Chapter 44 gökotta
gokotta
Maybe Harriett was the goose, after all.
I just wanted to go say goodbye to Mom and Eddie before they left on their RV road trip back home, and Damnit was hell-bent on keeping me from doing anything.
She chased me and Rus halfway across the lawn before we had to think up an emergency maneuver.
Rus told me to dodge through the Hedges; he’d take the Lily Walk and hopefully lose the hellion there.
It worked.
Breathing heavily, I planted my hands on my hips and walked over to the stone bench beside a bust of William Shake-speare and flopped down onto it. I really needed to find a way to befriend that goose. If I was going to live here, I couldn’t do cardio every single time I looked at her funny.
As I slowly caught my breath, I thought I heard my name.
Then again—
“Sophie! Soph!”
I froze. My heart stuttered at the sound of that voice. It was one I knew. One I knew better than my own. One that no longer existed—couldn’t exist.
And yet—
“Soph! C’mon, where are you?” Her voice echoed over the Someday Garden’s wall. I couldn’t tell where it came from, only that—“This maze is endless!” she added with a delighted laugh.
I’d recognize her laugh anywhere, even in a world that no longer held it.
“Harrie?” Her name came out as a squeak, too tight and too nervous. I cleared my throat and tried again. “Harriett?”
“Oh good, you’re there.” She sounded so close, just over the garden hedges, but she couldn’t be, she couldn’t be. I knew that if I went out and looked, she wouldn’t be there, because she was somewhere I could no longer reach. “I turned around and you were just gone.”
“Sorry,” I said, my throat tight. I leaned close to the box-woods and closed my eyes. “I lost sight of you.”
“Ha! Slowpoke. I’ll meet you at the end?”
“Yes,” I croaked.
She paused. “Soph? Is everything okay?”
Yes, but I didn’t think I would be for a long time. Yes, but I miss you. Yes, but the sky is a different color blue without you here. Yes, but only because I never really would be okay. Only different. Only changed—changing. Like a garden through the seasons.
Yes, but only because I had to live through all the years you never would.
“Fine! I just—I really like this garden,” I choked out, curling my fingers against the edge of the cool stone bench beneath me, concentrating on its solidness, its dampness, to ground me. The smell of honeysuckle was languid and sweet. “I’m glad I came here with you, Harrie.”
“I’m glad I came here with you, too,” she replied, and I could hear the smile in her voice.
That wide, toothy smile that was so bright and infectious, she made everyone else smile with her.
I could see it in my memories. “But this maze is ridiculous. You sound really close. Just turn the corner and we’ll get out together? ”
And ten years ago, I’d find her at the end of the Hedges. Ten years ago, we’d loop arms and walk the rest of the gardens together.
“I,” she had said gallantly, “was talking to the voice of my truest love.”
Ten years, and a lifetime, ago.
I rubbed my eyes. “You go ahead. I’ll catch up. I—I want to wander a little more.”
“Are you sure?”
No, no, I wasn’t sure. “Yes—wait,” I added, and her foot-steps, which had started to retreat, stopped.
“Yeah?”
“What, um”—I pursed my mouth, letting my bottom lip wobble, choking back a sob that I didn’t want her to hear—“what is that word—the one that you told me about, when you wake up early to listen to the birds?”
She laughed. “Gokotta. It’s Swedish.”
I blinked back the tears, unable to keep myself from smiling. I’m sure if I asked, she could tell me the origins, too. “Gokotta. That’s right—and, Harrie?” I added, hearing her footsteps start away again.
“Hmm?”
“I love you.”
She laughed. “Weirdo. I love you, too.”
And then her footsteps faded away from the garden hedge, and the golden light of the sun disappeared below the tree line.
I sat there for a long time, until orange bled purple into the sky, as I wiped the tears that just kept coming, and just .
. . let them. I let myself cry for the thousandth time since I first recognized the Harrie-shaped hollowness in my chest. A hole that, slowly, began to fill over with wildflowers, like any good plot of soil.
