Love is more than desire: It’s power. Deceit. You can command armies with love; you can alter the world. As long as I’m a Goode, no matter how far away I travel, these tulips will still bloom, and they will still curse my blood. I will never know if the love others feel for me is real.
Real freedom is not a town on the Pacific coast where no one knows my name.
Freedom is a swamp of destroyed tulips that will never bloom again.
I tilt my chin up to the sky and I scream. I tell the storm that I hate this place, every last inch of it. I beg the rain to take it away, to rip this land up from the bedrock and carry it out into the woods, as if it were never here at all.
With my broken heart beating hollow and empty inside me, I weep, and I plead, and I wish this house had never been built over the creek; I wish Fern Goode had never sailed across the Atlantic. I wish these tulips had never pushed their way to the surface, greedy and full of false love. Full of lies. Full of spite.
And strangely, with force, the storm replies.
My feet, my knees, feel suddenly cold and wet. The ground beneath me turns soft, muddy, as if a tide were rising up from the dirt, a lake bubbling to the surface. I wipe at my eyes and turn back to see Forsaken Creek has swelled beyond its banks and is now spilling outward like a dam that’s burst.
I push myself up, water swirling around me, rushing with the force of a river.
The sky snaps again, lightning flaring across the horizon, and the rain throws itself over me like tiny pebbles stinging my skin. I push through the rising swell of the creek, now flooding through the garden, and wade up to the porch, grabbing the sagging railing to pull myself up the steps.
I stand for moment, staring out at the downpour—stunned. I’ve never seen anything like it. Nearly a foot of water now surges among the tulip stalks, making them sway and bend against one another. Threatening to snap.
But it’s not only the garden that heaves against the force of the water. The porch beneath me begins to shift unsteadily, the posts in the ground starting to lose their footing.
My heart thuds. This is not a normal rainstorm; this is something else. Violent and unnatural. A torrent that is only getting worse.
Shit.
I turn for the door and scramble back inside. But the sound of the storm beats against the roof, and I can hear that the creek—usually a gentle stream spilling over rocks—is now a roar, tearing away the soil beneath the floorboards.
I sprint down the hall and duck into Archer’s room to be sure he hasn’t returned, but I find his room empty. The lights overhead flicker, then go out. There is a loudpopsound from the kitchen, and I know one of the circuits has blown. We’ve lost all power. The usual hum of the refrigerator has gone quiet, and back in the living room, all I can hear is the screaming wind, the echoing thunder, and the creek below the house becoming turbulent and angry.
For a moment I stand frozen, unsure what to do.
But the house doesn’t give me time to decide….
It begins to shake and teeter beneath me.
I hear a loud crack, followed by another.
The house is separating from its foundation.
This is bad.My eyes cut to the front door, but the wall tilts strangely, like it’s going to buckle. The window above the kitchen table shatters, glass exploding to the floor. I swivel around, and the garden is churning in the wind, everything blustery and tempestuous beyond the windows. But it’s not the world outside that’s swaying; it’s the house where I stand. It feels like standing in Oak’s rowboat, pitching from side to side as the floodwater lifts it up from the soil. I can’t stay here any longer. My legs take a staggering step, and I find myself slipping back, the house now tilted, the couch beginning to ease away from the wall and slide toward me. I nearly drop to my knees but somehow stay upright, feet scrambling across the wood floor.
I reach the front door, grabbing the knob with both hands. But it doesn’t swing open. It’s wedged shut. The walls of the house have shifted, buckled, and I yank at the knob, panic rising in my chest.
But it won’t move.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
Water begins to bubble up beneath the floorboards, cold and churning.
Fear wells up inside me, and I scream, eyes darting around the room. In the kitchen, rain pours in through the broken window. I stagger toward it, wet shoes crunching on the glass. A jagged layer of glass remains at the bottom of the window; if I try to climb through, I’ll tear my flesh apart.
But I don’t have a choice—the house begins to tilt onto its side,water spilling up from below. I slide a chair in front of the window and step up, when I hear a thud against the outer wall of the house. I pause, listening, and I hear it again, another loud smack.
My heart races, fear pulsing against my eardrums, unsure what’s causing the sound.
Thud, thud… crack.
I back away from the window, from the wall, afraid the whole house is about to collapse in on itself. The creek sounds like a torrent, a river expanding and swelling outward, swallowing up everything.
