Slowly, he shook his head. “I remember this. I remember him writing in this journal. I remember him talking about these plans—the flower beds, the willow tree swing, the trumpet vine gazebo . . . He wanted it ready for the bicentennial.” He sucked in a breath, sitting up a little straighter. “He said hewanted to make a special garden for Eula—a golden-hour garden. That’s why it’s always sunset in here.”
“And why I can only come here in the evenings,” I filled in, realizing.
The termgolden houritched something in my brain—something Harrie once said, in all her romanticized stories.Golden hourwas another name formagic hour, a time in folklore when the inexplicable was stronger. The precipice of day and evening. Like the old folktales of halfway places—shores where land and sea met and cliff sides where land and sky combined. Lilymoor had all of them—shore and cliffs, sea and land and sky.
“I think …” Rus looked around at the garden again, at all the half-finished thoughts, as if his uncle had left in the middle of a sentence and never returned. He closed the journal with a soft sigh. “Henry always said that the inexplicable at Lilymoor was more potent when things were left undone. It runs wild with hope and unrealized dreams—that’s the crux of Lilymoor’s magic.”
“You hear yourself, don’t you?”
He massaged the bridge of his nose. “Sophie, we’re sitting in a garden that has me trapped in a liminal space at sunset,” he pointed out. “Yes, I hear myself.”
“But what you’re saying is that …” I motioned with my hands, trying to find the right way to explain it. “That Lilymoor isalive?”
He tilted his head one way, then the other. “No, yes … I’m not sure? I know how I sound, trust me. But Henry always swore that there was magic here. He couldn’t explain it. He just said I’d know when it happened.”
“Like the voices in the hedges?” I asked skeptically. “Thatstory?”
“That’s an old legend from before Eula and Henry. That’s why they bought Lilymoor, famously,becauseof the legend.”
I must have missed that in the documentary, too enraptured by the delphiniums. Harrie would know more—she was the one who cared about the lore of Lilymoor, instead of its flowers.
“I believe,” he went on, thinking aloud, “that Lilymoor wants me to finish this garden for the bicentennial. That’s why I can’t leave, but you can.” He looked thoughtfully at me, a thin wrinkle furrowing the middle of his brow. “Because it knew I’d need help.”
The idea, as far-fetched as it sounded, was taking root for me, too, but there was still the elephant in the room. “So . . . whereisthis garden, then?”
“I don’t know,” Rus admitted, nervously flicking the top corner of the journal page back and forth. “But how else could we be here if it wasn’tsomewhere?”
Thatwasthe question, wasn’t it. “Okay,” I said, taking a deep breath, “I’ll look for it. If itissomewhere on the property, I’ll find it. No pressure.”
“None at all,” he agreed sarcastically, and closed the journal. “In the meantime, I guess I’ll have to . . . get myhandsdirty.” The way he said it sounded like he was being asked to commit a murder.
“Oh, how terrible,” I deadpanned.
“Atrociously. And in these shoes?”
I glanced down at his loafers. “I’ve seen those at Walmart.”
He made a face like I had just insulted his mother. “These are Tom Ford.”
“Then you’ll have to apologize to him for getting them dirty,” I replied, and picked at his collar. “Is your shirt also a proper noun, too?”
“Ralph Lauren …”
I barked a laugh. “This is too easy.”
“I do look good, though,” he pointed out, and then a thought occurred to him. He held up the journal. “Where did you find this?”
“Oliver took me to go see the greenhouse,” I replied, “and I found it there in the remains of the building, beneath the workbench.”
“Ah.” His voice was tight.
“He … told me what happened. About the fire. He said you took the blame for it all,” I ventured, “and then you left.” His face shuttered as he took off his glasses and placed them in his shirt pocket. Above us, the blooms of the crab apple began to wilt. “I did. So did he.”
“He misses you, I think,” I said, remembering about the far-off look Oliver got sometimes when he talked about Rus. “And I don’t even think he realizes it.”
He clicked his tongue to the roof of his mouth. “I doubt it. We haven’t talked in years.”
“Well, if you’d talked you’d know that healsoblames himself for the fire. He hates himself so much that he hasn’t moved on. He’s stuck here, like you.”
