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She had fled from him last night, but when morning came, all Rose wanted to do was see Lowell again.

She had spent a restless night in bed. The image of him—bleach-headed and cackling—was seared into her mind painfully, like looking at the sun and still seeing its afterimage when you closed your eyes. By the time she had to get up for school, Rose had convinced herself that what she’d seen in the garden in the middle of the night had been some sort of illusion. When she wasn’t looking, Lowell must’ve rubbed some powder over his hair or something. It was a shitty explanation, but it was the best she had. Because the alternative—that Lowell was telling the truth, that the garden was magic—didn’t make any logical sense.

Rose didn’t know why he’d play a trick like that on her, but he’d had his laugh. Now it was time for Lowell to come clean.

Except he wasn’t answering any of Rose’s texts or calls. At school, at the end of last period, after Rose had spent all day looking for him down every hallway, peeking inside every classroom, a sour dread began to roil in her gut. A feeling that Lowell was now missing because of what he’d shown her last night. Still, she was on a mission to find him, not knowing that the night in the garden would be the last time she’d ever see Lowell.

Her phone buzzed, but when Rose fished it out of her pocket, she saw it was just another text from Hart. She needed to talk to a different Hargrove. Rose found her in the student parking lot, fixing her sunglasses over her eyes as she headed to her car. And all that convincing—all the rationalizations and explanations Rose had talked herself into—began to unravel like a pulled thread as she marched across the lot, not stopping until she wedged herself between Heather and her Range Rover.

“Where’s Lowell?”

Heather took a step back, like Rose was a piece of chewed gum she hadn’t noticed and had almost stepped into. She stared at Rose and uttered the cruelest, most unhinged thing she could possibly say. “Who?”

Just one word, tossed out so blithely. But it made the hair stand on the back of Rose’s neck. “I can’t find him anywhere,” she said. What she didn’t say was, Did you find out he’s been sneaking into your garden? Did you do something to retaliate? “He told me the secret, in the hedge maze,” Rose said, turning the simple statement into a threat. “He showed me.”

Heather could have kept denying everything if she felt like it. Lowell’s whole existence, the secret, the fact that there even was a Wish Garden. And a part of Rose almost wanted her to. A part of Rose wanted Heather to lie to her, look her in the eye and say there was no magic, that it was just a normal garden, that this was all in Rose’s head.

But what Heather chose to say was more devastating than a slew of lies would have been. Simply, with no venom in her tone, Heather said, “It’s good you finally know.” She stepped around Rose and got into her car.

Even though she didn’t have work on weeknights, Rose drove to the hospice after school with only one intention: to sit down with Mr. Davis and ask him about the garden. He must know more than he’d let on. He had answers—answers that wouldn’t be flippant like Heather’s, or biased like Hart’s. Mr. Davis had always been trying to tell her something about the Hargroves and the garden. And she hadn’t listened. This time she would. But when Rose barged into Mr. Davis’s room, his bed sat empty, the sheets stripped off. Tonya caught up with her a moment later, relaying the news that Rose already knew in her bones.

“He passed away this morning, honey. I’m so sorry.”

Rose drove to Hemlock Hill in a daze, unfocused, wearing the news of Mr. Davis’s death like a mourning veil. She could feel the wetness on her face, the increasing pain in her jaw the harder she clenched her teeth, but she refused to feel anything inside. If she dwelled on it too long, she suspected she wouldn’t be able to move, wouldn’t be able to decipher the stop signs and red lights. And she had somewhere to be.

Rose had avoided him all day in school, but he was the only one left who could give her the answers she sought. She left her car idling in the circular driveway. She didn’t bother to go up the front steps. She knew where he’d be. The springy hinges of the greenhouse door squealed as Rose slammed through it. “I want the truth,” she said.

Relief flooded Hart’s face when he saw her, though it was quickly replaced with confusion. “What’s going on?”

“Lowell showed me what really happens in the Wish Garden.”

On the surface, Hart’s face barely changed, but Rose knew him well enough to pick up on the nearly imperceptible flickers that gave him away. His confusion turned to panic, and Rose took a measured step closer to him. “Lowell showed me and you didn’t.”

“Rose—”

But she held her hand up, cutting off Hart’s words. Rose didn’t want to hear excuses or apologies. She wanted answers, which meant she had to ask questions. “The garden grants wishes? Actual wishes?”

Hart combed a hand through his hair, and even in this moment, and though she hated herself for it, Rose’s first thought was that he looked beautiful. Shiny, voluminous hair—it made her insides flutter as it always did. But whereas before it would’ve been a passive, obvious thought, now she interrogated it. Were Hart’s stupidly handsome good looks something he’d wished for? Rose thought of Heather’s unreal opal eyes, so obviously wished for. Had Hart made a wish to look the way he did? Had his parents made the wish for him? Rose breathed deep through her nostrils, trying to catch her breath, but it was hard, thinking of the Hargroves, how far this went—how generational.

“Yes,” Hart said, waving that simple word like a white flag. “The garden grants wishes.”

Rose let out a breath so deflating it pushed her back, forcing her against the workbench behind her. The greenhouse felt impossibly small all of a sudden. Claustrophobic. The little glass house used to feel like it could contain her whole life with Hart, and now the walls were closing in.

