Chapter 37 saudade
saudade
It was the day before the bicentennial celebration, and I was up before dawn.
I took out the worn brochure with a map of Lilymoor that I’d stolen from Juliette’s desk weeks ago.
Systematically, I’d marked off each area of the gardens where I looked for the door, and in places where the map was slightly off, I double-checked it with the blueprints of the estate so I wasn’t missing another greenhouse-sized area.
I knew I’d covered every inch of the estate and then some.
But as the birds woke shouting, I was out there again, walking the grounds with the precision of a search party.
As the sun dragged itself fully into the sky, I was at my wit’s end.
How could I miss that huge willow tree, even if it was behind a wall?
What if the garden didn’t actually exist, and I’d wasted all this time for nothing?
“It has to be somewhere,” I told myself, marking off the Hedges.
As I made my way back toward the Central Garden, exhausted and prepared to sink onto a bench, movement near the second-story window caught my eye.
At first, I thought it was Eula, but then I caught the top of a blond bob ducking down behind the balcony railing again.
Juliette? What was she doing in her hiding spot?
That couldn’t be good.
Folding up my brochure, I stuck it into my back pocket and decided, for Juliette’s sanity and for mine, to take a break to go see what she was doing up there.
Inside, Yafir and Oliver were looking for her, but I told them I didn’t know where she was and quietly slipped over to the balcony outside Oliver’s window, which was a bold move, considering.
“Juliette?” I called.
She looked at me in alarm and pressed her finger to her lips. “Shh! Close the window!”
I climbed out and shimmied the guest bedroom window closed. “Is there a reason you’re hiding?”
“I’m not hiding,” she replied, busying herself with her phone, sitting on one of the stools. She was most definitely hiding.
“Is it Oliver?”
Her shoulders sagged. “Is it that obvious?”
I didn’t have the energy to lie. “Yes, it definitely is.”
She dropped her phone into her lap with a cringey groan and buried her face in her hands.
I quirked an eyebrow.
“I think I have a crush,” she lamented.
I had figured, but hearing it—well. “On Oliver?”
She burrowed her head into her hands. “It’s bad, Sunny! It’s so bad!”
“It’s definitely not that,” I replied, climbing out the rest of the way to join her. “He’s really good-looking.”
“You think so?”
I nodded.
She hesitated. “But aren’t you and he . . . ?”
I quickly shut that down. “No. I mean, maybe at first, but no. No, nothing is going on between me and Oliver.”
Relief rounded her shoulders. “Oh—oh, good. Because I was worried …” She chewed on her bottom lip. “I mean, well, you’ve been so happy lately and disappearing … and what if you’d been disappearing with Oliver? And so I got it in my head that I again fell for the wrong guy …”
Happy? I guess—the vague panic I was feeling this morning aside—I was happy, now that I thought about it.
I certainly didn’t feel sad, not like I had at the beginning of summer.
I could barely remember what that Sophie looked like in the mirror anymore.
“I am happy,” I replied, “but it’s not because of Oliver.
However …” I added, coming over to sit down beside her, “I think he might not be the worst crush to have. I mean, he’s no Myke with a y, but … ”
She huffed a laugh. “It’s hard to beat Myke with a y.
” And she sat back on her stool and looked out onto the garden, picking at her one broken nail.
It was so rare to see her even the least bit discombobulated.
She must have really had it bad. “Really? Do you think … I mean—is it silly? Am I being silly?”
“No,” I replied, taking her hand and gently squeezing it. “Not at all. I think you two might be good for each other, actually.”
That surprised her. She blinked, eyes wide. “I wouldn’t go that far, Sunny. I just think maybe he’d be good at sex. I haven’t had sex in so long.”
If he was anything like his former best friend … “I fully support you finding out.”
She laughed. “You’re such a bad influence! He’s our employer’s nephew! I can’t do that. It’s, like, an HR nightmare.”
“Jules, only four of us work here—three, really—”
“You count,” she argued.
“Just for the summer,” I reminded her, something I’d been trying not to think about. “And anyway, I think it’s perfectly okay to have a crush on a really hot guy who might just be the nephew of our boss. Dating apps could never.”
She made a face. “I dunno. Like, back in New York, a dating app recommended me my brother once. That was weird.”
“Okay, well, I stand corrected,” I said, suddenly losing much more faith in humanity than I had to begin with.
