IRIS
I tell Sol everything. Once I start, it all pours out in a flood: my guilt about the fire, telling Rose about the trials, lying to him about where she’d gone, the kiss. I confess every sin in a babbling stream, and Sol lets me. He doesn’t speak until I’m done.
I don’t tell him about what Rose stole from his room or her feelings about not trusting him. That’s her secret, not mine. As much as those things weigh on me, I know it wouldn’t be right to expose her like that.
When I finally finish, my throat raw and eyes burning, I look up to meet his gaze.
He’s watching me with one of those unreadable expressions, and for a moment, I’m afraid I’ve made a mistake.
I’d hoped confessing would mean he’d give me another chance, he’d help me instead of sending me away, but it occurs to me that I may have done too much, crossed too many lines, and my time here might come to an end before my third trial even begins.
“Am I in trouble?” I ask.
“Of course not,” he says. “I’m disappointed in you. I don’t think that’s surprising. But you did the right thing now, coming to me. We’ll work through it. We’ll get you back on the right path. I’m here for you, sweetheart.”
I let out a shaky breath and nod. His old flannel is soft against my wet cheek. “I’m sorry,” I say again.
“I know you are.” He pats my back before releasing the hug. “Give me some time to think about how we can work through this. It’ll probably play into your final trial. But you will be okay, Iris. As long as you trust me from now on—and don’t lie to me again—you’ll be okay.”
I want to believe him.
More than anything, I want to believe him.
It’s nearly dawn already, and I’m not prepared to look at Rose again just yet. So I don’t bother going back upstairs. Instead, I go to the kitchen and start making breakfast for everyone. I notice we’re running low on groceries again.
Sol stays in his room most of the day while the rest of us scatter to do our chores. For once, I’m relieved to find I’m not paired with Rose. Instead, I end up with Lily in the garden.
“All right, I think that’s pretty good,” she says, leaning on her rake as she looks down at the garden that we’ve just been spreading fertilizer over. She wipes sweat from her brow before turning and smiling at me. “Thank you for the help.”
“Of course,” I say.
Raking in the fertilizer isn’t exactly my favorite task. The stench hangs in the air and clings to my skin.
“How is it already spring again?” she says, propping the rake against the side of the shed but notably not taking it back inside where it belongs.
“I know. Still can’t believe I’ve been here over a year.”
She gives one of her warmest smiles. “You belong here,” she says. “I knew it from the time I met you, and Sol knew it, too. You’re one of us.” She hesitates before asking, “How are the trials going, hon?”
I shrug and barely meet her eyes when I give my less-than-committal answer. “They’re … going, I guess. I’m not supposed to talk about them.”
“I know,” she says. “I ain’t gonna push you to. I just wanna be sure you’re doing all right. That you’re not …” She trails off, biting her bottom lip.
“What?” I ask.
“That you’re not letting Rose distract you.”
I tense, hazily wondering in my sleep-deprived mind if Sol told her everything. If she knows that Rose and I kissed or how many lines I’ve crossed because of my feelings for her.
But Lily is still talking. “I don’t know what Sol has you doing, but I know you gotta be close to the end now, and I don’t want you getting sidetracked.”
“I’m not sidetracked.”
“Good,” she says, and she sounds genuinely relieved. “I’d hate for you to lose your way or fail. Selfishly, I can’t … I just can’t handle watching that again.”
“Watching what again?”
But even as I ask, I know the answer. At least, part of it.
Marigold.
Lily looks away, takes a shaky breath, and then meets my gaze again. “There’s only been one person to not complete her trials. We don’t talk about her because it’s too painful for us—well, mostly me and Sol—to think about.”
That sentiment rings hollow to me, though.
She says she avoids the subject because it hurts, but I feel like a dam is breaking.
Like she’s been desperate to speak about Marigold, years of thoughts gathering behind sealed lips.
A little more pressure, a little encouragement, and that dam might break.
So I push.
“What happened to her?”
“It’s my fault,” Lily says quickly. “I should’ve done better by her.”
“Done better how?”
Her words have me a little baffled. I can’t imagine how Marigold failing her trials would be Lily’s fault.
She doesn’t answer, just bites her lip.
“Lily,” I say softly.
And just as I expected, the dam bursts.
