The Night Garden (20 page)

“How badly were you hurt?”

He settled his face deeper into the crook of his arm. “Broken ribs. Concussion. Leg busted in three places—that’s why I limp a little sometimes. And …”

“And what?”

“And I died.”

“Died? Like … 
died
died?”

“Yes.”

“Sam … You died?” The reality of it was slow to sink in. He’d died. But here he was—with her, alive as far as she could tell. Her heart sped up as adrenaline coursed through her system, as if he were dying even now and needed her to save him. “They brought you back.”

“Yes.”

“And you’re okay, now. Right? You’re okay?”

He didn’t answer.

A dreadful, awful, terrible feeling lumped in her throat. A horrible feeling. She watched his shallow breath. “Sam … were you
alone
when you crashed?”

“No,” he said.

“And the other passengers?”

“Just one. He’s gone.”

“Oh, Sam.” She cursed every god there was that she couldn’t touch him, couldn’t offer that small kind of comfort. For he needed comforting, to be taken into her arms,
hers,
and held there until some of the tiredness went out of his face and some of the light returned to his eyes. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to say.”

He shrugged and shifted the crook of his elbow, leaving only his mouth exposed. The wind blew slightly, bending the soft grass. In the sky beyond the red kite, a few discrete white clouds cast shadows on the valley. Sam had been slated to serve and protect in one way or another from the moment he was born. If he truly had lost someone, he would have been the first Van Winkle to do so in a hundred years. Olivia could not imagine what an incredible burden he must bear.

Finally, he began to speak. But he did not talk about the accident; he told her about how he’d found himself living in Vermont. He’d bounced around from job to job for a while before he wound up in Plattsburgh, New York, flying medical cargo in and out of a regional airport. One day, a friend asked him for a favor: He was supposed to fly a buddy down to New York City, but something had come up. Could Sam take the job?

Later, Sam said, he would think of all the ways his life would be different if only he’d turned the job down—it was the way the decision of a split second could change the trajectory of a person’s entire life. But at the time, Sam figured the trip would mean a few extra dollars in his pocket and no big deal. The flight was VFR—clear skies with plenty of visibility at around 5,500
feet. The guy was a financial consultant named Patrick Kearny, though everybody called him Patty—and he was in good spirits. His oldest daughter was having a baby, his first grandkid, and he wanted to surprise her with a visit by getting in a plane and heading her way the moment he got news the baby was being born. As they made conversation, the sky began to appear spotty, but it wasn’t anything worrisome.

They were over the Adirondacks when Sam felt the rhythms of the engine change. Patrick Kearny, the soon-to-be-first-time grandfather, knew it, too. He never once asked Sam what was going on, never let on that he was afraid. He was ex-military, schooled to place his trust and his life in the knowledge of people who knew more than him, and he didn’t so much as break a sweat. Instead, as Sam fumbled to make things right, he gave Sam a silent look that seemed to say
I’m not worried because I know you’ll take care of this.

A few hours later, he was dead. Olivia held her breath as Sam talked about how they’d been pinned in their seats in the rumpled body of the plane for hours. Sam said he hadn’t panicked. Not at all. The plane’s engine had failed, but he would not. He’d put all his faith in his family legacy, talking to the man, telling him to hang on, to not sleep, to be strong—language that had been ingrained in him from countless dinners during which the Van Winkle men and women took turns telling stories of their exploits. He felt a tingling sensation at the back of his neck that he believed was the sign that his ability was rearing up; his father had described it as a sense of being stared at, not a thing you could quite place. And so even though Patrick Kearny was obviously in bad shape, bleeding from beneath his hair, Sam had no doubt the man would live to see his granddaughter. No doubt at all. And then Sam would have his own story to tell over family dinners about the life he’d saved. In a moment of quiet,
when Sam could hear ice beginning to fall on the windshield, Patrick turned his face toward the window as if he needed a moment of privacy, and he passed away.