Hart reached for her hand but she pulled it away before he could touch her. “Please don’t freak out,” he said.

Rose hadn’t yet wrapped her mind around the part that would truly freak her out. This was the preshow. She was scared and confused and reeling, but she hadn’t yet grasped the most horrific part. She only sensed it. A growing itch. An instinct that the worst was yet to come and she could feel it, like fire curling the edge of a paper, about to swallow it whole.

“The garden is responsible for all the beauty and wonder and blessings in my life.” The words might have been nice on the surface, but desperation laced Hart’s tone.

He would regard the bizarreness of this the way he regarded a flower. Like it was a precious and delicate miracle, a most special thing that commanded reverence. Hart was romanticizing this thing that was turning Lowell into a shell of a person. That—Rose suddenly thought of Heather’s strange garden party skits—made people do awful, dangerous things against their will. How could Hart think this was anything other than horrific?

“‘Beauty and wonder and blessings,’” Rose said. Those words should not have sounded so bitter. Those words should’ve been saved to describe something lovely. To describe love. And then her heart stopped beating. Her thoughts stopped racing. Everything froze as she caught Hart’s gaze, her eyes unwavering. Piercing. “Did you ever wish—” Rose swallowed, took a minute to untie this new knot in her mind and get her question out with as much clarity as she could. “Did you ever use the garden to make a wish… about me?”

It was so quiet in the greenhouse, glassed in from the crickets and tree frogs and the noises of nature, that all Rose could hear was her blood rushing in her ears. And Hart’s even breaths. He took a slow step toward her, like she was an escaped wild animal and he needed to be careful. An old quote she’d seen somewhere rang vaguely through her mind. Fragile. Not like a flower. Like a bomb.

“Rose—”

“Don’t lie to me!” she said, her voice so loud it could’ve rattled the glass walls. She took in a breath, controlled herself, and made sure her next words came out in an even whisper. “Did you wish for me?”

“I have asked the garden for a lot of things in my life,” Hart said. “Small things, inconsequential things. But after my mom died, I asked it for the one thing I needed more than anything in the world. I wished for love.” Hart’s eyes were fearful but vulnerable, every syllable out of his mouth a hopeful balm. “And you came into my life.”

The air left Rose’s parted lips in a gust, like it’d been knocked out of her, but Hart hadn’t touched her. Even as he was coming closer, hands hovering, he didn’t touch her, as if she were made out of delicate glass. Or maybe Rose thought that because it was how she felt. Like she was about to shatter. Her vision blurred with unshed tears, and when she spoke, she barely registered that she’d made a sound. “What?”

“Of all the things I could want, I wanted you the most,” Hart tried to explain.

Rose was incredulous, though. About what he’d said, and about how he’d said it, like it was some big romantic gesture. Like she should be grateful . With a shaking hand, she gestured back and forth between herself and Hart. Not sure where to start, but with a million questions ready to spill out of her. She settled on just one, pulling it out of herself with so much effort. “Do I even love you?”

His face crumpled up. “What?” Hart had the gall to sound hurt. But Rose honestly wondered now. If he had wished for her love, did she even love him? How could she trust her feelings for him if he’d manifested them into existence? How could she trust that their relationship was true? That this was real love?

Her hand kept moving, trembling—a physical extension of her scrambled feelings. “Did you rip me away from my life in New York because of some wish?” She watched him, but Hart couldn’t even answer that, because the answer was so obviously yes. Yes, of course, he’d wished for her and just like that— poof —she’d been dragged here, practically right to Hart’s doorstep. At his beck and call. “Wait—” Rose said, voice cracking. “Am I even real?”

“Rose, please,” Hart said, his own voice broken, too. “Come on.” His hand finally landed on her arm, but Rose wrenched it away as she skidded along the tiny central path in the greenhouse.

“Did I even exist before you wished for me?” she asked, her voice rising, shrill with panic. “Am I just a figment of your fucking imagination?”

“Rose, of course you—”

Rose could barely hear him, Hart’s voice fading as her pulse thrummed loud in her ears. She couldn’t breathe, she needed air. She shoved past him, touching him for the first time in her life with something less than love. She pushed the door open and ran, away from the greenhouse, away from Hart.

He went after her, her name a desperate plea called out into the sky. But Rose didn’t stop until she was out of that blasphemous garden, yanking open her driver’s-side door. Hart was right behind her. “Please,” he was saying. “You’re upset—we can talk. Just please don’t drive when you’re this upset.”

Rose ignored him, getting into the seat and dropping her keys two times as she tried to insert them into the ignition.

Hart banged his hand against her window. “I’m not letting you drive like this!”

Not letting me , Rose thought bitterly. Hadn’t he stolen enough from her? Her chin quivered as the engine groaned to life. Her unshed tears finally began to spill. Watch me , she thought.

She tore out of the driveway, away from Hart and Hemlock Hill, for the last time.

Mr. Davis had been wrong. The hedge maze was not unsolvable, it was just merciless. Wicked. Its center held a terrible curse, and Rose could feel its presence coursing through her, leaking out of her, muddling her vision. She had never been a very good driver to begin with, and with her emotions running high, she was even worse.

Rose Pauly’s last thoughts, as her car bounded straight for a sycamore only five miles from Hemlock Hill, may have been about Hart and love. But her last feelings were all doubt.