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Lowell’s hands dug deep in the Pauly snack cabinet, foraging for something to eat. They emerged gripping a crinkly sleeve, but Lowell’s triumphant grin slipped off his face when he saw his prize. “ Fig Newtons? You seriously have the worst snacks.”

Rose leaned a hip against the kitchen counter, arms folded over her chest. “They’re my dad’s preferred writing fuel.”

“No wonder he hasn’t written a good book in years.”

Rose narrowed her eyes. “What was that?”

“Nothing.”

“We also have peanuts,” she said. “Honey-roasted.”

“Please don’t say ‘honey-roasted’ like that makes up for it. It’s like me finding a dead body in here and going, ‘Still warm!’” Despite his protests about the Fig Newtons, Lowell bit down on the packet and tore it open with his teeth.

Rose followed him to the living room. Living with a single dad who was hyper-focused on knocking out a few pages whenever he had a free minute meant that decorating the house wasn’t a top priority. Since they’d moved to Meadow Falls, the little pink ranch house had remained pretty drab. Mr. Pauly’s writing desk, typewriter, and stacks of books cluttered one side of the room, the TV wasn’t attached to the wall, and a moving box full of, ironically, coffee table books stood in for an actual coffee table.

There was a couch, though. And Lowell sank into it like it belonged to him. He reclined into its corner, elbow draped over the top, one long leg planked onto the cardboard coffee table. Rose sat on the other end of the couch.

“So,” Lowell said around a mouthful of Newtons. “You going to the next garden party? Of course you are. Ugh , what are these things made of, dates?”

“ Figs ,” Rose said. “It’s in the name. And Hart hasn’t mentioned a party.”

Seeing her blank look, Lowell said, “It’s the fall equinox in less than two weeks.”

Right. She had completely forgotten about the equinox/solstice party tradition, and it clearly wasn’t top of mind for Hart, either, because it’d never come up. But Rose remembered the last garden party and was suddenly itching to go to another one. “Yeah, I’ll be there,” she said.

“Good, I’ll be your plus-one.”

“Pretty sure I’m already someone’s plus-one.”

Lowell ignored her. “I wanna re-create a moment from the last party.”

“A moment?” Rose asked, eyebrows waggling. But Lowell played coy, the corners of his lips curling as he chewed. He was stalling, wordlessly implying some secret, delicious thing, and it dawned on Rose what he was alluding to. She resented getting reeled into this conversation. “This isn’t about Heather, is it?”

“Of course it’s about Heather!” Lowell said, bouncing in his seat and getting Fig Newton crumbs all over the couch. “We shared something in that hedge maze. And I wanna get back in there. She showed me a secret part of her garden.”

“Gross.”

Lowell laughed. “Seriously, Rose!”

“What exactly did she show you?” Rose was going for casual, sitting back and tucking her legs up beneath her. But she cared about Lowell’s answer more than she wanted to admit.

“Just plants, I guess. Flowers. We talked about stuff but honestly, I don’t remember much about it ’cause, like”—he let out a long breath—“Heather’s super distracting.”

Rose stared at Lowell, and he felt the need to clarify.

“I mean her face and boobs and legs and stuff.” He punctuated this explanation with hand gestures, squeezing imaginary melons in front of his chest.

“Lowell.”

“Whaaat?” he whined. “That was the closest I have ever physically been to Heather Hargrove. Did you expect me not to check her out? Anyway, it was deeper than that. We sat on the grass and talked about what we both wanted out of life. Planted roots in our budding relationship. Planted seeds, even. It was nice. You know, Heather gets a bad rap but she’s, like, a sensitive flower child. Come on, aren’t you excited for the party, too? I’m going back to that garden and I’m gonna get some dirt. Literally.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, a sample of the dirt.” He put the packet of Fig Newtons down so he could mime sprinkling dirt into a little vial.

“A sample of the—Lowell, why ?”

Lowell stuffed two Fig Newtons into his mouth, one on top of the other. “To get it tested, dummy.”

“Lowell, I spent all summer in that garden. There’s nothing strange about the dirt there.”

“Nah, literally everything about that garden is strange,” he countered. “You know the Hargroves’ own gardeners aren’t allowed anywhere near the hedge maze?”

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s true! Totally off-limits to them. Don’t tell me that’s not weird. But I’m gonna get to the bottom of it. I’m gonna come out with answers. I’m gonna—”

Mr. Pauly walked through the front door, and though Rose and Lowell weren’t doing anything bad, they both froze up when they saw him.

“Hello,” Mr. Pauly said, giving Lowell a once-over. “Jim Pauly, nice to meet you.”

“Hi. Lowell Chamberlain.”

“A man with two last names,” Mr. Pauly said approvingly. “You know, a name like that would look great on a byline.”

Lowell looked bemused. Rose groaned. “Dad.”

“Sorry, did I say something embarrassing?” Mr. Pauly tossed his keys onto the console table by the door and crossed into the living room. “What were you kids talking about?”

