The Night Garden (30 page)

“There’s a pulse,” Mei said.

Olivia’s relief was so great it almost knocked her knees out from under her.

“I think it’s weak, though. I can barely feel it.”

“You stay with him. I’m going for help. Keep your hand on his neck. And if that pulse stops, do CPR.”

“But I don’t know it!”

Olivia had already started to head toward the silo, but she ran back to explain.

Mei stopped her midsentence. “How about this? You stay with him and
I’ll
run for help. Doesn’t that make more sense?”

“I can’t.”

“But you
know
how to do it.”

“Yes, but I can’t do it.”

“Why?”

Olivia threw up her hands. “Because it’s true, okay? Because that rumor about how my skin is dangerous, how it’s like poison ivy? That’s true. And if I touch him, he’ll probably die.”

Mei’s eyes widened.

“
Now
will you stay with him?”

She nodded.

Olivia ran.

Though she’d always believed in a Creator, she’d never actually prayed—not with real, human words because she’d always
thought the sentiment of a prayer mattered more than the language. But she prayed as she ran across the field, still not quite certain that what was happening was
really
happening. Sam cheated death once; he could do it again. He couldn’t die now. Not after everything he’d been through, everything that had conspired to finally bring him back to her. She ran, and prayed, and then dodged into her silo, racing for the phone.

By evening, the channels that funneled Green Valley’s juiciest rumors from house to house were spilling over. The Pennyworts had been “good people” for many generations. They minded their own business, helped out when a neighbor needed helping, and mostly got along. But tides of neighborly opinion were as changeable as the wind; the right triangulation of events could turn a favorable evaluation to a tempestuous one. For everything that made the Pennyworts good, there was something difficult about them. Arthur was surly as a black bear in springtime coming out of its den; Olivia was hard to figure out and had given the runaround to many well-meaning Green Valley men. And in the drought, it seemed they
had
so much, so much more than most farmers in the area had, what with their extraordinarily fertile soil and wild gardens that caused such a stir. Usually, neighbors who felt the bite of jealousy could ignore their baser impulses with no difficulty. But when Sam Van Winkle—who had returned to do his family duty just like everybody knew he would—was found half dead not far from the garden maze, some people began to say in voices loud enough to be overheard that
somebody needs to get those Pennyworts in line.
It was one thing for the Pennyworts to irritate a newcomer like Gloria Zeiger; it was another to nearly kill Green Valley’s Favorite Son.

Sam was weary when he got back to his house from the hospital
two days later, but his bout with anaphylaxis had not got the better of him. Roddy had driven him home—Sam was glad that the chief hadn’t decided to use the moment to reissue his warning to stay away from the Pennyworts—then he’d got Sam set up with the television, a bottle of cola, and a bag of orange cheese puffs in the living room. Outside the sun was setting. Moths had taken to randomly beating their bodies against his living room window as if they were trying to find a way in. Sam couldn’t be bothered to get up and close the blinds.

Evening became night, and he fell in and out of sleep, half expecting Olivia to come by. But she did not. When he had opened his eyes in the hospital, surrounded by white sheets and white walls and white white white, he thought for a second that he was still on the mountaintop, on Moggy Knob, and that everything that had happened from the moment the plane had crashed until this moment of waking up in the hospital had all been an elaborate, wonderful, bizarre dream. He’d wept, in his medicated half sleep, for the loss of Olivia—though he hadn’t quite known how exactly he’d lost her. As he got his bearings, everything came back—where he was, what he was doing there—and he waited in anticipation to see Olivia smile at him as she walked through the door into his room. But she hadn’t come. He told himself he hadn’t expected her to: She couldn’t—wouldn’t—leave the farm. Probably, she thought a hospital would be just about the
worst
place for a person as potentially harmful as she was. But still, he would have liked to have seen her just the same.

