Page 96 of The Manor of Dreams

JULY 2024

A WEEK BEFORE VIVIAN YIN IS FOUND DEAD

VIVIANknew it. The garden was finally coming for her.

At night she dreamed that she stood in the empty, dark foyer. Vines burst through the granite floors and redwood walls. They laced around her limbs and brought her to her knees. They wrenched bones from joints in her fingers and limbs, ripped tendons apart. They wrapped around her neck, crushing the breath from her throat, until spots filled her vision; until the roots gouged through flesh and organs, until her blood pooled on the ground. Until the vines covered the floor, until the house splintered and sank into the ground. Until it finally flooded withherrage. Night after night for the past few months, Vivian had dreamed of this.

She swore she could feel the roots twist and tremble underneath the foundations of the house. Dreams of her husband’s decomposing head had long faded. There were no more visions of Laura and Amos Dalby. Their ghosts, finally, were silenced, overtaken by the presence of the gardener’s daughter.

Vivian had been aware of the garden all these years. She’d watched the roses wilt in the fall, and fade into the ground for the winter. In the summer, they would bloom all over again. She’d stare out the window until she could see Sophie’s figure, tending to them in the dark. Some nights she’d even seen blood trickle from the roses’ centers.

Vivian understood that something of Sophie was trapped in the garden. She sensed her anger and she wanted nothing to do with it. She hadstayed in the house, never stepping foot in Sophie’s domain, hoping for her presence to fade with time, like everyone had said Vivian’s grief would. But years became decades, and Sophie’s rage only grew. Repairmen who came to look at leaks in the basement and problems with the pipes said that roots from the garden had pushed their way through the cracks in the rock foundation. The house was buckling. It was only a matter of time.

She had been warned on her wedding day, after all.

Now, Vivian sat at the long dining table with one rice bowl in front of her, and another at the place next to her. She watched the afternoon light shift. She should have left a long time ago. That’s what her oldest had told her.You can’t live in that big house alone, Lucille had tried to reason with her. She needed company. She needed help. But Vivian refused to go. Because there was one final, crucial reason to stay.

She turned and said softly in Mandarin, “It’s time for dinner.”

Something shimmered at the corner of her vision. Then her daughter appeared by the dining room chair. She still had her bright eyes and rounded cheeks. She wore a T-shirt and jeans, the same as she appeared to Vivian every day.

Ada sat down in front of her meal.

Vivian saw her own spotted hands; her skin had sagged and her limbs ached with sharp pain constantly. But her daughter was seventeen. And she would stay seventeen, doe-like and radiant in her youth. Vivian wanted to throw her arms around her. Ada had once had lifetimes ahead of her, and eras to grow into. Vivian would never forgive herself for the fact that Ada was trapped in this house too.

“Listen,” Vivian said. “I’m going to get you out of here.”

Her daughter looked at her wistfully.

“You tried, Ma. You keep trying.”

“No. This time I’m going to do it. You have to go.”

Ada shook her head. “There’s just no use anymore.”

“Don’t you feelher?”

Vivian saw her daughter’s expression shift to fear. Slowly she nodded. “There’s no love now. Only anger,” Ada whispered.

“I have these dreams,” Vivian said softly, “where the garden is tearing me apart.”

Her daughter said nothing.

“She wants me. I know it.”

“You need to go,” Ada said. “You can still leave this place. I’ll stay behind.”

“My dear daughter,” Vivian said, her voice breaking. “You know I’d never leave you.”

This was why she’d stayed. After that horrific summer, Lucille and Renata had floated away, cut themselves from their anchor. Vivian had let them, partly because she knew it was good for them, but partly because her other child was still here, keeping her company. Each night Ada appeared for dinner. Decades of truth lay bare between them. They were mother and daughter; they would always be together.

And Vivianhadtried, desperately, to free her daughter from this house. She’d tried every ritual she could find. She’d reached for the occult and said prayer after prayer. She’d begged to God and to the heavens and every deity to let Ada go. To let her finally move on, to rest, to be at peace.

“She wants me,” Vivian muttered. “She wants to ruin me the way I ruined her.”

There was silence.

“I’m going to do it,” Vivian said. “I’m too old, Ada. I can’t leave you here.”

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