Chapter 37
Begonia
I’m back in Richmond, once again eyeballing a Groupon for a boat ride out of Virginia Beach after failing to take that leap in the Outer Banks, again , when Hyacinth calls.
“Baby?” I ask her, as if she doesn’t still have almost three months to go.
“Begonia,” she whispers.
A full-body chill washes over me at her tone. “What? What ?” I whisper-shriek back.
“Camp Funshine sold again.”
“ What ? No. No . Why didn’t we know it was for sale? What are they going to ruin now? We’ve done this, Hy. I’m not doing it again. I’m not watching this again . Not right now. Not right now .”
“B. Stop. Slow down. Listen. The new owner wants to make it into a camp again.”
“ What ?”
“Stop saying what? ! Just—just stay there. I’m coming to get you. Get Marshmallow ready for the car.”
My stomach is in knots while Marshmallow and I wait for Hyacinth.
When Camp Funshine was sold the first time, we were devastated. It’s one of those memories I push down, and I try to remember the good times, not the heartache of knowing it wasn’t just Dad losing his camp, but that it was all of the kids losing their summer escape.
It was Hyacinth and me losing our place.
Not that I could’ve afforded it if I’d known it was for sale again, but?—
But I love to dream.
And I would’ve dreamed.
She has both kids in the back of her minivan, and they’re flinging Cheerios and Goldfish at Marshmallow, who’s strapped in six ways to Sunday so he doesn’t try to get out while the van’s moving, as we head out of the suburbs and into the hilly countryside.
“Why are we going?” I ask. “What can we do now?”
“They want our advice.”
“Now? Now ? Hello, warning .”
“ Begonia . If this is the only time my kids ever get to see Camp Funshine, we’re fucking going , okay?
If I’d been on the vacation of a lifetime in Australia and my kids were at camp in Europe and I got the call that I had one chance to influence what happens to Camp Funshine coming back, I would’ve fucking flown around the world six times over to get here . ”
I blink back more unwelcome heat in my eyes and nod.
Hy fell in love for the first time at Camp Funshine.
The second time too. And the third. All in one summer.
She lost her virginity out here. Not that we ever would’ve told Dad or Mom that.
And the pool. The campfire skits. The horseback riding.
The art hut.
My art hut .
“We had the best childhood,” I say softly.
She cuts a wet-eyed glance in the rearview mirror, undoubtedly looking at her kids. “The best,” she agrees.
I still don’t understand why we get one chance to go see the property and offer suggestions, but I know Hy’s right.
We can’t turn down this chance.
If we do it right, maybe we’ll get more chances.
We’re quiet most of the ride, talking with her kids and Marshmallow when we need to, and after about an hour, we turn off onto a gravel road that used to have a giant sign for Camp Funshine sitting prominently at the corner, but now has a cow.
Just a cow.
Staring at us while we pass.
“Fucking cow,” Hy mutters.
“Fucking cow!” Dani parrots from the back seat.
Another quarter mile down the road, my heart squeezes at the sight of the farmhouse that used to be Dad’s, the farmhouse where we all lived before the divorce, where Hyacinth and I would sneak out from to go do the ropes courses by flashlight because we thought we were invincible.
It’s dilapidated, with peeling paint and a dip in the roof and a saggy porch, which is no surprise.
When it was sold, the new owners made it pretty clear they’d be building a custom mansion deeper into the property.
“Fucking bankruptcy,” Hy mutters.
I swipe my eyes. “I miss this place.”
“I brought handcuffs. We can strap ourselves to the fence post and refuse to leave. And my purse has enough food to feed all five of us plus the baby for at least four days. Jerry will bring refills. I apologize for not having good potty facilities in my bag too though.”
“I love you, Hy.”
“I love you too, B.”
The gravel road turns into pavement, and soon a massive house with a stone front and arched doorways and a portico and a turret comes into view, right where the dining hall used to be.
Hy flips it off and keeps driving.
“Bad house!” Dani cries in the backseat.
Little Leo, who’s barely two, tries to echo her. “Baa how!”
“Show it your fingers, Wee-o!”
“Feeg-aahs!”
“I love those kids,” Hy whispers.
The road turns to gravel, then dirt. “Where are we going?” I ask.
She pulls off onto the overgrown former wide pathway to the section of camp that had the pool and the campfire ring-slash-amphitheater and the art hut. She points to a pin on her car’s GPS. “There. That’s all I got.”
My stomach drops as the weeds get thicker around her car and the pin gets closer.
We’re going to the art hut.
God , I miss that art hut.
And now I’m wiping tears again, half-furious, half grateful.
I can’t think of the art hut without thinking of Hayes building me an art hut in his house.
