In a month, Harrie would go off to grad school at UCLA and I would take an internship at the New York Botanical Garden. We’d be on opposite sides of the country soon, and though I didn’t say it aloud, I hated the idea of it. Not because I was afraid we wouldn’t be friends anymore when we weren’t in the same place, but because what if something happened? I was so used to her buying the milk when we ran out, and me paying the rent on time whenever she was too deep in her studies to remember. I counted on the smell of freshly baked cookies everyThursday, and falling onto the couch with her and a box of wine to watchThe Bachelorafter a particularly awful date.
But I knew that couldn’t last forever.
So I wanted to go slow. I wanted to stretch out this afternoon as long as possible, but Harrie could barely contain her excitement.
“Come on, comeon! We’re wasting time,” she said, looping her arm through mine, and pulled me up the steps to the moss-colored front door, and inside. Lilymoor was open and free to the public—it always had been—but it was emptier than I expected.
For the next three hours we got ourselves lost in the beautiful manor and its wildflowers and mazelike hedges and native trees. The gardens were so serpentine that the world disappeared the moment you turned a corner. I couldn’t tell you how the garden was laid out because it felt like between one step and another, you were always somewhere different. It constantly shifted from meadowy woodlands to pristine box-woods to lattice walls of wild roses beside a bubbling brook that seemed to dip in and out of almost every scene like a wellknown visitor.
“I can see why people think they can hear a voice,” I remarked as we moved through the Hedges, a hedge maze on the eastern side of the manor. “The wind coming up from those cliffs isloud.”
As I said it, another gust howled through the boxwood hedges, causing two birds to startle and take flight into the late evening sky. It must have been close to seven-thirty—Lilymoor closed at sunset, so we had another hour at most. I dreaded it more and more.
Harrie glanced over her shoulder at me. “You don’t believe it could be real?”
I shrugged. “It’s been debunked, like, at least a dozen times.”
“You can at leastpretendto not be a skeptic.”
“I just don’t think beautiful gardens need tacky lore and ghost stories to make them interesting. They stand on their own.”
“It’s nottacky!” she argued, affronted. “I mean, who wouldn’t want to hear the voice of their truest love? It’s magical.”
“There’s no such thing as magic.”
“Sophie, you can’t look at all of this and tell me you don’t believe in magic.” She raised her hands and spun around. “I think,” she challenged, “you’re being so obstinate because you want to believe it’s alittletrue.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and shrugged again. I sort of hated how well she knew me sometimes. “It’s the wind, Harrie.”
She smiled. “It’s magic,” she replied, and marched ahead.
“The wind,” I argued, following her. Though when I turned the corner, she was already around the next turn. Leave it to her to never look back.
“Magic!” she called back.
“Magically thewind, then!” When she didn’t answer, I called, “Harrie?”
Another heavy gust of wind shook the branches.
I sighed to the sky. I took my eyes off her for one second, and suddenly she was gone. She wasn’t around the next turn, or the next. Every corridor looked the same, apart from the stone busts hidden in the boxwoods like half-overgrown secrets.
“Harrie, slow down,” I called ahead. “I’ve lost you.”
I kept wandering. She couldn’t be very far.
Then I came to a dead end, so I doubled back. I’d read once that the trick to mazes was just to hug the right side, and eventually you’d find your way out, but of course I didn’t do that. I was sure Harrie had, just as I was sure she was at the end of the maze right now, laughing.
Harrie’s words earlier jabbed at me. “You’re being so obstinate because you want to believe it’s alittletrue.” Maybe.
But if therewasthe voice of my truest love somewhere on the wind, I didn’t hear it.
Though on closer inspection of a William Shakespeare bust that seemed to be giving me a sideeye, I did remember something from the PBS documentary. In it, a little kid with red hair and a face full of freckles had said, “If you ever get lost, just follow the eyes!”
So I did just that.
When I finally came around the last corner, there—framed in the arched exit—was my best friend. She clicked her tongue to the roof of her mouth, shaking her head. “You weren’tthatfar away.”
I wasn’t sure what she meant—I hadn’t said anything at all. “Sorry, I got a little lost,” I replied.
