Page 64 of The Memory Gardener
Again, I don’t know how to respond. How can I return to work now, after what I’ve done? “How’s Sophie?” I ask instead.
“She’s okay,” he says, but I can tell from his expression that she is not. After a moment, he brightens. “Shelovesyour design for her garden. I wish you could have seen her face when she saw it, Lucy. I haven’t seen her that excited about anything in a long time.”
His words are a balm for the burning ache in my chest. “I’m so glad,” I say.
In the doorway, Marjorie pauses. She squints up at my father. “Gregory, are you absolutely sure we’ve never met?”
“I’m sure,” my father says, his expression vaguely bemused. “I think I’d remember you.”
Marjorie chuckles. “I suppose you would,” she says, but she gives him one last look before turning away.
The door has barely closed before my father faces me. “Lucy, I really need to tell you something.”
I’m not sure how much more I can take right now, but there is an urgent note in his voice that makes my throat grow tight. “What’s wrong?” I ask.
“Nothing. Nothing’s wrong.” He looks steadily into my eyes and says, “I wrote to Jack Harris.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
California poppy: A native California wildflower with golden, cup-shaped blooms whose soft, citrusy scent inspires hope and healing
My father’s blue eyes are utterly clear and focused, and something about them stops the panic that hearing Jack’s name might have otherwise ignited within me.
“What do you mean, you wrote to Jack Harris?”
“I found his mother’s phone number in your mother’s address book. I called her, and she gave me Jack’s email address.”
I stare at him. “What? Why?”
“Hang on,” he says then, and leaves me standing, stunned, in the living room while he disappears into his bedroom. He returns holding his laptop. “Let’s sit,” he says and steers me toward the dining table.
“Dad, I—” I begin to say, blood rushing loudly in my ears. Ten years ago, Jack told me to stay away from him, and the anger in his voice on that day, the coldness in his expression when he’d ignored me from then on, moving away without saying another word, hasalways felt like an insurmountable wall, a locked door through which I could not pass.
“You need to read this,” my dad says firmly. It’s only when I feel his hand lightly holding my wrist that I realize I’ve begun to turn away. Everything in me wants to leave,needsto leave.Now.But my dad sets the laptop in front of me on the table. It’s open to an email.
Dear Mr. Barnes,
Thank you for writing. For years, I’ve wanted to reach out to Lucy to thank her
I look up at my father, my heart in my throat, and he nods toward the computer screen for me to keep reading.
for changing my life, and my mother’s, for the better.
I don’t understand how, or why, but in her garden a decade ago, I remembered something that I had forgotten.
I remembered that when I was six years old, I walked in on my father with a woman who was not my mother. I remembered my father grabbing me by the collar and making me promise not to tell my mother.Forget this happened, Jack,he said. I was scared and I was confused and somehow I did forget. Or I thought I did.
Now I think it was always there in the back of my mind—my father’s anger, his selfishness, his lies. I think I was never the same after that day. For years, I could not shake a feeling of dread. I lived with a sadness that I didn’t understand.
After I left Lucy in her garden, I went home and confronted my father. It all came out then—his affairs, his lies. It wasn’t just thetime I walked in on him; he’d been cheating on my mom for years. She was devastated. We both were. I drank too much and I crashed my car and wound up in the hospital. I lost my leg. I hardly remember that day, or many that followed it. Maybe that’s for the best.
My mother took me to live in Colorado. She thought we needed a fresh start. My father moved to San Diego. They divorced.
Once we were away from my father, the darkness that had hung over my life, and my mother’s life, slowly lifted. I stopped drinking. I went to college. I fell in love with a woman named Rebecca. We’re married now, and we have an amazing son named Noah. I work as a counselor at a rehab center. My mother remarried. He’s a great guy, and together they run an art gallery in Boulder. I’ve never seen her happier.
That day in Lucy’s garden changed my life. Lucy saved me. She freed me, I think. She freed both of us—my mother and me. I’ll never really be able to explain what happened, but I’m so thankful that it did.
Please pass this on to Lucy. I treated her terribly, and she didn’t deserve it. I should have reached out years ago. I convinced myself that I was the last person on earth she’d want to hear from, but I think the truth is that I just wanted to put everything that happened in Bantom Bay behind me. I should have called Lucy a long time ago to apologize, and to thank her. I’m so sorry. If she ever wants to talk, I’m here.
