Page 101 of The Midnight Garden

“I ran after her,” I say, my voice rising with protest, though I’m not sure I even convince myself this time. “She’s not interested. I have to respect that.”

Darren looks out the window, at the bluebird still sitting there watching us. “You ran after her, but did you really try to catch her, or were you just going through the motions?”

39

HOPE

An ache swells in my chest as I crest the trail and take in Maeve’s cottage and the empty space where Maeve’s tree once stood. The grass over that patch of land is smooth, unblemished. As if a tree with gnarled roots and carved branches were never more than my imagination. A trick of the light.

With a steadying breath, I get to work. Maeve has only been gone a few weeks, and despite my best efforts, the flowers have lost some of their brightness and the stalks have a limpness that wasn’t there before.

Or maybe the drought, which has decimated most gardens in Kingsette, has finally struck Maeve’s garden too. When she left, she took whatever magic had protected them with her.

After I’ve finished watering, pruning, and harvesting a few flowers and plants to brew some of Maeve’s most popular teas—specifically her sleep aid and heartbreak tea—I set to work searching for the final plant I need to brew the tea Maeve left for me.

The more I think about nursing school and that apartment in Newport, the more unsure I am about any of it. It’s moving—real moving—forward, but is it the forward I want?

But if not Newport and not Greece, then what?

A breeze bends the flowers, and I imagine Maeve laughing somewhere with a tree strapped to her back.

For an hour, I pick through Maeve’s garden, studying each stem and petal. The final flower I need for Maeve’s tea isn’t in her garden. The blanchefleur, the hundred-leaved rose, is not growing anywhere around the cottage either.

Maeve never mentioned this flower to me, but Google filled me in. The blanchefleur is not native to Rhode Island and probably would do terrible here, but Maeve has a way of making things grow, even things that should be impossible.

Still, I don’t see the flower.

Sweat beads on my forehead, and I wipe it with the back of my arm, which feels gritty.

Why would Maeve leave me a tea recipe that contained a flower she doesn’t have in her garden?

Even as the question enters my mind, the answer has already formed. Because she wants to encourage me to leave the garden. To travel and find the flower and make the tea. Maybe because what I need isn’t here, in this plot of land. Maybe it’s heading to LA with a man whose suitcases were never unpacked.

I think of Will, and a weight drops onto my shoulders. He didn’t say goodbye.

Maybe it wasn’t fair to hope for it.

A small chirp startles me out of my thoughts. A moment later, a flurry of blue appears in the corner of my vision.

“You’re still here?” Tears in the backs of my eyes feel ridiculous—Icarus is just a bird.

He stops fluttering long enough for me to see the way he’s holding his wing.

As if it’s broken again.

It couldn’t be. Maeve fixed him.

In response to my disbelief, Icarus tries and fails to take flight. His left wing doesn’t match the movements of the right.

“I can’t. It’s not—I’m just keeping the garden, and not even doing that well.”

The bird makes a small sound. It echoes in the empty space surrounding us.

I’m this bird’s only hope. Either I do nothing, and Icarus will never soar. Or I try something. It might not work. I might fail. But it’s worth the risk.

I scoop him up the way Maeve did that first day and carry him inside.

In the kitchen, I craft the recipe Maeve taught me, using calendula and jasmine. It’s not long before the kitchen smells as it did that day I arrived with an emergency bird kit. It feels like forever ago.

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