But I look down at the postcard still in my hand, the only one not destroyed.
Thisis why Archer often insisted on retrieving the mail himself—I always thought it was because most of the love letters were for him. But it was because he was keeping a secret from me. All this time.
“I should have told you,” he says now, but I’m already backing away. He never let me decide for myself what to feel. All these years I thought she didn’t care enough to even send a letter. It stacked more pain on top of the mountain of hurt. But she’s been writing to us all along.
She never forgot about us… not entirely.
“Lark,” Archer says again, but I won’t meet his eyes.
“I don’t want to talk to you right now. There’s nothing you can say to make this right.” He’s blocking my path to the front door, so I turn and escape out the back door into the garden, gulping in the warm evening air. I stare down at the postcard, my whole body shaking.
Moonlight breaks through the low clouds, lightning snaps in the distance, but it doesn’t rain. The sky is dry and sharp and awful.
I run my fingers across the smooth paper of the postcard, reading Mom’s words through a blur of salty pain, each letter a piece of her—theo’s like yawning mouths, thet’s like tall steeples, towering over the other words.
We found a port in Sardinia, off the Italian coast. The weather has been warm but windy, and Lark, you would love the oldstone buildings and the faces of so many beautiful people to sketch. Archer, are you still playing the guitar?
I’ll be at this hotel for the next two weeks if you want to write back. Would love to hear from you both.
Love always,
Mom
Her return address is a place called Casa Gallasso. She’s been writing to us, hoping for a response, for a letter back that never comes.
I feel ripped apart.
Archer denied me the chance to write to her: to tell her I hate her, love her, want her to come home, and never want to see her again.
He kept this from me. He didn’t think I was strong enough. Didn’t think I could handle seeing her words written with an airy ease, blithe and carefree, while she sipped espresso at some small café, the afternoon Mediterranean sun tanning her ageless skin. Living a life out there, without us.
My eyes rise to the field of tulips, the sound of thunder rolling across the skyline from somewhere far away.
I hear the front door shut, and I know Archer has left. The guilt or maybe the anger too much for him to bear. I won’t see him again before I leave—and I don’t want to.
Everything feels ripped apart.
I blink out at the garden—the thing that is to blame for all of it. For Mom leaving, unable to get away from this house fast enough.For Archer loving all the wrong people and keeping Mom’s letters from me. For Oak lying to me, loving me, when he never should have. For my own heart being turned inside out.
This garden has plagued me. It’s ruined me.
I walk out into the tulips, the hurt of it all like a fist around my dried-up heart.
My knees sink to the soil, and I let out a sob.
What if freedom from this house won’t really set me free? What if I’m no better than Mom—running away from the things I can’t face?
I read the postcard again, swiping at the tears, but they won’t stop falling. They leak into the already-wet soil. This damp, swampy land, this sinking house. I hate it all. I cry, and the sky answers back, thunder rumbling along the belly of the clouds. I dig my fingers into the dirt, ripping up the ground, and the rain begins to fall. It doesn’t begin gently—it falls in sudden sheets. And with each gasping breath in my lungs, the thunder shakes the air, rattling the earth beneath me. I think about fate, about Fern Goode choosing this awful patch of ground on which to build a home, dooming every generation that came after him, to suffer the same heartache, the same loss of love, the reminder of the tulips growing right outside our windows. I think about the magic in this soil, the curse, the bad luck that lives in my veins.
I think how unfair it is that one man’s decision to plant a few bulbs in this swampy dirt would plague me since birth.
Why can’t I choose something different?
Why isn’t there a way out, a way free from this dreadful life?
Why can’t I destroy what’s been sown into the soil? Destroy what Fern made, so I can begin again?
Tears well against my eyes, stream down my cheeks. How much pain can one girl bear in a single day? In a single life?
