Page 47 of Marrying the Gardener
“It doesn’t? Here I thought it revealed a stark absence of shame. Otherwise, my greatest-kept secret.”
“You’re still being cute, Kaleb. I gave you a packet that included an assessment of who I am and things I like, just in case you needed any of that information to be roughly accurate… All things considered, my father likely wouldn’t know if you were right or wrong, and he’d hardly care either way. I am of such little consequence compared to meeting him that knowing anything about me doesn’t matter.” I believe I wasted a great deal of energy explaining my backstory when I could have stopped atexists with the anatomy of a female. “The point is, you know a lot about me, but I hardly know anything about you beyond that you’re good at your job and like gardening. What other things do you like?”
“You.”
“Kaleb…”
He smiles. “Sorry. You left me wide open for that one.” His steady paintbrush strokes continue, coating more of the pot. “I like fairytales.”
“Fairytales?” I echo. That’s…unexpected.
He nods. “I had a book of Grimm’s Fairytales when I was on my own, after leaving my parents’ house. It was one of the only things to my name. I found it on a bus stop bench. I probably shouldn’t have taken it, but it was overcast that day, and I wasn’t sure it would be safe from the rain. So I took it. And I read it. Over and over.”
“Is that why you call me Rose-red? Wasn’t there a story about that character?”
“Yeah.” He smiles as he rinses his brush, chooses a smaller one, and dips it in the white I’m using. “Snow-White and Rose-Red. It’s a lesser-known story, overshadowed bySnow White and the Seven Dwarves. Snow-white and Rose-red arecompletely different characters, but they’re sisters, and they marry prince brothers.”
“Classic fairytale.”
“Quite. As the story goes, Snow-white was gentle. Rose-red was wild. Snow-white would often stay home and help her mother. Rose-red would seek adventure. Nevertheless, they adored one another, and whenever they’d go out together, they wouldn’t be far from the other’s side, pledging forever to stay united.”
“Like Crisis and I.”
His eyes twinkle as he takes great care in outlining flower petals on his pot in white paint. “Definitely a bond of similar intensity. My favorite part of the story is that the girls possessed something akin to a supernatural peace. They’d wander in forests and commune with the animals without any harm coming to them even if they fell asleep and stayed out all night. Fairytales often give main characters this overwhelming sense of community with nature. I longed for that serenity.”
“And you’ve found it with gardening?”
Kaleb pulls his attention off the lilies springing to life around his pot. “I found something like it when I left home. I use gardening as a means to connect with it still.”
My chest pinches. “I’m so sorry your home wasn’t safe.”
“I’m sorry yours still isn’t.” He cleans his brush, dries it, dips it in green to draw stamens that he tops with yellow. “Soon, I hope it will be. And I hope that I’ll be a part of it.”
I focus back on my pot, check that the acrylic white has dried, then rinse my brush to fill it with red. “What was it like being on your own?”
“Exhilarating. I didn’t know how bad I had it until I had nothing andnothingwas so much better than everything I’d had before. Even though the guilt for leaving remained a constant companion, it never even suggested I go back. Home was…vile,Crimson.” His voice softens, and I find myself watching him again, barely having added a petal to the idea of a nameless flower on my pot. Eyes hard, Kaleb works a green paisley design around the lip of his pot. “Nothing was ever good enough. They werealwaysangry. They were selfish. They treated us like slaves, dogs… We existed to make them look better, but we could never do it well enough.”
I…know what that’s like. Softly, I ask, “We?”
He freezes, glances at me, wets his lips, and nods. “I have siblings.”
“Are they okay?”
“I’d…rather not talk about them.”
“I’m so sorry.”
He shakes his head, forces the edge of a smile to his lips. “Don’t be. It’s okay. They are fine, now. It’s just hard to think about how I was the one who left them to handle our parents by themselves. I know they had each other, and I know I was the least favorite, the most useless, the one our parents hit the most because I mattered the least and they just…they justlikedhitting something that screamed.” Kaleb’s wounded eyes dart past the several seats separating us from everyone else, and he gathers himself, keeping his voice hushed. “I know that, but still. I wish I could have done something more. Something to save my family. All of us think like that, though. We all wanted to save each other. I was just the only one who gave up and left. I might spend the rest of my life beating myself up over it as I fight to accept how deeply they…still love me.”
“You’ve got a bond like the sisters in your story.”
“Yeah.” His smile falters when he focuses on me. “Except I broke my promise to stay united, and I know, now that we’re older, no one blames me, but I still struggle to find my place around them when they had to suffer at our parents’ hands nearly a decade longer than I did. While I was eating well andenjoying life and burying my frustrations in…” He glances at my hair, looks back down at his hands, paints another shape. “…in women…they suffered. I can’t forgive myself, even though they’ve forgiven me.”
“Do you think that’s hard on them?” I ask. “Seeing you continue to hurt, I mean.”
“Probably. But I don’t know how to stop. I don’t know how to get past this feeling that I could have donesomething. I could have gotten older with them, stronger with them. And I could have been the one to—toget rid ofour parents myself.”
My heart thumps. “You…you think you would have been able to…” I whisper, “…killthem?”
