Chapter 38 luftschloss
luftschloss
“Rickroll, please!” Wykofski announced.
The seven of us—Juliette, Oliver, Eula, Yafir, the goose, the goose dog, and I—were standing at the edge of the Willow Grove while Wykofski lit the trees.
Juliette’s vision for the Grove was a simple one.
An entertainment service had already set up a stage on the left side, along with speakers, and there was a line of tables on the right for catering.
Standing tables dotted the outskirts of the field.
But most magical of all were the fairy lights that Wykofski had painstakingly hung in the willow boughs with a rented cherry picker.
He held up the two ends of the extension cords and waited for his cue.
We all looked down the line to Yafir, who remembered himself with a gasp, and took out his phone. He pulled up YouTube and pressed play on a video.
“Never Gonna Give You Up” by Rick Astley blared from the phone.
And with great aplomb, Wykofski united the two ends of the extension cords. Behind him, the willow trees blinked to life in bright, glittery twinkles of light.
Eula clapped happily. “Oh, it’s perfect, it’s perfect!” she cried.
I tried to take in the moment, to feel grateful to be here, but there was a knot of dread in my stomach, while everyone else seemed to be looking forward to tomorrow night.
I excused myself back to my cottage soon after, a nervous wreck. I paced back and forth, feeling sick to my stomach and hungry and too nervous to do anything besides complain about it. I should be happy about my work—proud of my work for the bicentennial—because the gardens had never looked better.
But I couldn’t think about any of that—about my hard work, and my job. I kept skimming my hands across every solid surface, under every piece of lattice, through every hedge, trying to find the blue door to that garden where Rus was trapped.
I sat down at the kitchen table and took up the 8 Ball. “I don’t know what to do,” I told it.
I’d felt a helpless sort of ache like this once before with Harrie, but I refused to just stand by while it happened again.
I couldn’t save my best friend, but I could save someone else.
I could save Rus—I was going to save Rus.
The ache didn’t kill me last time, and it wouldn’t now.
It wouldn’t be as bad, and even if it was . . . it was worth it.
Rus deserved a future, even if I wasn’t in it.
A knock at my door startled me out of my thoughts. I put the 8 Ball down, checked my reflection in the mirror by the entryway, and answered the door.
It was close to nine, so I couldn’t imagine who it could be.
Juliette, on another anxiety spiral? Or Wykofski?
Whoever it was, I wasn’t in the mood.
When I pulled open the door, I didn’t expect Eula to be there with a bottle of wine.
She smiled and held it up, her walker decorated with blinking lights, in flamingo pajamas and Birkenstocks.
At her heels was Reggie, the not-goose-herding dog, who when not trailing the goose seemed intent on accompanying Eula instead.
“Sorry to bother you,” she said, “but we’re almost at the end of summer and I’d like to celebrate all your hard work.
What do you say?” she asked in her disarmingly polite way.
Her attention lingered on my swollen eyes, my red nose, but she didn’t comment.
“It’s a pretty night, and there’s a bench right over there that I particularly love.
” And she motioned to a small alcove in the cottage yard where a bench sat under a laced pergola dripping in wisteria.
“And if we’re patient enough, there might even be fireflies. ”
“W-wine and fireflies?” I asked, sniffing to shove back down an errant sob.
“Just for a little while, dear?”
I didn’t want to, but I remembered the 8 Ball in my hand. The die had tumbled to YES, DEFINITELY. So I steeled myself and said, “How can I say no?”
Her smile widened. “Excellent! There’s some wineglasses in the top cupboard in the kitchen, and a wine opener in the drawer. Reggie and I will meet you over on the bench?”
“Sure, I’ll be right there.” So as she shuffled her way over to the bench, I got the glasses and slipped on my Birkenstocks over my socks and dried my face.
I didn’t look terrible in the mirror, but you could definitely tell that I’d been crying.
It didn’t matter, I decided, and made my way outside and through the overgrown garden to the side of the cottage where Eula sat.
Reggie was lounging in the tall grass to the side, rolling onto his back, pink tongue out, staring at the sky.
