“You’ve got a look on your face. What’re you thinking about?” Oliver asked, taking two Diet Cokes out of the refrigerator, and came to sit down with me again.
“I guess . . . do you know of any secret gardens?”
“What, like the book?” he asked, dropping back into his chair. He looked amused. “You think Lilymoor has one?”
“Couldn’t it?”
He shrugged and popped open the tab on his soda. It fizzed up, and he sipped the liquid that escaped onto the top. “I neverreally paid much attention to the gardens. You’d have to ask theothernephew about that, since he spent more time with Uncle Henry than I did, but good luck getting him to talk.”
“Cyrus?” I asked, hesitant. “Why?”
“HehatesLilymoor.” He shrugged. “Hasn’t been back in years.”
And yetsomehowhe was stuck in a garden here that he magically couldn’t escape from. “Ah.”
Oliver reached over to the bowl in the center of the table and took an apple, tossing it into his other hand. “You can ask Lala to call him if you want. Maybe he’ll pencil you into his schedule in two years.”
“That’s …”
“By design. I think he’d marry his job if he could. I wouldn’t be surprised if he sleeps in six-minute intervals.”
“Six minutes … ?” Maybethathad something to do with the garden and why he was trapped? What if he could only escape on the six-minute mark on the hour, or only at six o’clock or— “Six is odd.”
“It’s something about billing hours. He’s obsessed with it. It drives Lala crazy. Anyway, don’t go climbing hedges anymore, okay? That’s why we have ladders. And Wykofski.” He winked at that, and bit into the apple.
“Wykofski won’t get on a ladder.”
“Afraid of heights?” Oliver guessed.
“Lightning,” I corrected.
“Huh.”
My mind wandered back to the strange garden, because if the only other person who would know anything about a secret garden was the one currentlytrappedin said garden . . .
That struck me as strange, suddenly. “Are you sure he’s working? And he’s not—um—missing?”
“Pretty sure,” Oliver replied. “I mean, Lala talks to him all the time.”
But then, if Cyrus wasn’t missing outhere, how could he also be in the garden? Maybe Oliver was mistaken. He didn’t seem like he cared very much about Eula’s other nephew, anyway. I should have Eula call Cyrus, just to make sure, but how would I do that without it sounding odd?
I was so caught up in my own head, I didn’t realize Oliver had followed me out of the kitchen until he called my name. “Sophie?”
I spun around to him, distracted. “Yeah?”
“Are you hungry?” he asked the ground. “Would you want to go to dinner?”
“Oh no, I have a TV dinner in the freezer. Thank you, though,” I replied absently, and bid him good night. I took my Diet Coke with me as I left the house, my mind wandering as I traveled back down the garden path and over the Moon Bridge to my cottage. Maybe I could gently broach the subject of Cyrus with Eula, and then guide the conversation to calling him?
I was so caught up in planning that Oliver’s question didn’t sink in until I chose a TV dinner out of my freezer and immediately groaned. “Ohno. Did Oliver just ask me out? Like,dinnerdinner?”
I asked the Magic 8 Ball. The die tumbled and tumbled and tumbled and finally landed on an answer.
WITHOUT A DOUBT, the die read, but it might as well have been laughing at me.
18
psithurism
