Chapter 16 yoko meshi
yoko meshi
After I walked with Eula through the garden and told her my plan to tackle the Willow Grove and the terrible news that the vines were now in the Rose Court, too, I returned her to the house so that she and Juliette could start deciding on food and beverages for the bicentennial.
Oliver had gone for the day, taking his shiny Lexus back into town.
He had been grumbling about the Wi-Fi connection in the old house, so I assumed he was camped out in the coffee shop doing work like he’d said.
Unlike him, I welcomed the unreliable internet and cell phone reception.
At least until the satellites aligned and I got twenty text messages at once, which was exactly what happened as I made my way back toward the roses. Okay, not twenty, but it felt like it.
Hey, it’s Sanchez.
I hope you’re doing well, Soph. I know the last year has been really difficult for all of us. I’ve wanted to reach out but it’s sort of felt pointless. You went through it. I went through it. But I think in the end Harriett was happy you were there. I’m glad you were.
My feet slowed to a stop. Sanchez. Harriett’s fiancé.
We didn’t really see eye to eye on a lot of things—anything, actually.
He was too loud, and he didn’t like that I was too blunt and told him he was too loud.
It was Harrie who kept us from killing each other, and when she was gone we realized Harrie was the only one who kept us friends, too.
Harrie loved his too-loud laugh, and the way he hyped up every party he walked into.
He was either always running as fast as he could go, or he was stagnant; there were no other modes for Sanchez Belo.
And knowing Sanchez, there was only one reason why he would be reaching out now, almost a year since she died. I didn’t want to read the rest, but I did anyway, dread growing in my stomach like rotten roots.
I know this is sudden, but I wanted you to hear it from me first before you saw it on socials. I found someone. She makes me deliriously happy—something I never thought I’d feel again. We’re engaged, and we’re telling everyone tomorrow. I know it’s fast, but sometimes that’s how life happens.
I have to move on.
I hope you find a way to move on, too.
Harriett would want that.
I stared at the text messages, the words blurring.
No, he was wrong. Harrie would want to live. She’d want a husband and a white picket fence and kids. She’d want a bestselling novel and her name in the Romance section between Heather Fawcett and Carley Fortune. And she’d want to keep her promise.
That is what she would have wanted.
But she wasn’t here to want it anymore.
And her fiancé of five years got engaged to someone else in less than eleven months.
I should’ve just turned my phone off and gotten back to work, but instead I opened up socials and pulled up his Instagram feed.
I hadn’t looked at it since a few weeks after the funeral, mostly because he just kept posting.
Photos of their dogs. Photos of the apartment he moved out of a few months ago.
Photos of travels and new food and life …
and just like all those months ago, I couldn’t understand how he could just …
continue. Keep the same heading, the same course—forward.
I didn’t have to look very far into his feed to find photos of the woman in question. She and Sanchez looked happy in all the places you expect someone to be happy—at dinners, on vacations, during birthday parties and holidays. His entire feed was a life, moving on.
If this was moving on—burrowing yourself so far into a stranger you were no longer yourself—then I didn’t want to.
I refused.
A soft summer wind rifled through the wildflowers, carrying with it the scent of sweetness and earth—
There was a creak of rusted hinges. At first, I didn’t pay any attention, staring at the latest photo of Sanchez and his new partner, both smiling during a dimly lit concert. She looked a little like Harriett, dark hair and wide eyes, but that was where the similarities ended.
I felt sick to my stomach as I swiped back over to his text messages, my feet carrying me toward the Rose Court by themselves.
How do you know what Harrie would have wanted? I wanted to text, wishing more than anything that I could ask that one question—
That was all I needed. Just one.
How do you know that moving on was what she’d want? How do you know what she would think? How do you know she wouldn’t hate being left behind? How do you do it?
How do I?
The wind pulled harder this time, picking through the wildflowers as I walked past them to the Rose Court, spinning their petals into the sharp goldening sky. There was a rattle, like a breeze against a door—
A door?
I glanced up from my phone, whirling around to the sound. And there, against the soft heather-gray stone wall, was the blue door. It sat so perfectly in the sunlight as if screaming I’m here. Don’t ignore me.
As if I could.