I’d kept it barren for so long, plucking out weeds and grass alike, waiting for the perfect thing to fill it, but there was no such thing.
Though slowly, as I tended to this garden, I tended less to the immaculate hole in my chest and let a little bit of life in.
It wouldn’t be the same, but it was no longer hollow. Still there but changed. Growing something new in the love that stayed.
Ten years ago, we would promise to come back someday. Even though that’d never happen.
I was glad that, for at least a little while, I had a best friend in Harriett Fisher.
“Thank you,” I whispered to the garden, and found my way back to Rus.
He was sitting on a moss-covered bench in the Central Garden under the lightning-struck oak, in dark jeans and a loose T-shirt.
They fit him a little weirdly, since they were Oliver’s, but the sight of this perfect man showing too much indecent ankle made my heart squeeze with adoration.
He smiled at me, lopsided and warm, and I returned it, coming to sit down at his side.
He folded his fingers through mine as easily as breathing, like it was second nature.
We started back toward the parking lot, where my mom and Eddie were still—hopefully—waiting.
Mom was over the moon that I had decided to stay at Lilymoor.
She said just how happy I looked, and I was happy.
For the first time in my life, I think. Really and truly.
I just wished Harrie could’ve seen it, but maybe in some ways, she already had.
“Are you okay?” Rus asked, noticing my red and puffy eyes.
I nodded, wiping away my tears. “Gokotta.”
Confusion crossed his brow. “What?”
“Do you remember, in the garden, when I told you there was a word for waking up at dawn just to hear the birds?”
His eyes lit with realization. “Gokotta,” he repeated, rubbing his thumb against the knuckle of mine. He bent down, brushing his nose against mine, and kissed me. “What are you doing tomorrow morning?”
“Depends.”
“On?”
“What you’re doing to me tomorrow morning.”
He chuckled. “I was thinking around dawn, we could drink some coffee and listen to the birds and then … maybe plant a willow in that garden you found? I have a feeling it’ll be big someday. Big enough to put up a swing.”
“Whatever happened to that swing?”
He shrugged. “I have no idea. Maybe we’ll find it when we build a gazebo in there, too, and plant some asters, and cosmos, and daisies …”
“That sounds like years of work,” I noted.
“Probably,” he agreed, pretending to give it a think. “Then how about penciling in a few more mornings, too? Just so we can get a head start?”
“I think in this plan you’ve forgotten your job,” I pointed out.
“No. I’ll still have it. I think I might do, I don’t know, estate law or something easy.”
I mocked a gasp. “You’ll give up your clients?”
“I’ll tell you a secret”—and he bent in toward me to whisper—I hate my clients.”
I clicked my tongue to the roof of my mouth, though my heart was fluttering, bright and hopeful, at the idea.
I couldn’t remember the last time I ever thought about planning for something in the future.
And maybe it wouldn’t work out. Maybe the plan would change.
But at the moment I liked the hope of it—of someday.
“Then I think it’s a great plan,” I said, “but you’ll have to ask my boyfriend.”
He didn’t balk at the idea. In fact, he looked like he’d already considered it himself. “I hear he’s very ginger. And tall. And handsome.”
I scrunched my nose. “Who told you all of that?”
“Your boyfriend,” he replied, and gave me a kiss that brooked no argument. It was sharp and slow and devouring, like he had all the time in the world. “And I hear that he likes you very much. In fact, I think he’s utterly mad about you.”
I looked up into his stormy eyes. “You are?”
They softened. “I am.” He took my hands and kissed my fingers. “I want to grow old with you, however long that takes. We deserve to take our time, and with you, Sophie Drear?” He locked eyes with me, and in them was an entire ocean of devotion. “I’ll gladly take a lifetime.”
I looked up into his face, memorizing how the soft dusk light played across his coppery hair and angular cheekbones, wanting to commit it to memory just in case.
If nothing else, then just to be able to pull this moment out when I needed to remember what it felt like to be loved, and seen, and home.
Because I was here, in this moment, tilting my head like a sunflower to soak in the last rays of the evening.
A lifetime was too short, but I think we could make do.