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Hart woke up in his bed in Connecticut.

A moment ago, he’d been levitating with visions of Rose and him in New York. Now reality hit him like a subway train straight through the chest, pinning him to his mattress. But he still scrambled to the phone on his bedside table, full of hope. Half-asleep, he called her. But Rose didn’t pick up the phone.

Hart kept sinking into the bed, deeper now, as he opened Rose’s Instagram. Comment after comment telling her to rest in peace.

Hart chucked his phone over the side of the bed. His current reality was so heavy he couldn’t lift his head from the pillow. All he could think about was his wish. All he could wonder was why it hadn’t come true.

Hart ambled through the quiet, cavernous house, his footsteps echoing off the hallways until he found his way down to the kitchen. He could’ve been blindfolded for this routine. Box of Cheerios in the cabinet over the sink, ceramic bowl from the shelf by the window, spoon from the drawer, shutting it with his hip. It would’ve been so easy to eat at the counter, or walk a few feet to the breakfast nook. But since they were little, Heather and Hart had thought of the breakfast table as the kids’ table, and they much preferred the enormous twelve-seater in the dining room. Force of habit ushered Hart into the adjacent room, where Heather already sat at the head of the dining table, digging her serrated spoon into a half-sphere of grapefruit.

Heather scooped a teaspoon of juice and pulp into her mouth, letting the utensil hang from there when she set eyes on Hart. “Morning,” she mumbled around the sterling silver.

The sound that came out of Hart’s own mouth might have been “Morning,” or it might have been a grunt. He shook the whole-grain O’s into his bowl and grabbed the carton of milk next to Heather’s glass.

Though they could afford it, the Hargroves had grown up without live-in help. There were, along with the gardeners, a couple of people hired to maintain the house part-time: Ludwika was in charge of cleaning and Dolores did all the grocery shopping and cooking. But per Mr. Hargrove’s demands, the housekeepers were to be neither seen nor heard. The rule had been in place since the kids were little, and Hart suspected it was because his father feared the twins might accidentally spill the family secret while Dolores served breakfast omelets.

The system worked for a long time. But with Mr. Hargrove always away, and Mrs. Hargrove now gone, the lack of adult supervision—or even companionship—stood out at times like this. Without their mother’s warm presence at breakfast, chatting about the day in front of them as she buttered her piece of toast, Hart and Heather sat at the table like pieces on a chessboard, no one there to move them.

Heather finally took the spoon out of her mouth and set it down on the folded cloth napkin next to her dish. Slowly, and as sincerely as she could, she asked, “Do you want to borrow my hairbrush?”

Hart considered his sister’s question as though listening to a fuzzy radio broadcast, first parsing the words, then the meaning, then the context. His hand absently rose to his hair, combing through it but getting tangled. When he withdrew his fingers, they came back mildly greasy.

“Hart,” Heather said, “I’m sorry about Rose. I really am.”

Hart would’ve looked at his sister if he had the energy, but his eyes felt too heavy to lift from his cereal bowl. His spoon looked too heavy suddenly, too, and the most he could do now was stare at it. “Why didn’t you like her?” he asked. “If you’d given her a chance, you would’ve been friends. I know you would’ve been friends.”

He finally did look up when he heard the sound of a chair skidding back. Heather came around the table and crouched next to her brother, placing a gentle arm over his shoulder. “You know what it was, right?” she asked. “I was only worried about you getting your heart broken so soon after Mom…” Heather breathed deep. “You were in such a bad place after Mom died. And you were just starting to come out of it. I didn’t want to see you back there.”

Hart understood what Heather meant. Or he thought he did. But she was wrong. He hadn’t been “starting to come out of” anything. Not until Rose showed up. She was the one who’d brought the light back into his life. Not that it mattered. All of Heather’s warnings and bitterness, and all his attempts to be happy and in love—none of it mattered. He was back in this place, a hole he couldn’t seem to dig his way out of.

“I feel like I’m stuck in a museum display,” he mumbled. Maybe because he wasn’t looking Heather in the eye, this was easier to admit out loud. “Like I’m behind glass and there’s a plaque underneath that just says ‘grief.’ And I can’t get out.”

He could feel the press of his sister’s forehead on his shoulder. He knew that she never left her display case, either.

“It won’t always be this way,” she whispered. She cleared her throat. “About Lowell—”

Hart lifted his head. “You know where he is?”

“No, rumor is he ran away,” Heather said. “But I heard that some of the guys on the football team were planning something. A sort of ‘Come Back Home’ party. You should go. Get shitfaced.”

If Hart could bring himself to laugh, he would have. Heather would say that. “My girlfriend is dead and you want me to go to a party?”

Heather’s arm rubbed against his shoulder as she shrugged. “I’m just saying it won’t hurt to distract yourself. Just until enough time has passed. The only way through this is to give it time.”

Now a laugh did bubble up inside him, bitter as it hit the back of his throat. “Yeah, like you ‘gave it time’ after Mom died?”

At this, Heather pulled back, dropping her arm from around Hart. She stood up again, smoothing down the front of her pants before heading back to her seat. Maybe Hart had said something she didn’t want to hear, but it wasn’t something she could deny. Heather hadn’t been able to deal with her grief, and she’d done something about it. Hart hardly ever used the garden to make wishes. But Heather used it all the time. For frivolous things she was too lazy to get the hard way, or things that eventually would’ve come to her if she’d just waited for them. Heather couldn’t deal with a lot of things, and her emotional support garden was always there, its soil perpetually tilled from her frequent visits.

Back at her seat, Heather picked up her spoon again, hurrying her breakfast along. “Did you end up making a wish yesterday?”

Hart nodded, scratched the back of his head. “Didn’t work, for some reason.”

“Your wish didn’t work because you can’t bring her back,” Heather said.

Hart flicked his gaze across the table. He hadn’t told her his plans, but Heather knew him all too well. She knew the only reason he’d go to the Wish Garden these days was for something important. And there was nothing more important to him than getting Rose back. “I’m going to figure out a way—”

“You know the rules,” Heather said, licking the tangy juice off her spoon. “You know how the garden works.”

There wasn’t any point arguing with her anymore. Yes, there were rules to the garden, and yes, Hart knew them well. But he also knew that Heather herself had found ways to bend them. And anyway, Hart hated fighting. He avoided confrontation whenever possible. It was something that, since his final argument with Rose, he was starting to hate about himself.

Hart heaved himself out of the stiff-backed chair and picked up his bowl, the soggy Cheerios sloshing against the sides. Heather stood, too. “Do you want a ride to school?” she asked.

He shook his head. “I’m not going.”

“What do you mean, you’re not going?”

Hart shrugged a shoulder. “I’m not going back.”

His twin stared at him, her bottom lip falling open. “So, you’re just going to quit school now?”

He went to the kitchen to get away from the ensuing conversation, dumping his untouched cereal in the sink. He looked out the French doors. School could no longer give him what he wanted. The only thing that could was out there, beyond the glass. Within the walls of the hedge maze.