“Before you, Sol let us be more involved with the trials. Marigold was hesitant about hers when her turn came up.” Lily hugs herself, eyes darting from the door of the shed to the misty mountains beyond the cabin.
“It was my responsibility to reassure her, and I didn’t do a good job.
She didn’t wanna do the last trial. She wanted to leave.
I tried to talk her out of it. Did everything I could, but … ”
My breath is trapped in my lungs. This is the most anyone has ever spoken about Marigold. Certainly the first time anyone’s mentioned that they’d tried to stop her leaving.
Lily swallows, and I see a sheen of tears beginning to rim her dark eyes. “She wanted to leave, and that wasn’t an option. So we had to stop her.”
The end of that sentence hangs in the air between us. A chill runs down my spine.
“Where is she now?” I ask.
“I went into the shed to talk to her so many times,” she murmurs, more to herself than to me.
“Tried to talk sense into her so many times, but she wouldn’t listen.
She just kept yelling at me. Saying all this awful stuff about Sol, even though he’d helped her.
She didn’t understand how much good Sol was doing for us.
She didn’t understand how much danger she’d be putting us all in if she left, and I tried to tell her.
I tried so hard, but she didn’t listen. She was supposed to stay in the shed until she saw reason, but one night she pushed past me when I came to see her and … ”
She doesn’t finish the sentence. I think I see a flicker of worry in her tear-filled brown eyes, and I wonder if she’s having a sudden realization of how much she said. Or how little it actually took to lure the truth out of her.
My fingers tense, my muscles gone rigid as some of the pieces fall into their hideous places.
Again, I ask, “Where is she now, Lily?”
But, again, I get no answer. Tears are streaming down Lily’s round cheeks.
I feel a sudden pang of guilt for pushing her to talk, despite the fact that I’m certain she’s been secretly desperate to do so for a while now.
The pain this is causing her is obvious, especially when she glances at the shed once more.
The shed that she’s always seemed so afraid of, so haunted by. Now I think I know why. In a way, it is haunted for her. By the memory of a girl she couldn’t save.
“This is why Sol doesn’t let us talk to each other about the trials anymore,” she says. “Because it’s better for us to be independent, but also so we ain’t dragged down by someone else’s weeds.”
Weeds.
That’s what Violet thinks Rose is. Now I understand the comparison to Marigold. And I know it might be—terrifyingly— more accurate than she or Lily even realize.
“I shouldn’t have told you all this,” she says, choking out the words.
“It’s okay,” I tell her, though I’m not actually sure it is. “I won’t say anything.”
“I ain’t gonna ask you to keep secrets,” she says.
“Just finish your trials, Iris. No matter what Rose says, remember that Sol is the one who cares about you. He took you in. He’s going to help you bloom.
He’s not going to steer you wrong.” She shakes her head.
“I need water. Can you finish up out here, hon?”
I watch her go, feeling confused and unsettled.
Where did Marigold end up if she wasn’t allowed to leave?
What did Lily and Violet do? Does Sol know?
I’m sure he does. Violet doesn’t keep anything from Sol, as far as I can tell, but that thought causes my stomach to coil into tight, unpleasant knots.
I walk toward the rakes, pick them up, and step into the shed myself.
It’s empty right now. Everyone else is doing their various tasks around the yard or inside the cabin.
Poppy’s cassette player is sitting on the workbench, a stack of The Lord of the Rings tapes beside it.
I carry the rakes to the corner and prop them up near the shovel and the other gardening supplies.
I close my eyes and try to imagine some other faceless girl here. Try to imagine her conversations with Lily. I wonder what her trials were. I wonder if she sounded like Rose, skeptical and uncomfortable with Sol and what was being asked of her.
My eyes snap open then, because I don’t want to go down that dark path. I don’t want to imagine a world in which Rose is trapped in this shed because she wants to leave. Surely there is more to the story. Surely Sol would never do that to her.
When I step out of the shed, the sun has begun to sink behind the wall of rounded, foggy mountains. The back door to the cabin is open. Zinnia’s thick black curls blow in the breeze as she stands out on the steps.
“There you are,” she says. “Are y’all done in the garden?”
“Uh, yeah. I’m done. What’s up?”
“Sol wants to talk to you,” she says. “He says it’s time for a Growth Session.”