But my relationship with my father was ruined years ago. I don’t know if it can recover or if I’ll just keep pretending everything is fine with him. I don’t know how to move forward with Finn, either, or if I even can. Maybe I’m too broken. Or maybe Solange was right. She’s certainly right that Finn and I are in different places. I don’t know anything anymore.
The knot from earlier today has nothing on this new one rising up in my throat, like it’s going to strangle me with all these damn feelings. “Finn,” I say, choked up.
He strokes my hair. “Come on one last date with me. I told you I had a surprise for you. And it’s actually something that’s on your list.”
That perks me up. The intrigue is too hard to resist. “But we’ve done everything on it.”
“Yes and no. The first day you said you wanted a garden all to yourself. So I arranged one for tonight.” He pauses, steps back a few inches so he can watch my reaction, I suspect, as he says, “We can go to Monet’s Garden, and it’ll just be you and me.”
If I wasn’t already in love with him, I am now.
The town car he arranged whisks us to Giverny in just over an hour. We arrive as the sun coasts toward the horizon, pale pink and orange streaks painting the summer sky.
We go inside the big house with green doors, Finn handling the details with an older woman whose gray hair is cinched in a bun. She must be managing this icon of gardens, and Finn’s buyout for one night.
I’m still stunned that he’s made this private visit possible. Then, I’m awed to walk into the famous gardens at the height of their summer glory.
Emerald is everywhere, from the vast lawns to the trees canopying the grounds. Wildflowers pop up as we walk, rippling in the summer breeze in a riot of shimmery purples, ruby reds, and vibrant oranges. Lavender is everywhere.
With Finn’s hand wrapped around my waist, we wander along a tree-lined path with a wooden fence, then deeper into the gardens, the endless peonies and poppies saying goodbye to their blooming days, as roses shoulder their way up in bold pinks, whites, and reds.
Butterflies escort us, and bumblebees hum as they flit from flower to flower. It’s a dreamlike place, and tonight it belongs to us. The walled gardens and house make this moment feel even more intimate as we’re surrounded by sweet and delicate scents of flowers, and even the silence is soft and lush.
It feels like a sin to speak, but I do it anyway.
“My favorite things,” I say, gazing around at the flowers.
“I know.” He sounds pleased. He should be.
“I’ve never been someplace so serene,” I say in a hushed voice even though we’re the only ones here. But there’s a magic spell in this garden, and I don’t want to break it.
“You deserve it,” Finn says, pressing his hand firmly against my back.
I let his words burrow into me—I deserve it. Finn makes me feel that way—like I deserve good things.
But he also seems to love giving those things.
“I think your whole let me punish you with pleasure mantra has reached its peak,” I say to the man obsessed with my bliss.
He laughs. “Let me know when you can’t take it anymore.”
I gaze around the vast gardens that go on endlessly. “I can definitely take it.”
We wander past peonies, their sweet aroma taking me back to younger days, when Willa and I would sneak out as kids.
Those are both my best and my worst memories. Of summers. Of days spent with friends. Of nights wanting more. Of my sister, always pushing, always wanting, always a little wild.
My heart aches even as it fills. When we reach the famous green bridge arching over a pond of water lilies, Finn lifts a brow. “This bridge is okay?”
I love that he asks. But it’s only a few feet over the pond, so it’s not an issue for me. “I’m good with this one.”
He returns my smile with one of his own, but it falters as we stop in the middle of the bridge, with more roses on the other side. “I’ll miss you, Jules.”
“I’ll miss you,” I say.
This time, when I draw a deep inhale of the roses, the scent becomes the smell of my stepmother’s perfect rose bushes just outside my window, and I fall back in time to six years ago—the summer after my freshman year of college. The summer before what would have been hers.
She was bored that Friday night, but Willa was always bored if she had no one to see. She was the ultimate social butterfly, the glue holding together Hannah, Josh, Ollie, and the whole crew from our high school and hometown. That night, she danced into my room with twist-my-sister’s-arm intentions. I can remember it so perfectly, it feels like it’s happening all over again.
Finn must read the longing and the missing in my face because he says the same thing he did at the Luxembourg Gardens: “Where did you go right now?”
To a place I don’t like to talk about.
But as I glance around the gardens, I feel like I’m in a dream. A good one. A safe one. Like this is a place out of time. A few days ago on a quiet street in Montmartre, I told Finn something I’ve never told my family. I shared the truth of my OCD with him, and it felt freeing. Like I no longer had to live all alone in a dark secret.
I no longer want to live with this dark secret either.
I’m tired of how much it hurts. I’m tired of carrying it with me. “The day Willa died…” I say, steady and careful. I have things to say, and I have to get through this. I’ve met somebody I trust with my secrets. This man might not be in my life the way I want, but he values honesty so deeply. He’s been here for me with a willing ear, and a big heart, and the most care I’ve ever known.
On Monet’s bridge, gazing over a pond of water lilies, I give him what he asked for—the truth.
“She wanted something to do that August night. There was a pool party I had heard about. I didn’t go. But she did, and I helped her get there. Because that’s what I’d always done.”
“How so?” he asks with curiosity but no judgment.
“We were at my dad’s house, and he was out that night with Liz, and when Willa said she wanted to go to the party at Josh’s house, I said, ‘You know how to sneak out and you know how to sneak back in so Dad won’t know you were gone.’”
I wince but don’t look away from Finn as I continue my confession. “See, I’d taught her how. I was the older sister, after all. We’d been sneaking out our whole lives. That was what we did to get away from him and his rules.”
“What happened at the party, Jules?” he asks, as gentle as the summer breeze, as soft as the ripple in the pond in front of us.
“I didn’t know it at the time—this was pure Willa—but she’d taken some wine from our mom’s home.” I can’t be clinical anymore as I recount the story. Briefly, I stare at the lavender, blinking away tears as I jump ahead to the collateral damage. “Afterward, my dad blamed my mom. He said she should have locked up the liquor. My mom blamed him and said he should have paid more attention. He blamed her right back and said she shouldn’t have had liquor at her house in the first place. She blamed him and said he shouldn’t have been so strict that it made Willa want to sneak out.” I feel emotional whiplash all over again, the blame game the two of them played.