Her phone buzzed with another email, and she took a deep, steeling breath. “This party is either going to be the best thing I’ve ever planned . . . or a complete disaster. But the only way out is through.”
I repeated it. “The only way out is through. You got this.” I squeezed her hand reassuringly, but I was reminding myself, too.
The only way out is through.
Golden hour came in a sigh of orange, and the door stood where it had the first time I ever found it—in the Hedges. Vines had wrapped their way around the doorframe, heavy with buds ready to bloom. Honeysuckles. As though they had grown through time and space to reach me.
After I left Juliette (and used her balcony as a vantage point for searching), I had scoured every inch of the estate once more, retreading the ground I had for weeks, all the places where I’d climbed over walls, and I’d come up empty.
I wasn’t going to find it. If it even existed.
Which meant there was only one thing left to do.
I just had to keep him from finding the garden in the first place. I couldn’t stop him from coming with the letter—but in person? Maybe I could convince him then.
I had to convince him then.
Coming to that realization was like slowly turning over a heavy stone and seeing how clean it was underneath. Clean . . . and empty.
Because if I succeeded, then the Rus of the garden would never exist. And then maybe none of this ever happened?
I nearly staggered back with the impact of it.
The flowers, the willow, our chats, our kisses.
The way I shared my heart, the way he bared his.
Maybe neither of us would remember, or only I would?
I wasn’t sure which was worse. Because I’d changed this summer in the garden, but imagining being the only one left to hold these memories hit a bruise deep in my heart.
To be alone with the joy and to feel the shape of its loss.
Like with Harrie.
I already knew that if I told him my new plan, he wouldn’t go for it. Knew there was no guarantee, even if I found him again after the bicentennial, that we could find our way to each other the way we had while he was trapped in that garden. That liminal time, it had changed us both too much.
But I was out of options, and out of time.
I won’t tell him, I decided as I reached for the handle, and pushed the old blue door open.
And I stepped into the Someday Garden, knowing it might just be the last time.
The garden, over the last month, had transformed into a beautiful oasis of flowers and clovers and soft willow boughs. It was perhaps beautiful at any part of the day, but Henry had been right to design it for sunset. The orange light of magic hour really made the magic.
Equal parts shade and sunlight shifted across the flowers, native plants mingling in colorful bouquets.
Large stalks of milkweed waved between rays of sunflowers, chicories grew in bursts of violet between Saint-John’s-wort, while hedge maids crawled across the ground between sprigs of wild mint and fireweed.
There were summer lilacs basking in the sun beside black-eyed Susans, buttercups and yarrow and Queen Anne’s lace mingling like a colorful soiree, while goldenrod sprouted in the sunniest spots beside the forget-me-nots and bluebells.
It was a kaleidoscope of colors and flowers, while tireless honeybees with little yellow trousers of pollen skirted from one bud to the next.
Henry had a dream, and now, standing in Rus’s finished version, it was a good one. Eula would love it.
“Rus?” I called, looking at the vibrant flowers and shrubs, the shade of the willow and the soft green of clovers. The far wall had finally bloomed with deep yellow honeysuckles, looking like molten gold spilling onto the grass. I climbed the incline to the willow tree and parted the curtain.
He sat there on the swing, deep in thought. He was comically big for it, his legs splayed out as he gently rocked back and forth.
“Rus?” I repeated, a little louder.
Blinking, he pulled himself back and greeted me with a smile. “Why, hello there, sunshine.” I came up to him and bent to kiss him, so he didn’t have to get up. “I feel like I just saw you.”
“I guess to you, you did,” I replied teasingly, though my heart ached at the gentle rapport. “The garden turned out good, didn’t it?”
He gave an effortless shrug, but he was awful at hiding how proud he was. “Time flies when you’re … wasting away in a garden.”
“I thought the phrase was having fun?”
He tilted his head, his soft dark blue gaze drinking in my face. I’d miss that the most. The cherished way he looked at me, like he wanted to burn me into his memories. “I did have a bit of that, too, I guess, while I’ve been here.”
“A bit?” I argued, pretending to be affronted, trying to swallow the ache in my chest.
“A bit,” he echoed. “The company helped.”
“She did?”
“I couldn’t have done it without her,” he replied, and rose up just enough to capture my lips in a chaste, quick kiss. I thought for a moment I’d fooled him, until he said, “You seem off. What’s wrong?”