Sam said that in a way, he’d been more shocked by the man’s death than by the plane dropping out of the sky. He’d had nearly three frozen days to think about all of the small things he might have done differently in those last airborne seconds, the chain of tiny adjustments that might have changed everything. He also tortured himself with the question of why he hadn’t been able to save Patrick Kearny when saving him should have been as easy as breathing. Had the Van Winkle legacy skipped him because he’d left Green Valley? By the time his rescuers arrived, he’d lost the will to fight, and he succumbed.

Sam had died. Olivia had almost lost him. She let herself down off her elbows to lie beside him, and she stared at the sky. Life on the farm had its minor catastrophes of each day, but the larger shape of any given year had remained the same for much of her adulthood. How shocking it was to be reminded of the fragility of human life, the cruelty of the world, when she’d spent so many of her days trying to believe she lived in a paradise.

Sam lifted his arm from his face. When he turned his head to look at her, she turned hers as well, and his closeness went through her like a shock. “You’re upset.”

She tried to smile; her eyes stung. “In all the years I imagined you out there in the world, I never thought anything bad had happened.”

“I’m just glad you thought of me at all,” he said. “That makes it better. A little, anyway.”

She looked away from him—she had to. Any illusion she’d had of trying to maintain some distance between them had been a joke: If they were in proximity, emotional distance was
impossible. She cared about him too much to pretend she didn’t. When she looked back at him again his expression was grave, and she knew he was thinking about the dead man.

“I’m a mess, Olivia,” he said.

“No you’re not.”

“I am,” he said, insistent now. He sat up with some difficulty and leaned down over her. His brow was furrowed. “After the accident, I stopped being able to feel anything—nothing that touched my skin.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Not hot or cold. Not the sun, not any human touch. It felt like my skin was leather.” The shadow of the kite passed over his face. “The doctors said it was all in my head.”

“Oh, Sam,” she said. She’d never in her life wanted to pull someone close as much as she wanted to touch Sam now. “Go easy on yourself. You went through a lot. And your feeling might come back, in time.”

“That’s the thing. The other day when I touched you? I felt that. I really felt it. It was like … I don’t know … getting plugged back in again or something. All the circuits lighting up.”

“And since then?”

“I feel everything. And it’s because of you.” His gaze fell to her mouth.

Since Sam had returned, the pull to be with him, to make the most of him in any way she could, was strong. But he complicated Olivia’s basic idea of a good life. The question he brought into focus was weighty and fearsome: At what point was it okay to say
I could be happier than I am now
without disrespecting or diminishing her current happiness? How could she be content with the way her life was right now—the way
she
was right now—if she permitted herself to wish for something more? And how could she go back to being content with what she had
now if any new joys she allowed herself were to be suddenly gone?

When he spoke again, she suspected he was having thoughts in a similar vein, about what they might mean to each other or what they might not, because he said: “When was the last time you left the farm, Olivia?”

She didn’t want to tell him. But he’d just shared such a personal moment of his life with her, that she knew it would be miserly to withhold her own secrets. She told him it had been nine years since she’d made the decision to quit leaving Pennywort land. She’d gone to Lyon’s Pharmacy and Sporting Goods Shop to pick up something her father needed—she could no longer remember what. She’d stepped off the curb, heading toward the old station wagon that had belonged to her father for as long as she could remember, when she heard a cry. A child—a girl no more than two—was jerkily running toward the road. And the girl’s mother was doing her best to follow, but she was on crutches and lagging far behind.

Help her!
the woman had screamed at Olivia.
Grab her. Please!

Though Olivia’s heart sped and her whole body seemed to break out into an instant sweat, she somehow couldn’t move. The child was running for the road, and Olivia could only stand there, paralyzed and afraid.

“What happened?” Sam asked. “Was the kid hurt?”

“No, thank God,” Olivia said. “At the last moment, the baby just stopped running. Just like that. Turned around and went toddling back toward her mother, laughing like it was the funniest thing in the world while the mom got on her knees right there in the parking lot and looked like she was trying not to cry.”

