“It’s not your fault,” I tell him.
He winces at hearing these words, like the fault can no longer be pinpointed, not exactly. When I think of Oak, I feel the same way. It’s his fault he lied, kept the truth about his father from me. But it’s my family—my mom—that broke his. It’s the Goode tulips that caused everything that happened between us.
In the end it all leads back to me… and this garden.
Love is a malediction in this family: a plague that tightens around the heart.
He was merely swept up in it, just like Dad.
Neither of them can be to blame for how it all started.
And this is why our father stays away—this is why it hurts so bad when he walks through that front door, when he sees Archer and me.Weare the ghosts of his past. Of a time when he had no control over who he fell in love with.
And this is the point:free will. The right to choose who we love,to trust our hearts to know the difference between what’s real and what’s not.
This garden takes that away.
“I hate these flowers,” I say under my breath.
Dad is quiet, thinking, while the wind briefly sways through the garden, a frog croaks from the muddy creek, and the stars reveal themselves behind a thin sheet of clouds. “You can’t blame the tulips for everything.” He looks at me, and I feel wrung out, a husk left to wither in the sun. “You might not like who you are…,” he says gently. “Or the life you were born into, but there are always things to be learned from your past… from your mistakes.” I swallow down the tears, and it feels like he can see the crumpled remains of my heart, even if he doesn’t know how it got that way. “And I hope you make a lot of them in your life. I know I have.”
Tears break over my eyelids, and Dad pulls me into a hug, folding his broad arms around me. I can’t remember the last time my father hugged me, and I worry my legs will collapse—I worry all the torments inside me will crack apart at once. “It’s the only way you’ll become who you’re meant to be,” he says, his own chest rattling with emotion. “Don’t be afraid of who you are, Lark.” He releases me but keeps his hands against my shoulders, holding me up. “Not all Goodes are bad.”
I wipe at the tears dripping from my chin. “Can I come with you?” I plead, my voice tiny, a little girl again, all my strength gone.
He breathes, his eyebrows angled down like he’s considering it. But when his gaze lifts, I know what he’s going to say. “Sorry, buttercup. I got a job up north, in Alaska, for a few months, not a good place for you.” He releases my shoulders, and I teeter. He reachesinto his back pocket, pulls out his wallet, and extracts all the cash inside. A few hundred dollars, I’d guess. “I always thought you’d leave as soon as you graduated.”
“Me too,” I answer.
He holds out the wad of cash to me. “You deserve to see what life is like beyond this place, then decide for yourself where you belong.”
I hesitate, staring down at the money.
“But I should warn you, the world isn’t any easier beyond the borders of Cutwater. Life is hard no matter where you put down roots.”
I nod, and he pushes the wadded bills into my hand. But when I look up, the softness in his eyes has changed. Gone rigid. He looks on the verge of tipping over a cliff, like a shadow has crept over him again, the memories of his own past getting too heavy to hold up. This house is a reminder of what he’s been trying so hard to forget. A feeling he’ll never get back. And I think he’s been running from this town, and us, taking jobs farther and farther away, in hopes that eventually the past will rework itself, and it will be like we never existed at all.
“I leave in the morning,” he adds, offering up a tight smile. “I just wanted to check on you, make sure you hadn’t burned the place down, before I headed up north.” His gaze sways out over the tulips, eyebrow lifted.
The light is gone from his eyes, but he touches my cheek, and I sense that this is goodbye. He’ll likely be gone before sunup tomorrow.
The longer he’s here, the more pained he looks.
I doubt he’ll sleep; he’ll toss and turn in the bed he once sharedwith a woman he thought he loved. Until he didn’t. And in the early dawn hours I’ll hear the sound of his truck rumbling down the drive.
He’ll escape this place, leave it in his rearview mirror.
And I don’t blame him.
I stay on the back porch, watching the tulips bend and twist in the breeze, stirred up by a wall of evening clouds. I think about all the tragedy that’s burdened this family.
And I know I will never allow myself to get close to someone again. Like I did with Oak.
I sink into one of the rocking chairs, knees pulled up, head resting back. I listen to Forsaken Creek rushing beneath the floorboards, spilling out into the garden. I watch the dark rain clouds push away to the east and the sky become still and starry.
I search for something.
A way to heal this emptiness that was cracked wide inside me. I look for reparation. But it’s not out there in the garden, under this somber summer sky.
