Page 144 of Love Arranged
We both watch her disappear around the corner, and from my angle, it looks like the overgrown hedge swallowed her whole.
I stand andhead over to Lily, who went back to checking out the fountain. “What do you think?”
“It works.” Her voice is strained.
“Now we have to fix up the rest of it.”
A bone in her neck cracks from how quickly she turns to look at me. “What do you mean?”
“Your garden needs some love.” I rub a speck of dirt off the side of the fountain, which could use a good pressure wash.
She stays quiet.
I speak up. “Your mom told me how much you love it here.”
Her shoulders slump. “I did—I mean, I do.” She shakes her head. “It’s…complicated.”
“For the record, the vaguer your responses, the more interested I become.”
I pull her into an embrace so she has no chance of escaping this conversation.
“I don’t know how to talk about it,” she says, exasperated.
“There is a first for everything.”
She swats my chest with a laugh, and the tightness in it lessens.
“Honestly?” She looks around the garden. “I couldn’t deal with it…or myself, for that matter.”
“What do you mean?”
She eyes the bench. “Can we sit down for this conversation?”
“Of course.”
Once she takes a seat, I wrap my arm around her. “Comfortable?”
She seems to be with how she melts into me, but her quiet “Yeah” confirmsit.
“So, you were saying?”
“My dad was big on two things.”
“What were they?”
“A motto that was his catchphrase:Un Muñoz nunca se rinde. A Muñoz never quits.”
I nod. “And the other?”
“Wishes.”
I shoot her a look. “How so?”
She flushes under my gaze. “You know. Like close your eyes, make a wish, and toss the coin into the fountain.”
“That explains the coins. I was wondering about them when I dropped off your keys.”
“It was something special I had with him. He and Dahlia had their own thing together, but this was mine. Anyway,” she says, drawing in a gulp of air. “When I was little, he gave me this small bag of gold coins. There weren’t a ton, but he told me to use them wisely.”
