“Thus, the monarchs.” He smiled, a funny, almost sad smile.
“You don’t think it’s too late? I feel like everything I read about the environment is doom-and-gloom.”
“I don’t know.” He touched the trunk of the tree beside him. “I think we need to try, no matter what. I think everyone has a responsibility to do whatever they can.”
“We could just let the world burn.”
“We can’t.” He pinned me with an intense, searing glance, which slowly lessened. “You’re joking.”
I bit back a smile. “Yeah. I think that’s actually kind of a noble way to think about things.”
He scoffed, the color in his cheeks heightening, and turned away from me. “Come on,” he called over his shoulder, voice muffled as he ducked under a gap in the hedge.
I followed him into a wide, open space. Roses bloomed everywhere, a hundred kinds and colors, circling a gazebo in the very center of the clearing. I stopped. “It’s beautiful.”
“My grandmother’s a gardener,” he said, stroking the petal of a shoulder-high rose.
“Did she—make all of this?” But no—O’ma had been in this rose garden at seventeen years old, standing in the center of the gazebo. Unearned nostalgia filtered through me. How strange to walk through the same gardens she had.
“My great-grandmother—my grandpa’s mom—designed it. But my grandmother added some of the newer rose varieties.”
While Edward’s current memories of O’ma in this garden had to be blurred by years with his wife, children, and grandchildren, I could only see this place through the lens of his letters. I wondered if O’ma’s memories of being here had been crystallized, since she’d had nothing to overwrite them. Had they stayed with her throughout the decades, bright and clearly defined?I wish I could see you surrounded by roses...
It was too much—the setting, the inherent romantic nature of a rose garden and a gazebo. It made me strangely sad. I lifted my gaze, and it snagged on text carved into the inside of the gazebo’s wooden cupola.Quien no sabe de mar, no sabe de mal.
Noah caught me looking. “‘He who knows nothing of the sea, knows nothing of suffering.’ It’s an old Ladino proverb.”
“Ladino?”
“A combination of Spanish and Hebrew.”
“Very Jewish, a proverb about suffering.”
“We like to stay on brand.”
I smiled briefly, but it fell away. It was too bittersweet, the saying, this place, Ruth and Edward. “We should go back.”
“Should we?” He looked at me, dark gaze intense, not a hint of teasing humor in his voice or expression.
My breath shuddered. I couldn’t get a read on him today. Was he playing a game with me? But why? He had what he wanted; I’d promised not to talk to his grandparents for a month.
But maybe rich boys played games I didn’t understand, games with roses and gazebos and summer girls. Part of me wanted to play, too, but I didn’t know how, and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to stop if I started. “Yes. We should.”
And I turned away before I changed my mind.
Golden Doors rambled. Its interior reminded me of a Diana Wynne Jones book about a house whose many doors led to different places. We began in the modern addition, but quickly moved past it. It felt like we were winding back in time. The modern kitchen was connected to a semi-modern pantry, which led into a formal dining room from a much older era. A massive chandelier hung above a heavy oak table, and candlesticks decorated the sideboards.
“We almost never eat here,” Noah said. “Most of the time we’re in the modern section since there’s more light and it has the sea view. But occasionally we have formal dinners here.”
“Did your grandfather eat here? Growing up?” I tried to envision my grandmother sitting at one of the seats. Whyhadn’tthe two of them felt like siblings? Surely she’d been treated like oneof the family, hadn’t she? “Or, wait, they were mostly in New York.”
“Yeah. My great-grandparents moved there in the 1920s. Before then, though, the family lived here full-time.”
For some reason, that surprised me. I’d imagined they’d started living on Nantucket, bought Golden Doors, in the 1950s or later—after accumulating their wealth in the modern era. “How long’s your family been here?”
“They came from New Bedford in the 1800s.”
“New Bedford? The... whaling town?”