She picked a few blades of grass and tossed them.
What is wrong with you?
the child’s mother had yelled at Olivia.
What
kind of person just stands there when a baby is running into the road?
Olivia had clutched her paper bag to her chest and said nothing. She couldn’t even apologize. In all the years since she’d discovered she was dangerous, she’d never felt more like a monster than she did that day. And she realized that it would probably be better for everyone if she stayed on the farm, where she was less in danger of hurting people, and where she wasn’t constantly, unceasingly,
always
reminded that she was different than everyone else. It was easier for everyone that way.

“To tell you the truth,” she told Sam now, “I don’t even know if I
could
leave anymore.”

“Why?”

“I think about leaving, and it’s like I get this knot in my stomach from the thought of being away from the Poison Garden for any amount of time.”

“But how do you get by without leaving? Don’t you need things?”

“We have help,” Olivia said. “Tom’s been a godsend.”

“You and Tom …”

“What?”

“Are you …?”

“Oh! No. We’re not anything. I’m not his type.”

“Because you’re sort of a redhead?”

“Because I’m a female.”

“Ah.”

He looked down at her steadily, seriously. Her heart began to pick up speed, a slow-building momentum she couldn’t control. Her skin tingled where every blade of grass and flower petal touched her. Sam gazed down on her, his look curious and transparent, and it made her bones ache.

All this—the conspiracy of her body to work against her—was a clear warning sign that she should exit the way she came, now, while she still could. Otherwise, she and Sam were both
heading at top speed toward a brick wall. The old refrain swept like blowing leaves across her mind:
If only, if only, if only.

“Do you want to try the serum now?” Sam asked.

“I’m not sure it’s a good idea.”

“But why? Because you don’t want me to get hurt?”

She nodded.

“I think you’re afraid.”

She scoffed. “What would I be afraid of?”

“That you might like it.”

The wind picked up forcefully enough to lift her arm at her side. “I’m not afraid.”

“Good. May I?” He reached for the bag she’d brought, which contained only the serum. He looked at it a moment—the pink plastic bottle—then unscrewed the top. “Hold out your hand.” She did. But instead of easing the serum into her palm, he dropped a pea-sized dollop on the inside of her wrist. The serum was nearly the same temperature as her body, slick and translucent gray. “What are you doing?”

“We’re trying it out.”

“But I thought—why didn’t you put it in my hand …?”

“Just rub it in. Right where I put it. Trust me.”

She pulled her hand that was held by the kite, and the kite pulled back. But she prevailed and rubbed the serum into her wrist with one thumb, aware that Sam was watching. The whole thing felt intensely indulgent and impossibly intimate. So much of her fragile new friendship with Sam hinged on her ability to hide how much she desired him. If he knew, it would only make things awkward between them. Better to let him think he didn’t affect her.

“Is it dry?” he asked.

“I think so.”

“Good. Lay back for me.”

“Sam?”

“Just trust me.”

With some awkwardness, she lay back and felt the dry grasses buckling beneath the blanket. High white storm clouds were stacked in the sky, the sign of uneasy atmosphere. The kite tugged her wrist.

“You do that a lot,” he said.

“What?”

“Touch things. Run your hands over things.”

She stilled. She hadn’t realized she’d been toying with a blade of grass near her hip, running it absentmindedly between her fingers. She let it go. “I feel everything,” she whispered. “I can tell when the dew’s falling even when I’m in my bed with the shades down. I know spring by the smell of the crocuses. And food—
God.
It’s my weakness. Even if I never ate again the smells alone can make me feel like I just ate a ten-course meal.”

“Is that a side effect of your condition?”

“Maybe. Or it’s just how I am.”

“Close your eyes,” he said.

“I don’t know about that …”

“Can you stand to be out of control for one second?”

“Of course I can,” she said. “Just promise me you won’t touch me with anything more than one fingertip. That’s it. Promise?”

He put his right hand over her heart, his left pinky finger in the air. “Scout’s Honor.”

“I don’t think that’s how you do the salute,” she said. But she settled back and closed her eyes. In the red dark behind her eyelids, she wondered if she might—sometimes—make a harmless exception to her rule about not leaving the farm. But she banished the thought as quickly as it had arrived. Sam had her second-guessing the structures she’d put in place that had until this point kept her life from falling apart. She needed to do a
better job of appearing indifferent to him—so they would
both
believe she was.