Somehow, the mystery of the garden felt easier to untangle than the texts in my hand, so I deleted them and pocketed my phone. Then I took a deep breath to sturdy myself and crossed the wildflowers to go inside.
The garden looked just like it had the other afternoon, though I took it in with a bit more skepticism this time, trying to figure out what this place was.
I couldn’t see any landmarks—not the Willow Grove or the old oak in the Central Garden—and I decided that it wasn’t because the walls were too high.
I couldn’t see anything past the walls, actually.
I couldn’t hear anything, either, as if nothing existed on the other side.
How strange indeed.
The door creaked shut behind me. “Hello?” I called, stepping farther into the garden. Then, a little quieter, as if daring myself to be right, I added, “Cyrus?”
Still there was no answer. Could he have left? My chest felt tight, which was odd because I should’ve been relieved, but all I felt was anxious.
I wandered over toward the half-finished gazebo, large trumpet vines slithering down from the roof, growing wherever they pleased. From there, I could see all the way back to the willow. The garden’s shape gave the illusion that it was much larger than it really was.
As I stepped into the gazebo, looking up through the crowded trumpet vines that laced across the rafters, I heard a voice behind me.
“So, do you believe me now?”
Startled, I whirled around.
The stranger stood a few feet away, in the same charcoal dress shirt and dark trousers, coppery hair slowly coming dislodged from its slick style, as if he’d run his hands through it a few too many times.
He looked so similar to the boy in the photo, though a decade and a half older, with wrinkles around his mouth and eyes.
The windswept curl of his hair was gone, as was whatever lopsided smile came with it; he’d traded them both for something refined and tame.
He was definitely Cyrus Beck.
“I think I do,” I replied.
His mouth pressed into an agitated line, and I’m sure he had something snarky to say, but it was like all of a sudden he ran out of the energy it took to stay annoyed. His shoulders dropped, and he pushed his hand through his hair again. “It’s been hours—I’m sure someone’s missing me by now.”
Hours? I shook my head. “It’s been days. I saw you last week.”
A muscle in his jaw feathered. “You’re not funny.”
“Am I laughing?”
The annoyance flickered into worry as he studied me a little longer, his gaze dropping down the length of me.
“You are wearing a different shirt . . . but you could’ve changed it outside.
I would remember being here for days.” He folded his arms tightly over his chest, but he didn’t seem to believe himself, either. “Wouldn’t I remember?”
“I don’t know,” I muttered.
He sat down heavily inside the gazebo and put his head in his hands. “This can’t be real. I can’t be stuck here. I can’t. What the hell is happening?”
I sat down beside him. “I’m sorry,” I said, because it was really all I could think of.
He said, a note of hopeful desperation in his voice, “Maybe you can tell someone. The authorities? Yes! The coast guard—anyone. They’ll find me. Airlift me out. Something.”
That was something I had already thought about, tragically, and it was a great plan except—“The garden keeps moving.”
His eyebrows furrowed. “What?”
“The door doesn’t appear all the time. It just appears sometimes. And never in the same place. I first saw it in the Hedges, then the Wildflower Garden. I tried telling Eula about it already, but she doesn’t know anything. She kinda laughed at me, actually.”
Eyes widening, he sat back against the railing. “Well, shit.”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
That didn’t leave us with very many options. I was certainly coming up short.
“I’m sorry,” I repeated.
He studied me quietly, a crease troubling the skin between his brows.
It felt like this was the first time he really looked at me.
His face was so close, his eyes so stormy, not quite blue and not quite gray, perfectly framed by those long, coppery eyelashes.
There was the faintest mirage of freckles across his nose and cheeks that quickly darkened as a blush rushed up from his throat to his face.
“It’s not your responsibility,” he said, and there was a softness there that surprised me. “It’s mine. I shouldn’t have come. I just thought …” He trailed off, then shook his head. “I don’t know what I thought.”
As I sat beside him, I noticed the faintest red mark on his forehead.
It looked like it might come up a bruise.
I had something of the same mark the morning after I ran headfirst into a glass door in college.
I hadn’t even been drunk, just absentminded.
Without thinking, I reached up and touched the red splotch.
He winced, more in surprise than pain, and leaned away.
“Sorry!” I gasped, mortified. “I wasn’t thinking!”
“Does it look bad?” he asked.