Chapter 46
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
CORINNE WILDE - PRESENT DAY, ONE WEEK LATER
The warm scent of chamomile-and-mint tea fills Foxglove, hitting my nose the second I walk through the door. I know the recipe by heart. It’s the one Mom made me as a child whenever I was sick or sad, the one that feels like a hug from the inside out.
“Any change?” Mom asks from where she stands in the kitchen over the sink. She’s washed so many dishes lately, scrubbed so many floors, that her hands have been dry and cracking. Bleeding.
I drop my purse onto the couch. “He was sleeping for most of the visit. The doctors say everything’s healing better than they expected. Hopefully he’ll be cleared to come home soon.”
Mom pauses at the counter, watching me. “Want some tea?”
I take the mug from her hand when she holds it out. On the far side of the room, the fire crackles, throwing shadows across our cozy space in the dim evening light.
“Are you ever going to tell me what that was?” I ask, casting my eyes toward the cupboard. I’ve been too afraid to open it since we saved Lewis, too afraid of what I’ll find. Or what I won’t.
I know I didn’t imagine it, I know it was real, but sometimes I start to question everything.
Mom’s lips tip up with a smile that says I may never know all of Foxglove’s secrets. That’s why it surprises me when I hear her say, “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. If you’re ready.”
“I want to know, too,” Taylor says, leaning forward in her chair by the fire.
She closes her book, and I start to argue, to list all the reasons she’s already been through enough and doesn’t need to worry herself with anything else, but Mom puts a hand on my arm like she senses my incoming protests.
“Walk with me. Both of you.” Mom places the chipped mug down on the counter, the steam curling toward the ceiling like a ghost, then holds out her hand.
Cautiously, I take it.
We walk together through the living room, where Taylor joins us, looping her arm through her grandmother’s.
Medically, Mom is bruised, but not broken, and I guess the same can be said for all of us.
Outside on the porch, I draw in a deep breath, tasting the rosemary and lavender in the air. The meadow grass rustles in the breeze, so loud it sounds like whispers.
“Where are we going?” I ask as we step down off the porch and into the yard.
“I thought we’d visit your grandma.” Mom’s voice is low, and I can’t help thinking of the last time the two of us were here together, saying goodbye to Grandma, but also to Foxglove.
It feels like a lifetime ago.
We cross the meadow slowly, the weeds and flowers grasping our legs as if welcoming us, calling us forward.
“Do you remember much about her?” Mom asks, eyeing me curiously. There is wisdom etched across her face that I haven’t noticed before, lines worth of stories I want to hear.
“I remember everything. She was always singing. And she knew every flower, and that every plant had a purpose. She could sense when a storm was coming, even before the weatherman. She was patient and could make anything. Do anything. She could make any meal delicious.”
“And she loved you,” Mom reminds me, her eyes sad. “And I kept her from you. More than I should’ve.”
My stomach drops. I can’t argue with the truth, but that doesn’t mean I want Mom to hurt over what she can’t change. “I knew she loved me.”
Mom runs a thumb over my hand as we reach Grandma’s grave. Together, the three of us sit down on the grass, and instinctively, our hands go to the earth, side by side.
“My mother—Hazel,” she tells Taylor, “your great-grandmother, used to say the women in our family are born with roots rather than bones. That the forest is inside us, as well as around us.”
Taylor gives her a quizzical smile. “She loved nature,” she deduces.
“She loved this place.” Mom runs her hands through the grass. “Foxglove isn’t just a house. A building. It’s…it’s a promise.” She nods, confirming something to herself. “It’s a living thing. It knows who we are, and more than that—it remembers us.”
With her last words, she turns her face up to the sky, eyes squeezed shut. A tear skirts down over her cheek, following the wisdom lines almost as if her face were being caressed by a gentle hand.
The wind blows through the trees, and they seem to lean toward us, like they’re listening, too. Like they’re confirming her words.
“I never told you why I left Foxglove,” Mom says, dropping her head forward to look at me. “But it’s time you know now.”
I wait, anxious to know, but also scared. I fear the truth will hurt worse than the wondering.
“I was a little younger than six when your grandfather, Charles, died. I don’t remember a lot about him, but I remember his smile.
