Page 10 of The Manor of Dreams

Then she realized itwasfull.

How had she not noticed it before? In the center of the garden, Nora could see water spilling over the sides of the fountain. The space around it was flooded with vivid blooms in every color. Someone stood among the flowers, but Nora couldn’t make out who it was. Maybe the daughter of the other family?

How bizarre. Inside, the house was falling apart. But someone had been taking care of the grounds? Maintained an immaculate garden? And if so, why did her mother not want her to go near it?

Nora sighed. She crawled back into bed. She didn’t know if the bedside light was flickering again or if she was just struggling to keep her eyes open until she slid into sleep.

MADELINEheld on to a dim memory from five years ago when Ma had brought her to this house to visit her grandmother during Thanksgiving. They’d only stayed long enough to drop off food and groceries.Madeline remembered her mother and Wài Pó having a hushed, tense conversation in the foyer. “Get out,” Madeline had heard her grandmother say sharply. “I don’t want you here.”

“I didn’t want to come here in the first place,” Ma had shot back.

Her mother was silent on the drive home to Newport Beach. On the way, Madeline had asked what happened. “I suggested hiring a nurse to take care of her,” her mother had said, her fingers clutched tightly around the steering wheel. “And I invited her to come down to us for Thanksgiving. She said no to both.”

“Why?”

“She wants to be alone in that house,” Ma snapped. “So be it.”

“Why don’t we have dinner at Wài Pó’s house?” It was big enough, wasn’t it?

Her mother didn’t answer.

Why had her grandmother kicked them out? When she came to Newport Beach during Madeline’s childhood, she’d stay for weeks at a time. Ma would put together elaborate dinners. She’d hire a cleaner. Wài Pó would drift around, taking Madeline to the park and the ocean. And then after a few weeks she would pack her bags. Madeline always begged her to stay. “I can’t,??,” her grandmother would say. “I need to be home.” Ma would be in a stormy mood the rest of the day. Madeline would always feel like she’d disappointed her own mother in some way by failing to charm her grandmother into staying.

What had led her grandmother to become such a recluse that she avoided her own family? Her passing left Madeline with her own half-sketched questions. What had they done to her? Why would Wài Pó give this house away to another family?

In the early morning, Madeline paused at the top of the wide stone terrace behind the house, one hand on the carved balustrade. Gingerly, she stepped down, surveying the gardens before her. Or, the remains of a garden. Dark roots, long overgrown and rotten, sank into the earth. The mottled grounds stretched out far before her, and the unkempt tangle covered every inch. Madeline could just make out the remnants of walking paths, which cut through the gardens like a cross. In the middle was a cracked stone fountain, moss etched into its rippledgrooves. Vines clung to it, knotting into one another as they crawled up from the mess of roots and dirt. It was August, but not a single thing was in bloom.

It must have been beautiful once. But even with the grounds in this state, she felt a keen sense of envy every time she looked at it. Sure, Madeline had grown up without worry about her family’s financial situation. She’d gone to a private day school and her parents had paid for college. But she’d never lived anywhere that had this kind of grandeur before, and now she was only here because her grandmother had died. She had felt like a child again at the dining table yesterday, everything argued over and predetermined for her. As the only child of two lawyers, that was often the case. And it only got worse after her parents’ divorce. She had to be the tiebreaker and the peacemaker. It was instinctive now to play neutral and absorb other peoples’ emotions. Placating her mother was always the first step. She preferred to manage her own emotions—her anxiety, her panic—alone.

Madeline walked across the grounds. The choppy, uneven grass was shriveled and yellow, wilting in the dry heat. There were impending signs of wildfire season. The summer after her sophomore year of college, she’d been a volunteer lookout in Tahoe. She’d rise before the sun, shivering to the bone, and keep an eye on the shape of the clouds, the direction of any smoke. On good days, when the sky was clear, she marveled at the divinity of the landscape before her, at the tree line and the gentle layered slopes of the blue mountains cresting into the lake.

Ma said a degree in environmental studies was useless. How could you change the course of the earth? What jobs could she get? But Madeline had clung to her major. Ma had been right about the job prospects, though. At least here, in this house, with its spotty cellular connection, Madeline could take her mind off the silence in her inbox.

She surveyed the matted blanket of vines and roots and weeds. Everything seemed beyond reviving. But maybe after the dangers of wildfire season had passed, they could remove all this and plant a new garden? She at least knew how to take care of plants and help flowers sprout. That was a start.

Then, as she was scanning the trees that rimmed the perimeter ofthe garden, her eyes caught on color. At the other end of the garden, she knelt down, teasing the vines apart with her fingers to find a single rose.

A large, half-hidden bud, with soft, fresh pink petals was half-submerged among the parched stalks and shrubbery. Madeline reached for the flower on instinct. Maybe this gardenwouldheal. She stood and wiped her hands on her jeans, glancing up at the house as she wondered how to tend a rosebush….

Someone stared at her from one of the first-story windows. After the initial jolt of surprise, Madeline recognized her short hair. Nora. Madeline offered a tentative smile.

The curtains snapped shut.

The girl hadn’t spoken to anyone. Madeline had thought that them being around the same age might even evoke some transient affinity between them, but clearly she had been wrong.

Madeline dusted off her carefully maintained white shoes and walked back up the house and into an empty kitchen. The faint scent of rose clung to her, undercut by something sharper and metallic. Rust.

Guilt washed over her. She should have reached out to her grandmother more, tried to know her better. But her estrangement must have been intentional. Madeline’s family had been less than a hundred miles away. Something must have happened here, but now all Madeline knew was the fallout.

NORAmust have been dreaming about the garden.

She woke up that morning with the corner of her textbook imprinted on her cheek. She yanked open the curtains to find the fountain covered with a fine layer of moss, the roots tangled, and everything else dry and brown. But her dream had been so vivid. Nora was sure she’d seen flowers blooming last night and Madeline pacing among them, just like she was now.

Right then, Madeline looked up and a curious smile lit up her eyes. Maybe it hadn’t been her in the dream? Nora snapped the curtains closed, aware she’d been caught staring, and walked down the hall. “Ma?”

Her mother was curled in a fetal position in bed.

“Ma?” Nora moved quickly to her mother’s side. “You okay?”

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