“Nothing,” Rose said.

“The upcoming party at Hemlock Hill,” Lowell said.

“Ah,” Mr. Pauly said, hands on hips. “A Hargrove garden party. Do they still put on those fantastic trapeze acts?”

The kids looked at him blankly and Mr. Pauly let out a sigh. “Okay, you got me, I have no idea what happens at a Hemlock Hill party. Won’t somebody please put me out of my misery and tell me?”

“Dad,” Rose said again.

“What?” Mr. Pauly raised his hands in surrender. “I’m just trying to make sure you don’t get up to anything too crazy. School started. Time for me to step back as the primary decision maker and allow you to take the reins as a young adult responsible for her own smart choice not to stay out all night drinking. Or juggling swords—again, I have no idea what happens at these parties.”

Lowell stretched into a standing position and walked over to Rose’s dad to hand him the sleeve of Fig Newtons. “Thanks for these,” he said. “But maybe you could get real cookies next time? White chocolate macadamia are my favorite.” He grabbed his backpack by the door. “See ya,” he called to Rose.

Mr. Pauly waited for the door to slam shut before turning to Rose and asking, “Is that the new boyfriend?”

“A world of no .”

He looked inside the crinkly package. “He ate all my Fig Newtons.”

Rose finished up her sketch of Mr. Davis while he sat in bed, propped up by pillows. And though her subject remained the same, every portrait of Mr. Davis turned out different from the last. In this one, the lines of his face sank deeper, the hollows of his cheeks darker, shaded with a firmer press of Rose’s hand. But the biggest, most noticeable difference came from the oxygen cannula beneath his nose and the tube sweeping across the width of the paper.

Mr. Davis talked less these days, which made Rose instinctively talk more. She shut the sketchbook on her lap and smiled. “I’m calling in sick tomorrow, but don’t worry, I’m just playing hooky.” Now that school had started, she’d switched her shifts to Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays.

Mr. Davis’s eyes crinkled as he smiled, tears staining his lower lids as they sometimes did. “Going somewhere special?”

Rose nodded. “It’s the fall equinox party at Hemlock Hill.”

“Ah,” Mr. Davis said, nodding.

Rose scooted to the edge of her seat and leaned in. Mr. Davis always had an interesting perspective on the Hargroves, and it occurred to her that he might get a kick out of Lowell’s ridiculous theories about the place. “I have a friend who’s going, too,” she said. “He has this plan to collect samples of the dirt and get it tested.”

One of Mr. Davis’s wiry eyebrows arched like an inchworm. “Get it tested for what?”

“He thinks there’s something special about the dirt, I guess? Who knows.”

“It’s just regular old dirt,” Mr. Davis said.

“That’s what I told him.”

“It’s the hedge maze that’s special.”

Rose was about to agree with this too before she stopped herself. “What?”

“Well, ‘special’ isn’t the right word for it.” Mr. Davis readjusted the cannula so it fit better in his nostrils. “‘Strange’ is more like it.”

Rose sat back. “What do you mean?”

“The maze,” he said, as if it was obvious. “It’s unsolvable.”

Confusion itched the back of her mind. “I don’t understand. It’s hard to get out of?”

Mr. Davis shook his head. “You don’t solve it by getting out. You solve it by finding the center.”

Rose thought back to her first night in the garden and Hart’s reluctance to take her through the maze. But she also remembered Heather and Lowell going through it just fine. Maybe they hadn’t reached the center? “What’s in there?”

Mr. Davis shrugged, his shoulders dislodging the pillows somewhat. Rose helped readjust them so he was comfortable again. She sat back down quickly, though, eager to hear everything Mr. Davis had to say about the maze. “No one knows for sure,” he said. “The Hargroves don’t tend to let folks go through there for some reason. And those who try…” Mr. Davis paused, his gaze drifting before he finally remembered Rose again. “Anyway, I don’t personally know of anyone who has solved the labyrinth.”

“But,” Rose murmured, “I mean, those are just stories.”

“Well, everything’s a story, isn’t it?” Mr. Davis said. “Did you ever hear the one about the Pardes?”

“What’s that?”

“A Jewish legend about a heavenly orchard. Four sages entered the orchard. No one knows what they found inside, only that one of the sages entered the orchard and lost all his faith. Another entered and went mad. The third entered and died. The last one who entered went in peace and came out in peace.”

The way Mr. Davis spoke, it felt almost like there should’ve been a campfire crackling between them. Rose held her breath and listened closely, even though she knew very well this wasn’t a ghost story. “Only one of them makes it out of that orchard unharmed. I don’t know about you, Rose, but I don’t like those odds.”

“What are you saying?” she asked.

Mr. Davis breathed deep again, looking more tired than ever. “What I’m saying is, maybe some orchards… gardens… hedge mazes… are better left unexplored.” His eyelids fluttered closed. Long after he fell asleep, Rose remained, thinking of Mr. Davis’s story.