Page 81 of The Midnight Garden

I nod, though I want to grab her hand and pull her inside with me. No, I want to grab her hand and race out of here, go back to poaching bartenders and impressing her with my limited Kingsette social savvy,and ... none of that is really an option either. If we weren’t here, we wouldn’t be there either.

She walked away from me. She asked me to let her go.

Hope slides open the door, and I enter, instantly missing her.

Beeps and shrieks from the machines monitoring my brother greet me. A machine for his heart. One for his blood pressure. Another for—I don’t even know. I swivel around, but Hope is gone.

Darren lies in the bed. The blanket pulled over him hugs his torso, revealing narrow shoulders and bone-thin arms. Shrunken even from the man who I saw just weeks ago. A deep-purple bruise circles his right eye. A bandage across his left cheek completes the tableau.

The only other time I saw Darren with a black eye was when he’d fought some older kid who’d been bullying me. Our mother didn’t punish Darren. Instead, she told him violence wasn’t the answer, but that sometimes rules had to be broken. We went out for ice cream afterward.

The thought of her makes my jaw clench.

My mother should be here. She should be here for her son. She should be here to take care of things at her Inn. She should be here to pay back her loan, deal with her staff that’s abandoning ship faster than I can keep track, and fix everything that’s broken.

Hope and a doctor find me pacing the room.

The doctor explains how Darren was found, the condition he was in, and the medications they administered. Her words go in one ear and out the other. Overdose. Stomach pump. Permanent damage. I catch just enough to understand. He’s stable now and will be monitored overnight.

“He may be discharged as early as tomorrow afternoon, but I suggest he not go straight home,” the doctor says, handing me two sheets of paper. “He needs a treatment facility, or he’ll end up right back here.”

I thank her, and Hope walks with her to the doorway. They exchange a whispered conversation, and then Hope returns, dimming the lights on her way toward me. She pulls over the second chair and sits beside me, as if she has nowhere else to be.

Like in the car, her silent company feels like a grounding. Or maybe like the calm in the eye of the storm.

Cool air hums through the vents. Hope shivers and then smooths Darren’s blanket. His fingers flutter at her tender touch.

Memories rush up like floodwater. The rattle in my father’s lungs as he struggled for breath. The small light my mother kept on in the evening as she sat vigil by his bedside night after night. The hole Darren punched through the wall. The hollow hiss of a last breath.

“My dad died in the hospital,” I say, because giving voice to the words that are drowning me feels like reaching for a lifeboat. “He was diagnosed with lung cancer when I was twelve, went to the hospital—this hospital, actually—and never came out.”

Darren’s heart rate monitor shrieks, the numbers climbing as if he’s remembering the same moment.

“Darren was never the same. I mean, none of us were. But Darren ... it was too much for him. He started stealing liquor, and I started covering for him. I think I knew it was bad, but he seemed so fine most of the time, and I thought ... I thought I’d know when he hit the tipping point. Or someone else would know and they’d pull him back, but it doesn’t work like that.”

“You and Darren had to grow up fast.”

“It’s not an excuse. You and Tessa had to—”

“I’m not feeding you an excuse. I’m not saying you can’t or shouldn’t feel guilty. I am saying you did the best you could with what you knew as a kid. Now you know different, and you have the choice to do different. If you want to show up for Darren, show up. See him for who he is, though, not who you think he can be or used to be.”

I frown. “You sound like Maeve when you lecture me.”

She grins, flashing all her teeth. “Young widowhood made me wise, what can I say?”

My heartbeat finds a new rhythm, the inverse of the one it has played my entire life.

Hope turns serious. “What do you need right now?”

I press my elbows into my knees and cradle my head in my hands. “I don’t know, but I imagine asking for a strong drink wouldn’t be appropriate at this moment.”

Hope breathes a surprised laugh, and I want to hold on to the lightness of the sound in this dense room.

“Sorry, that joke was probably in poor taste.”

She waves off my apology. “Wisdom and morbid humor are my widow superpowers. The darker the better. You should see some of the memes my online widow group shares.”

She begins to describe some of the memes and jokes she’s heard from her online widow tribe, as she calls them. Her stories fill in the space between beeps so that my thoughts can’t take over. It’s the kindest thing anyone has done for me in a long time.

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