” Her fingers trace her own lips in memory, her eyes looking through me rather than at me.
“He had a charm like sweet poison. I think, even then, I suspected he had a darkness in him. I was a child. I didn’t understand.
But looking back, I know it’s true. I believe my mother’s story. ”
She runs her lips together, plucking three daffodils from the earth.
Slowly, her fingers work to braid them together, the movement happening without thought.
“When I was ready to marry your dad, my mother sat me down and told me the truth. About love. Marriage. About this place. About…about what happened to Charles.”
The earth is eerily still around us. Even the flowers and trees have stopped moving. It’s as if everything—us included—is holding its breath.
“He was a dangerous man. Not just to your grandmother, not just to me and Violet, but to others. To Violet’s birth mother especially. And her boys. Conrad.” She nods her head toward the woods in the direction of Conrad’s house. Our new, dear friend. “His brother, Cory, too.”
Mom places the braid of flowers on Grandma’s grave. “She did what she did because she had no choice. Or rather, because her choice was the only real one she had. She killed him, not out of hate, but out of fear. Out of love.”
Taylor’s inhale is sharp. My hand goes to my mouth. It’s impossible to imagine my dear, sweet grandma Hazel who captured spiders and set them free in her garden ever harming anyone, let alone her husband.
“That’s about how I reacted at first,” Mom says.
“She wanted me to know the truth because there was a point when she loved him. Trusted him. And in a split second, it all changed. She warned me against loving your father, warned me there were more important things.” She pauses, collecting herself.
“In the end, she was right in more ways than she could’ve known. But I’ll never get to tell her that.”
She ducks her head, and I rub her back, wanting nothing more than to comfort her.
“I left here thinking she was a monster. I couldn’t see then what I see now.
She made an impossible choice…and in doing so, she saved you, Corinne.
And you, Taylor. And your children, someday.
That’s the legacy of Foxglove. That’s the legacy of Wilde women.
We protect the ones who come after us. Even when it costs us everything.
Even when we’ll never see what comes next. ”
Mom squeezes my hand, then Taylor’s. I don’t know what to say or how to move on from this. All I know is that if Grandma had ever asked for, or needed, my forgiveness for making an impossible choice, she’d have had it.
She does have it.
Whatever decision she made, I believe it was the right one. I’m sitting here with the proof that it was.
The sun hangs low in the sky, like a shimmering coin resting on the edge of the earth, ready to disappear.
“I wasted so many years being angry at her. Afraid of what it meant. Of what it made her. I took you from her, and her from you.”
“That’s not true—”
“You had the occasional weekend and your earliest summers together, yes, but you were meant to grow up here. At Foxglove. You were meant to have known your grandmother and this place in ways you never got the chance. The three of us should have so many memories together. Here. But I couldn’t…
I couldn’t stay. Even when I wanted to. Even when I brought you, dropped you off.
I couldn’t bring myself to stay with you.
I can never fix that. Never make it right.
But…” She releases our hands again and picks up an oak leaf, running her fingers gently along the edges.
“I know what I can do. I know what she would want. What she always wanted.”
She places the leaf down on Grandma’s grave.
“This place…Foxglove…it’s meant for us. It’s watched us bleed and grow and grieve and survive.
This land is woven with our choices. Every tree, every flower, every stone carries the bones of women who fought for the ones they loved.
Who fought to give us this moment right here. ”
She looks at me then, her eyes shining. “I don’t want to waste any more time. Not with you two. Not now that I understand our legacy. Not now that I understand her.”
I wait, watching as she says so much with her eyes and no words.
As we have a silent conversation, as words are passed between us with only glances and tears.
“I want us to stay here—together. The three of us. I want you both to know the strength you come from. Not some fairytale strength, but the real kind. The kind that walks into fire if it means the next girl won’t have to. ”
Silence stretches between as soft and gentle as the ribbons of flowers Grandma used to tie in my hair.
“The three of us?” I ask, watching her.
Mom nods. “You understand.”
“What will that mean?”
“He can’t stay here.” Again, she reads me like a book.
Understands the question I’m not asking.
The one I’m not brave enough to ask. In truth, I don’t know if I want Lewis to stay, or if that’s even on the table for him.
I don’t know where we stand. But I don’t like being told it’s impossible, either.