Page 24

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Early the next morning, before the day got underway and they’d need to head to school, Hart took Rose to the hedge maze.

For someone who never wanted to set foot in here, he easily knew the correct path to take, never hesitating at any turns, never second-guessing a footstep. But then, maybe he came into the maze a lot more than Rose assumed he did. She had so many questions, but she let Hart take the reins and tell her what he wanted to tell her. As they walked through the tall, flourishing passageways, Hart chose to talk about his mother.

“She always loved plants and gardening and being outdoors. And then she met my dad and came to Hemlock Hill and, well, you can imagine how happy she was here. But there was one spot in the garden she loved more than any other. She spent the most time in the garden at the center of the maze.”

“So, it’s just another garden room in there?” Rose asked.

Hart nodded.

“Then why don’t you ever want to go there?” It could’ve just been that it was a private family garden. But Rose suspected it was more than that.

This was harder for Hart to articulate. He shrugged a shoulder and cocked his head, grabbing for the right words. Finally, he sighed and kept his eyes straight ahead as he said, “It’s the last place I saw my mom alive.”

Rose watched the side of his face, the color seeping from his cheeks, the tension gathering in lines around the soft skin of his narrowed eyes. She slowed to a stop. Which made Hart stop, too, and finally look at her. “Hart, I’m sorry,” she said.

“It’s okay.”

But Rose shook her head. She held on to his hand with both of hers. “I’ve been pushing you to show me this place but I had no idea… If it’s too hard for you to go in there, you don’t—”

“No, I want to,” Hart said. “It’s time I show you what makes the Wish Garden so special.”

The Wish Garden. As though summoned, the wooden door appeared before them at the next turn, waiting to be opened. For a place so private, Rose noticed for the first time that the door didn’t have a lock on it, only a simple handle, and Hart pulled on it. When Rose walked through the doorframe, it felt exactly like the moment in the movie when Dorothy walked into Oz.

The Wish Garden assaulted her senses with an overstimulation of sight, sound, smell. There was the immediate, intoxicating fragrance of the flowers. There were birds singing, and Rose swore she could also hear the music made by every individual pollinator, joining in the chorus. But it was the sights that got her. The austere, monochrome walls of the hedge maze gave way to a riot of color. Flowers filled Rose’s field of vision, messy, chaotic, and so beautiful they took her breath away. Her first instinct was to doubt what she was seeing with her own eyes. That these colors must’ve felt deeper and brighter and richer because of the light somehow. A trick. So much of it felt impossible. The size of the place, for one thing. Far too large to exist inside the maze. And the flowers. Every type she could imagine, and so many more that she’d never seen before, crowded together like bits of confetti after a New Year’s parade. Hart wove his way through the small areas of unclaimed earth and Rose stepped into his vacated footprints, her eyes unable to settle on just one spot.

The flowers grew from everywhere. The trees, bursting with bubblegum-pink blossoms. Another, with mossy clusters of magenta, down to the base of its trunk. Some flowers grew tall as cornstalks, tall as Hart, and even taller still, while others blanketed the ground like a patchwork quilt come to life. Even the hedge walls sprouted flower buds, impossibly, defiantly. Pollen-coated bumblebees buzzed between the blooms, and butterflies fluttered around Rose’s ankles. The Wish Garden lay before her as a tapestry of color. And as she made her way through it, she felt like she was living through a dream come true: She was walking through a painting come to life.

Hart stopped in the middle of a patch of grass and motioned for Rose to join him on the ground. They sat cross-legged, facing each other, and it struck Rose how beautiful Hart looked, surrounded by flowers. Lily of the valley kissing his knees and poppies sidling up to his forearms. He scratched at a spot on his neck where an overgrowth of fuchsia dahlias pecked him, and Rose bit back a laugh, imagining that the flowers wanted to touch him as much as she did.

“This is the place where I planted my first seeds,” Hart said, his thumb absently grazing the velvety petal of a tulip. “We Hargroves, we come here to collect our thoughts. Talk to our loved ones, I guess. I don’t really know, everyone does their own thing.”

“It’s beautiful here,” Rose said.

Hart looked up from the flower, fixing Rose with a delicate smile. “Every single flower here is a family heirloom. We don’t let anyone come here because… well, it’s not for them. We don’t want people trampling over the flowers, or picking them. It might look like an unkempt garden to anyone else, but it’s so much more to us.”

Rose had felt it the moment she stepped inside the garden. And she could see it on Hart’s face, too. How important this place was to him. She didn’t take it lightly that he’d brought her here. “Why is it called the Wish Garden?”

“It’s a family tradition.” Hart reached into his pants pocket, angling his hips for a better reach, and when his hand came back out, it held a paper envelope that fit in his palm. A seed packet for roses. “Some people toss pennies in a fountain. Or blow on an eyelash or a birthday candle. Or they’ll do it when they see a shooting star or eleven-eleven on a digital clock.”

Rose understood. “Making wishes.”

Hart nodded. “My family uses these.” He held up the seed packet, pinched between his index and middle fingers. He took Rose’s hand and turned it on her lap until it lay palm side up, then he opened the little envelope and tipped it until a couple of seeds tumbled into her hand. “We make a wish anytime we plant a seed in this garden. I don’t know who started it, but it’s something we’ve done for generations.” Hart’s hand continued to cup Rose’s, his strong fingers holding hers in place. “Every single flower in here, they’re more than just plants. They’re wishes.”

Rose looked out at the flowers and saw them the way Hart did. The dizzying, bursting manifestations of hopes and dreams. It filled her up with those same feelings. The lush hues, their heady scent. Knowing all these flowers had been planted here by individual people, with care and purpose, suddenly overwhelmed her. In a strange way it felt like meeting every member of Hart’s extended family. And being watched by them. But it was a lovely feeling. A peaceful one. Like every flower was a face, smiling at the two of them.

“I’ve never shown this place to anyone before,” Hart said. “You’re the only one I’ve brought here. The only one I’ll ever bring here. I promise you that.”

Rose didn’t think he’d needed to hold her hand with the seeds this whole time, but when he let go, she realized she did need his support, because her hand trembled. The weight of what he was showing her, how personal it was to him, how deeply it was a part of him, was enough to unsteady her.

Hart found a soft spot of dirt between the blades of grass and prodded it apart, then dug a small hole, an inch deep. “Plant a seed,” he said, his voice low. “Make a wish.”

Rose dropped a tiny seed into the hole. She gathered soil over it and tamped it down. Like blowing out birthday candles, she closed her eyes and didn’t say her wish out loud, lest it didn’t come true. She thought hard, of what she wanted most in this world. When she opened her eyes, he was staring back at her.