Chapter 1
— The Garden at Dusk
The light went gold over the garden that evening, the way it always did in late summer, and the big tree at the far end of the lawn threw one long shadow across the grass. I sat on the bench beneath it with my daughter on my lap, and I did not want the day to end. Poppy was six years old, and she was small enough still to fit against my chest when she leaned back, though her legs had grown long enough to dangle past my knees. Her hair was the color of honey left in the sun, and it curled in thick rings that bounced whenever she moved her head. I had spent two years learning to brush it the way her mother used to, and I still did it wrong half the time, but Poppy never complained. She liked the way the curls sprang back when I let them go.
"Daddy," she said, "tell me about the tree."
I told her again. I told her the tree had been standing in this garden before the house was built, and that when her mother was a girl, she had climbed it and hidden in its branches with a book, and nobody had ever found her until she chose to come down. Poppy laughed at that part, and her curls shook around her face.
"Mama climbed trees," she said, as if she were testing the words.
"Your mama climbed everything," I said. "She climbed trees and fences and the stairs two at a time."
Poppy pressed her cheek against my shirt. "I wish she was here."
"I do too, sweetheart. Every day."
It had been two years since Meredith died. Two years of mornings when I woke up and reached for her side of the bed before I remembered. Two years of learning to braid hair and pack lunches and answer questions I had no good answers for. The grief had changed shape since the first winter. Now it was quieter, a dull ache that lived in the house like a draft through a window I could never quite close.
Poppy picked up a fallen leaf from the grass and held it to the light. "Veronica says my hair is too messy for the wedding," she said.
The words landed harder than she meant them to. I looked down at the top of her head, at the curls that would not lie flat no matter how I brushed them, and I felt something tighten in my chest. "Your hair is not messy," I said. "Your hair is beautiful. It is the most beautiful hair in the whole world, and your mama had hair just like it."
"Veronica says bridesmaids have to look neat," Poppy said, and she said it in the flat, careful voice she used when she was repeating words that were not her own.
I chose my words slowly. "The wedding is days away, and you are going to be the flower girl, and you are going to look exactly like yourself. That is all that matters."
Poppy nodded, but she did not look convinced, and I filed the moment away in the back of my mind the way you file away a small crack in a wall. I told myself it was nothing. Veronica liked things neat and planned, and a child's curls were hard to plan. I wanted to believe in the life we were building. I wanted Poppy to have a mother again, and I wanted the house to feel full instead of half empty.
The sun sank lower, and the garden turned the color of warm amber. Fireflies began to blink above the grass, one by one, and Poppy counted them in a whisper. I thought about Meredith, and about the way she used to sit on this same bench with a book in her lap while Poppy napped in the shade. Meredith had been a schoolteacher, and she had written little stories for Poppy and drawn pictures in the margins, and she had believed with her whole heart that a child should be loved exactly as she was. I could still hear her voice sometimes, when the house was quiet, telling Poppy that her curls were brave curls, curls that would not be tamed, and that was a good thing.
"Daddy, will you carry me inside?" Poppy asked.
"Always," I said, and I stood up with her in my arms. She wrapped her legs around my waist and her arms around my neck, and her curls brushed against my cheek. I carried her across the lawn, through the back door, and up the stairs to her room, where Dolores had already laid out her nightdress. I brushed her hair one more time, gently, and I kissed the top of her head.
"Your curls are brave curls," I told her, "and they are yours."
She smiled then, a real smile, and I thought the evening had ended well. I carried her small shoes in one hand and held her close with the other, and I listened to her breathing slow as she drifted toward sleep. I did not know that it was the last quiet evening we would have for a long time. I did not know that the wedding I had been planning was already broken, and that the woman I was about to marry had been keeping a secret from me since the night my daughter was born. All I knew was that my little girl was safe in my arms, and the garden was gold.
Chapter 2