat, but I swallowed it back down.
I let him search for the spigot while I ventured deeper into the greenhouse. The ground grew softer. It smelled different here, too, heavy with moss and dampness.
“I think we found the culprit,” announced Oliver, motioning to a rusted spigot and the damp ground around it. “Strange that it only started leaking through the wall now.”
“Maybe it busted after Wykofski started installing those sprinklers in the front?” I wondered aloud.
“Hell if I know. Ugh, it’s so wet,” he added with a scowl, his white tennis shoes now caked with mud.
He waded back to dry land and followed the path I’d made through the weeds to the back of the greenhouse.
“I’m sure Wykofski can turn off the water to this side of the garden and that should fix it. ”
At the far end of the burnt building, there was a small room where no weeds or flowers grew. There was a charred desk still standing, and the remnants of a wooden chair, and broken pots and pencils. When I asked Oliver about it, he told me it was where Henry kept his workshop.
“It used to be covered with paintings and schematics. He papered the wall with them,” Oliver said, coming to join me as I sifted through what was left, which wasn’t much. It didn’t look like anyone had visited at all since the fire to see what could be salvaged.
If they had, I’m sure they would’ve looked under the charred table. I’m sure they would’ve swept aside the debris and found a burnt leather journal. I’m sure they would’ve picked it up and dusted it off.
The journal was sixteen years faded, waterlogged and with blackened edges, but it was still intact. Even the string used to wrap it together hadn’t burned through, still tied slapdash, as if its owner would be back shortly to finish whatever he was working on.
Oliver came up to me, curious. “What did you find?”
“I think …” As I unwrapped the twine and opened the cracked leather journal, my hunch was proven correct.
There were notes. Pages upon pages upon pages, with drawings and empty seed packets shoved inside.
Most of the pages were unreadable, water damaged beyond repair, but a few toward the middle were still legible.
Henry had a sharp, slanted scrawl that would have been hard to read on a good day, but his sketches were lovely.
There were plans for the Rose Court, the Spiral, the greenhouse even—and then as I came to the end, there was a new garden.
The schematic on the page was blurry, almost completely ruined, but I could make out a gazebo, and haphazard flower beds, and a willow—
And above it, written in long and loopy letters, was its name.
The Someday Garden