He upended his bag of puffs and dumped the last nuclear orange crumbs into his mouth. The ring that Arthur had given him sat in a box on the end table beside him, its gemstones staring at him like a cluster of unblinking eyes. Just before he’d passed out in the field, his last thought had been of Olivia, of how if he died, his death wasn’t going to prove that she could
believe in him, just that he’d done something stupid. Now that he was home again, he wanted to see her—if only to know that the world was just as he’d left it, and that he hadn’t missed anything, and that the fragile happiness they’d found together before he’d decided to propose to her wasn’t going to change.

By 2
A.M.
, he was as awake as if it were midday. He felt sort of hyper, like he could run a marathon or ride a wild bull. He also felt a little crazed with loneliness. He tugged on clean shorts and running shoes, then took himself outside for a brisk walk. He meant to head down the quiet road, but when his feet angled him toward the garden maze he did not stop them.

Inside, he walked the corridors that circled like eddies and the straightaways that were as stiff as flumes. Some flowers were closed tight against the night; others were open, and he felt like they were watching him. The night was dark; if there was a moon in the sky, it was obscured by clouds.

He did not know he was looking for Olivia until he found her. She was in the Moss Garden, one of the oldest rooms in the maze, and she was sleeping. The garden was a soft green pond of moss that smoothed over the stones in the ground, obscuring edges and bumps, creating a thick, soft blanket underfoot. He and Olivia used to lie on it with their storybooks spread around them. Supposedly, people who fell asleep in the Moss Garden dreamed only good dreams, but if he and Olivia had ever dozed there, Sam didn’t remember.

Olivia slept on her side, her head pillowed on a mossy lump, her hands curled under chin. He sat down beside her, the thick green ground cover seeming to sigh beneath him. Her long hair flowed and puddled. Her lips were parted, her eyelids closed. She wore a dress that might have been pajamas or pajamas that might have been a dress, and the white, lacy cotton fell from one shoulder and exposed a collarbone. As he gazed on her,
some of his anger toward her began to siphon away. He was disappointed in her for not being there when he’d needed her, when the hospital had illuminated his most nightmarish memories in the crisp white light of his sad little room. But he loved her, still. And when people loved each other, hurt was a given.

Though he had not made a sound, Olivia opened her eyes and inhaled as quickly as if a gun had gone off. She was startled for a second as he tried to assure her, then she cried out. “Sam!”

She sat up and almost threw her arms around him, then drew her hands into her chest in horror at what she’d nearly done. The noises she made were not quite words. She was sobbing. “Sam. Sam, you’re here. Thank God you’re okay.”

“I’m okay,” he said.

“I didn’t know what to do. We rolled you over and, oh, God, I had no idea. I had no idea what to do.” She was breathing hard, almost hyperventilating, as panicked as if she’d only just found him half dead in the field. “I saw you lying there, and I didn’t want to touch you and make it worse, and you weren’t breathing, and I thought
—Oh God, what if he dies? What if I lose him?
”

“Shh,” he said. “It’s okay. That’s over now.” He pushed her hair behind her ear, the only thing he could do. He was glad for the darkness because he knew he looked rough; he hadn’t shaved in days. The hives had done a number on his skin, and what sleep he did manage was troubled. She dropped her face into her hands and outright sobbed. It was the most he’d ever seen her cry, and all he could do was watch. Any thought he’d had of giving her a piece of his mind about her unwillingness to step off the Pennywort property was gone now, replaced by a need to console.

“I thought I lost you,” she said at last, her eyes full of water.

“You didn’t. Apparently I’m not that easy to kill.” He wanted to squeeze her as hard as he could, flatten her chest against his,
bury his nose in her neck. He wanted to know she was real, alive, and vital. She seemed to understand this, and she leaned away.

“They said you got stung by a bee.”

“No.”

“Then what was it?”

He flexed his hand, then closed it again. There was no reason to keep the truth from her. “The honey.”

“
My
honey?”

He nodded.

“How did you? I’ve got it hidden.”

“Olivia. You hid it in the old root cellar. That was the first place I went to look. It’s where we always used to put things we didn’t want people to find.”

“But the lock?”

“I picked it.”

“Why would you do that?” she asked, her voice rising. “I told you the honey is toxic. You knew it was. You could have died!”

