The earth is soft and pliable from the lingering effects of yesterday’s unexpected storm, and we work slowly and carefully beside the other grave markers Grandma talked about—flat stones covered in moss, wood slats with mushrooms peeking out of the deep cracks, an old iron doorknob hammered into the ground. Though a handful have been carved with names or initials, most don’t have any identification. Just signs. Just honor and memory.
Grandma made it clear she didn’t want a priest. She didn’t want prayers. She wanted to go back to the land, the way all the Wilde women have.
Someday, this will be how I go, too. It’s my legacy.
Mom won’t carry on the tradition herself. She’ll have a proper funeral in a building, surrounded by friends and family. She’ll want a real gravestone—one carved with her full name, the one she reclaimed after the divorce.
She doesn’t have to say it; her bitterness as she carries out Grandma’s bidding makes it clear. She thinks it’s silly. Strange. I’m pretty sure I heard her mutter the wordbarbaric.
I’ll admit it feels weird to put her straight into the earth like she asked, but it also feels…right. It’s what she wanted.Dust to dust.
When it’s done, Mom goes back inside. Alone, I can’t fight my tears as I collect wildflowers the way we used to when I was a little girl. Grandma taught me to identify every plant in the meadow, taught me how to tell the dangerous ones from the harmless.
When I’m finished, I lay a braid of wildflowers at the base of the tree—Queen Anne’s lace, goldenrod, and a little foxglove for the name of this place. They were some of her favorites, from a time that feels so far away now.
As I step back, the wind picks up, and the tall grass bends low, like it’s bowing. Like it’s honoring her, too.
I stay with her, refusing to leave, refusing to say goodbye until Mom calls me inside. By then, it’s dark, and I try not to think about Grandma, cold and alone under the dirt.
I say goodbye to her but promise to be back soon. Even though I know it’s a lie.
With Grandma gone, Mom doesn’t want to remain at Foxglove for another second, let alone for another night. The house is too quiet, and the silence makes her skin itchy. She doesn’t stop pacing, stop twitching and fussing, until everything is packed.
In the car, as we pull away, I turn in my seat and watch the cabin get smaller and smaller until it vanishes behind the trees, swallowed whole by the earth around it.
“When will we come back?” I ask.
Mom doesn’t answer.
“It’s ours now,” I remind her of Grandma’s words. “We could live there. I could switch schools, and we could plant a garden. We could take care of it, just like Grandma said. I could?—”
“No,” Mom says, cutting my hopes off at the root. There’s no negotiating with her when she’s this way. It’s firm. Final. “Foxglove is not our home.”
I don’t understand. “She said we belong there.” My voice is soft, weak. I’m not fighting the way I know Grandma would want me to.
“She says a lot of things,” is all I hear before she turns up the radio.
I turn back to my window, pressing my hand against the warm glass. As we turn off the winding road, with no guarantee of when or if we’ll return, I make a plea to the trees. To the flowers. To the land, to Foxglove.
Don’t forget about me.I squeeze my eyes shut, willing the earth to hear me now like it seemed to when I was young. It’s childish foolishness, but if there was ever a time I needed to believe in the magic of this place, it’s now.
Please don’t forget.
Eventually, my longing for Foxglove fades. My time away does what Mom hoped it would do, distracting me. Distancing me. I forget about the wild fantasies of childhood and the magical meadow that once fascinated me.
The cabin sits empty. We don’t talk about it. Don’t visit.
Still, every once in a while, a dream will sneak up on me, catching me off guard. A dream about the meadow or the willow tree, about the little creek that runs through the woods. About the flowers and the sunshine that feel so different there. About the wind, and the roots, and the stones sunk so deep in the dirt only the earth remembers their stories. Bones with names long since forgotten.
And, foolishly, when my mind wanders back to that girlhood innocence and whimsy, the place where fairies are real and the good guys always win, I wonder if the ground is still breathing.
If the house remembers me.
If it’s still waiting.
Still listening for a Wilde girl to come home.
CHAPTER TWO