I’ve been doing so well at squashing memories of him, but there it is. Welling up and mixing with my favorite childhood memories.
“Fucking art hut,” I mutter.
“Aunt B, don’t say fuck,” Dani says. “It not nice.”
“It really doesn’t sound right on Aunt Begonia, does it?” Hyacinth says to her daughter.
Dani shakes her head.
“Let me out,” I tell her. “I don’t want to go.”
She ignores me.
“Marshmallow, jailbreak!” I cry.
I turn and watch my dog delicately eat a Goldfish out of my nephew’s hand and make no effort to free himself from his straps and harness to rescue me.
“Stop being dramatic,” Hy says. “That’s my job.”
“ I don’t want to go .” Dammit . Now I’m crying. “Hy, it’s too much. It’s?—”
She pulls the van to a stop, and I can’t avoid it anymore.
There’s the art hut.
And just like my relationship with Hayes, it’s over.
The door is falling off the hinges. All of the bright designs that campers painted all over the outside of it over the years have washed off with time, so all that’s left is a broken gray building missing a few shingles sitting amidst an overgrown field of weeds and baby trees.
The forest wants its art house back.
“B, go on,” Hyacinth says. “I have to spray these rugrats down with bug and tick spray before I let them out.”
“I’ll get them,” I offer.
“ Begonia . Get your ass into that art hut and make sure the toilets still work, because that’s the next thing I’m gonna need, and if I’m gonna be peeing in the woods instead, I have to spray my cooch with bug and tick spray too.”
“Do not spray your cooch with bug and tick spray.”
“ Go find me a bathroom .”
“I’m sure the new owners will?—”
“ Go !”
She’s being such a pill, and I get it.
This is hard for her too.
But my stomach is in knots and I want Hayes.
There.
I said it.
I want Hayes .
I don’t want to walk into my dad’s old art hut, the place I discovered my entire mission in life, all by myself when the last person that I thought could love me tried to recreate it for me and then couldn’t tell me he loved me.
I want him here with me.
I want him holding my hand and telling me that I can do this. That I can walk into this building that meant so much to me so long ago and tell someone else how to rebuild the dream I let go of forever ago.
God , I miss him. He’d squeeze me in a hug and tell me I can do this, and then he’d tell me he’d buy the whole damn place for me, which I’d tell him was ridiculous and unnecessary because I’m finding another job, a real teaching job that’s not just summers working for peanuts at a camp, and I can’t just pretend I’m a kid at summer camp for the rest of my life.
I don’t want him to buy me a camp.
I just want him to love me.
And here I am, thinking I was finally getting over this, and instead sobbing to myself as I walk through the doorway of my dad’s art hut to meet some random stranger who’s expecting a mature woman who’ll have ideas on what to do with a summer camp.
“H-hello?” I call as I push through the creaky door. My voice sounds like two frogs are fighting over a bug in my throat, and I can’t stop sniffling, and everything’s blurry.
And that’s before someone inside answers my call.
“Begonia? What’s wrong? Who hurt you ? I’ll kill them. I’ll fucking?—”
I trip at the achingly familiar voice, but I don’t fall, because two massive arms and a solid chest are suddenly holding me against the softest fabric in the world, and I smell the Maine seashore, and my heart can’t decide if it wants to be in my throat or if it wants to burst out of my chest, because Hayes is here .
He’s here .
“Don’t cry.” He sounds on the verge of tears himself, desperate and aching and alone, and it only makes me sob harder. “Begonia. My sweet angel. Please?—”
“Don’t call me that.” I try to push him away, but my arms don’t get the message, and instead, they circle his waist and hold on for dear life. Two more minutes. Just two more minutes of pretending this is real. “Don’t call me that.”
His arms tighten around me, and he presses his face into my hair. “I’ve fucked this up again, haven’t I?”
“W-what—you—here?”
“I missed you.”
My brain tries to process the words, but all I manage is absorbing the pain in his voice.
The pain, and the fear, and the desperation.
Everything his mom told me comes flooding back, and I squeeze him harder.
I can’t be the person who does all the loving. I can’t . But he’s here.
He’s here when I need him to be, like he materialized out of thin air, and— oh my Georgia O’Keefe .
“ You bought my camp .”
“It’s too much. I know. But I can’t go small, Begonia. Not for you. Not when I—when you—it’s yours. It’s all yours.”
“ You can’t buy my love !”
“I know. I know ! But I—Begonia. I?—”
He stops, cutting himself off abruptly with a curse, the words he won’t say hanging in the air between us, and my heart flips inside out.
He bought my dad’s camp. He’s here. He wants me.
But he can’t say the words.
Is he here because he loves me? Or because I’m the easiest path to whatever it is he thinks he needs?
Can I do this?