He really didn’t have a single thought in that head of his. I was envious.
I offered to open the wine bottle, but she waved me away and did it herself.
“If I ever get old enough to need help opening wine, send me out into the sea,” she announced, and popped the cork off with a twist. “There! It’s a dry red from the cellar. Can’t say how old it is, the label’s worn off.”
I sniffed it. “I’ve never had expensive wine, so it doesn’t last long enough in my house to go bad.”
She laughed and poured two glasses. “I hate to admit the best wine I’ve ever had was the cheapest bottle with the best of friends.”
I grinned at that, remembering all the boxed wines Harrie and I went through our last year of college together, and all the BUY 2 Get 1 Free chardonnays I brought over to her apartment after whenever I visited. “I think you’re onto something there.”
She raised her glass in acknowledgment, and I clinked with her, and we drank. The wine was dry and cool and nice. “So,” she said, “here we are. At the end.”
“At the end,” I echoed.
“I hope you’ve enjoyed it, at least a little bit.
You’ve been such an antidote for this old estate,” she said, looking pensively down at her wine.
“Honestly, when I called some of my late husband’s colleagues, I was half afraid I’d be laughed away and told I should’ve given this place to someone who knew how to take care of it years ago. ”
That surprised me. “I don’t think anyone would’ve laughed at you.”
“You’re very kind, but I’m glad it was you they sent.
You woke this garden up. You brought it back to life when I’d been stuck tending to my own grief for so long, I didn’t realize the flowers were dying.
” She took a sip of her wine, shaking her head.
“You know, I could’ve retired quietly—a lot of my friends thought that was the best way to go about it—but to be honest, I like the pomp and circumstance,” she added in a not-so-secretive voice.
“And I was rather tired of my nephews constantly being at odds. I was hoping this would bring them together. You can see how well that worked.”
I swallowed thickly. “He’s coming tomorrow, at least.”
“Oh yes, I know!” she confirmed brightly.
“Oh, Sophie, dear, I’m so excited. I hope he’ll see what you’ve done with the place, and he’ll miss it.
I know he will. He always loved this place.
I’m certain he still does. He just doesn’t think he deserves to love it after everything. I hope I can prove him wrong.”
“Maybe you will,” I replied, my heart aching at the thought of Rus.
Reggie whined, and she bent down and rubbed him behind the ears.
“Henry and I never had children, you see. We tried, but …” Her voice trailed off, and she drank more of her wine.
“Ollie and Rus were our kids, as much as we could have kids. We loved them very much, and you want to know a secret?” She leaned in toward me, smelling strongly of sweet wine and Red perfume.
“The inheritance always went to them. Since before Henry died. We knew when they were little tots running around that we’d leave Lilymoor to them. ”
“So this retirement party and inheritance announcement . . .” I began to guess.
“It was to bring them back,” she said, eyes glittering mischievously.
“And it just might work—oh!” she gasped, pointing at a glowing bug in the distance.
“There’s one! I knew we’d see them. Henry always loved them.
He used to say, ‘Eula, if the gardens weren’t already magic, they’d make it for us.
’ We were lucky to find this place, I think. ”
“Lilymoor was lucky to have you, too,” I replied, and she reached over and squeezed my arm.
“And you.” She smiled at that, and it was a smile of adoration. I didn’t think there was a world in which she didn’t love her husband. “I hope its next stewards will be just as lucky. It would be a good life, I think, to whoever wants it.”
Lazy mornings with a cup of coffee, the scream of birds, the soft bloom of flowers across spring, and summer, and fall. Growing old in a rocking chair, and dreaming up new vistas in the woods, and listening to the wind come up off the cliffs, searching for voices we once knew.
“It would be,” I agreed, letting myself imagine it for the first time.
I raised my glass and clinked it against hers once more, wishing that if there was magic somewhere in this world, it would be here in a small coastal Maine town, in the midst of this quickly fading summer with a man who made my heart bloom, where the nights were cool and the skies were bright and I just wanted with all of my heart to be home.
“To a good life,” I echoed, and maybe it could be, someday.