Page 102 of The Midnight Garden

While I work, the bluebird attempts flight a few dozen times.

A dozen tries and a dozen fails.

My heart breaks at each attempt because I don’t know that I would have kept trying.

When Maeve’s recipe is ready, I pipe it into the bluebird’s mouth and wait. His breathing evens, but tension remains in his injured wing.

“I’m sorry.” My breath flutters his feathers. Something in my chest unlocks. “I’m so sorry.”

A moment passes, and the bird goes still.

My pulse tracks the seconds ticking by, and my breath becomes edged with the same raw sob that left me without a voice in the days after Brandon’s funeral.

Then, a movement. It’s so small, it has to be my imagination.

It happens again.

Then again.

Then a slow wing beat.

I hold my breath as the bird flaps his wings and, in a burst of energy, takes flight. He swoops around the kitchen, circling twice. In the time it takes me to blink, he disappears through the open window, where he melts into the clear blue sky.

I brace myself against the windowsill to find the bluebird.

Another figure, in a blue T-shirt, stands at the top of the hill.

He looks as stunned as I feel.

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m ...” He holds out a planter with a tiny stalk, a sad little thing with barely a nub pushing through the dirt. Somehow it’s already wilting. “Maeve’s plant. I figured I’d replant it. Try to save it.”

His gaze drinks me in, revealing more than I want to see.

“It needs water.”

He glances at the plant, then lifts his eyes to me. “The whole town needs water.”

“I heard ... I mean, I thought you left.”

“Leaving. Had a couple loose ends to take care of. I’m trying this thing where I don’t just run from my problems and leave other people to deal with them.”

His brown eyes fix on me, revealing something that takes my breath away, and ... Maeve was right. Will’s on a journey. He stumbled, but he’s righting himself.

My gaze lifts to the sky. “I’m glad you’ve found your way.”

“Hope,” he says, so quietly that my heart shatters. “I’m so sorry. For lying to you. For asking you to trust me and then not trusting you to know what was best for you. I—you trusted me with your heart, and I ruined that. If you can find a way to give me another chance, I won’t ruin it again.”

“Will ...”

“Come to LA with me. We’ll figure it out there. Away from all of this.” He gestures toward the woods, where Kingsette waits on the other side. “It’s this place. This fucking town.”

His eyes lock on mine, willing me to give the answer he wants, the answer I can’t give him because it’s trapped beneath a tidal wave of emotion that’s rising up.

“I can’t,” I say, the words escaping on a breath, and then gaining momentum. He pulls away from me.

The need to close this new distance is almost primal, but somehow, impossibly, I hold myself in place. Our story needs to end here, before we hurt each other more. “We can’t keep doing this to each other. You run, then I run. We’re just—we’re not good for each other. You have to see that too.”

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