Page 62 of The Dravenhearst Brides

“He chose magnolias.”

—Samuel Greenbrier to his daughter Margaret on her wedding day

She’d forgotten how the hydrangeas looked in the winter, how they remained in full bloom, rotund, but turned brown and crisp. How the heads would break off and blow like tumbleweeds around the property.

It had been eight years since Margot last set foot at Greenbrier Estates, and in her mind, the hydrangeas flowered always. Blue and soft, fragrant and divine.

Like her family, preserved meticulously in her memory by the way she dreamed of them, the way she wanted to remember them—in full color, lovely, soft around the edges.

Memories didn’t lie, per se, but they didn’t tell the whole truth either.

There wasn’t much time after they arrived, barely twenty-four hours. But it was twenty-four hours more than Margot had ever been given before, and she knew exactly what to do with them.

She was brave. She said the things she needed to say. She held her father’s hand.

And when the time came, she didn’t hold on, and neither did he.

Her father let go.

And so did she.

There was much to do in those first days, but she saved the most difficult for last. Margot had never been good at staring down the hard things, the painful things. There was sweet relief in avoidance, in circumnavigating pain. Numbing it.

But she wasn’t going to live that way anymore. Margot was done granting power to ghosts.

The graves were surprisingly tidy, all in a row. Two old, covered with grass. In the spring, Margot imagined there would be dandelions, maybe chickweed and creeping violets. Maybe she would return when the ground thawed, bring flowers. Maybe plant some, dozens of them, herself.

She was avoiding again. She blinked once, long and slow, gathering courage. Then she opened her eyes and looked.

There was the third grave, freshly dug. A gaping, ugly hole in the ground. The place where her father’s casket would rest on the morrow. No headstone yet, but it would come, would be here by spring.

Spring…when she might plant flowers…

Her eyes filled with tears.

She was the last remaining member of her family. There was immense, soul-crushing sorrow in that. In realizing she was all alone in the world. The people she’d started with had all, one by one, gone.

Merrick squeezed her shoulder. His timing, as ever, was impeccable. She leaned into him, against his full chest. His arms wrapped around her.

Not alone, she realized, closing her eyes again. Tears fell, dripping down her cheeks and onto the ground. Salting the earth where she stood.

The last Greenbrier, yes, but not alone.

“I want to come back in the spring,” she whispered. “I want to plant flowers.” To see blooms here.

“All right,” he answered, steady. “Maybe hydrangeas?”

“I was thinking, actually…” She turned to face him, slipping her arms around his neck. “A magnolia tree.”

“A magnolia?”

“Yes. To start.”

His smile was a little bit shy and a whole lot hopeful. Margot watched her entire future open up in that smile, ribboning out before her like the tail of a kite in the breeze. Like a wedding veil streaming behind a bride in the wind.

Like magnolia petals falling to the earth in the spring.

Blooming.

Blooming, blooming, blooming.