He rubbed the back of his neck. When she’d turned down his proposal, he’d been filled with an angry energy—not that he was angry at her, though that was part of it, but he was angry in general. If the only impediment to their marriage was her condition, then he would find a way to take that out of the equation—with or without Arthur’s blessing or help. Once he set his mind on finding her honey stores by himself instead of relying on Arthur, he found the job to be surprisingly easy. In hindsight, he supposed they’d both wronged each other: he, by breaking into the root cellar; she, by not coming to see him in the hospital. They both had a right to be mad.

He told her, “I went to see your father. He said the honey might make me less allergic to you.”

He couldn’t quite see her face, but he heard a small intake of
breath that suggested surprise. Apparently, she hadn’t considered the possibility of a honey cure for their problem. “But it can’t work … can it? Your system is too sensitive.”

“We’ll try again.”

“No.”

“At a smaller dose.”

“No, Sam! No.” She lifted herself a little higher where she sat. “It’s too dangerous. Maybe if you weren’t born so especially sensitive to things—but we can’t now. Your reaction will only get
more
severe if we keep trying, not less. And I’m not going to lose you. I’m
not.
” She put her hand down in the moss beside her. He heard the tears in her voice again. “Please. Don’t scare me like that. I love you so much. I want you to be here with me forever.”

“I love you, too,” he said softly. “And that’s why I want to keep trying.”

She punched her hand down. “No! You shouldn’t even be here right now.”

“Shouldn’t be here?”

“You should be home. Alone. Resting. That’s what you need.”

“I’m the only one who knows what I need. If I need rest, I’ll rest. And if I want to try to figure this cure thing out, I’ll do that, too.”

“No.”

“Yes! Olivia—it’s the best way.”

“But do you think it’s necessary?”

“What do you mean, necessary?”

“Exactly that,” she said. “Is it
necessary
that you figure out a cure for us to be together? Or can’t you be happy with how things are?”

“Of course I’m happy.”

“You don’t sound happy.”

“Right now, I’m ticked off,” he said. “Being able to touch you isn’t
necessary.
But I want to, Olivia. God do I want to. You’ve got to know that!”

She crossed her arms. “I don’t think so.”

“Sorry?”

“I won’t let you try again.”

“You won’t
let
me?”

“I’ll throw away every last damn jar of honey I have,” she said. “I’ll send the bees away.”

“You’re completely overreacting.”

She started to get to her feet. “Do you see what’s happening here? You see?
This
is why I couldn’t agree to marry you. My father was right.”

“That’s a first.”

“How could I make you swear to love me forever if you’re never going to give up trying to change me? Or change things between us? It is what it is, Sam. The fact that you’re still trying to make it something else …”

“What?”

Her shoulders fell forward. “I don’t know.”

They were both standing now; Sam had no idea why what should have been a warm reunion was turning into a fight. And though he desperately wanted to stop it he didn’t know how. The momentum was bigger than both of them. “I’m not trying to change you,” he said. “I’m just trying to make something happen that we both want. I want to be able to touch you.”

“Well, you can’t,” she said. “And I’m not going to accept it if you’re going to spend the rest of your life exposing yourself to all kinds of dangers just so you can. It’s not worth it.”

He pressed his lips together.

“What I mean is, losing you is not a risk I’m willing to take.”

He was quiet. He meant to tell her about Arthur’s requirement that Sam propose—a wedding in exchange for a jar of Pennywort honey. But if he added that bit of information now, there was no telling how furious she might be.

“I don’t want to fight,” he said. His voice, so strident a moment ago, now gave evidence of his sheer exhaustion, days of poor sleep and bad food and emotional fatigue. The freak energy burst that had propelled him into the garden maze had fizzled, and he was becoming very, very tired and wanted nothing more than to sleep. “We shouldn’t be fighting. We both want the same thing.”

“Do we?” she said. She sniffed.

He was quiet.

Olivia wiped at her cheeks and he knew she was still crying. “What if this is it? What if this is where things are going between us? If we’ve just got more and more and more fighting ahead of us? The snowball rolling down the hill.”

“We probably do have more to discuss. But don’t worry. We’ll work it out. I know we can.”