Overgrown

The garden is overgrown.

I stand at what used to be the property line, a line I leaped over a hundred times the summer I was sixteen, and I can't tell where Grandmother's roses end and the Donnelly lavender begins. A decade of neglect turned two gardens into one wild tangle.

Like everything else I left behind.

The rental car sits in the driveway behind me, still ticking as the engine cools. San Francisco to Willow Creek took seven hours. Seven hours of podcasts and audiobooks and anything to keep me from thinking about what I was driving toward.

Now I'm here. And I have to think.

The house looks smaller than I remember. Faded yellow paint. The porch swing where Grandmother used to shell peas. The kitchen window where she'd wave at me running across the lawn.

She's not waving now. She's not anywhere.

Three weeks ago, she died in her sleep. Peaceful, the nurse said. Like she was ready.

I wasn't ready. I'm still not.

But her lawyer called, and there's a house to sell, and I'm the only family left to do it. So here I am. Twenty-eight years old, senior marketing manager at a tech company that won't notice I'm gone, standing in the ruins of the only place that ever felt like home.

The afternoon sun beats down. August in Willow Creek is brutal, all sticky heat and cicadas screaming. I forgot how loud summers are here. In the city, there's always noise, but it's different. Mechanical. Human.

This is alive.

I take a step toward the tangle of plants. Roses and lavender intertwined. Morning glories climbing both directions. A jasmine vine I don't recognize, probably planted in the last decade, reaching toward the sky like it's trying to escape.

"You have some nerve coming back here."

The voice hits me like ice water. I don't turn around.

I know that voice. Dreamed it. Replayed it. Ran from it for a decade.

"I'm just here to sell the house."

"Good." Footsteps in the grass. Closer. "The faster you leave again, the better."

Now I turn.

And there she is.

Violet Donnelly. Twenty-eight years old. More beautiful than I remembered, which shouldn't be possible because I remembered her as perfect. Copper hair pulled back in a messy braid. Freckles scattered across sunburned cheeks. Dirt under her nails. A florist now, I'd heard. She built something here while I was busy building nothing that mattered.

Her eyes haven't changed. That same fierce green.

Except now they're full of fury.

"Hello, Violet."

"Don't." She holds up a hand. "Don't act like we're old friends."

"We were."

"Were." The word lands like a slap. "Past tense. You made sure of that."

I don't have an answer. What can I say? That I'm sorry? That I had reasons? That every year I told myself I'd call, I'd write, I'd come back, and every year I found another excuse not to?

She wouldn't believe me. I barely believe myself.

"I just came for the garden," I manage. "The lawyer said..."

"I know what the lawyer said." Violet crosses her arms over a faded blue t-shirt. "Bloom Flowers" printed on the pocket. Her shop. Her life. "Property line dispute. The gardens grew together. Has to be sorted before the sale can go through."

"So you already know."

"Unlike some people, I've been here." Each word is a blade. "I watched this happen. Year after year. Your grandmother asking me to help with her side because you never came back. Never even called her."

"I called..."

"Twice a year. Christmas and her birthday. I know. I was usually there." Violet steps closer. The anger rolling off her is almost physical. "She talked about you constantly. Showed me your holiday cards. Told me about your promotions. So proud of her successful granddaughter."

I feel sick.

"She didn't tell you what she really thought, did she?" Violet's voice drops. "That she cried after every call because you always had an excuse not to visit. That she started leaving your room exactly as it was because she kept hoping you'd come home. That she..."

"Stop." The word tears out of me.

Violet stops. But she doesn't look away. Doesn't soften.

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because you should know." Her jaw tightens. "Because someone should have told you years ago, and I was too angry to bother. Because now she's gone and you're here and it's ten years too late for anything to matter."

The cicadas scream. The sun beats down. Between us, the tangled garden waits.

"I'll sort it myself," I say. "The garden. I'll figure out which plants are which, dig out what needs to go..."

"You don't know the first thing about gardening."

"I'll learn."

"Like you learned to return phone calls? To show up for the people who loved you?"

I take the hit. Deserve it.

"I'll figure it out," I repeat.

Violet stares at me for a long moment. Her face tightens, then loosens, then tightens again. Anger, yes. But grief too, raw and unguarded for half a second before she shuts it down.

Then she turns and walks away. Back toward her side of the garden, though which side is hers anymore, I couldn't say.

"Violet."

She pauses. Doesn't turn.

"I'm sorry."

Nothing. No response. Just her rigid back, her clenched fists, the space between us filled with everything we never said.

Then she keeps walking. Disappears around a jasmine hedge. Gone.

I stand there for a long time.

The house waits behind me. The garden waits in front. And somewhere in between, the girl I loved is growing flowers she planted without me, tending roots I was too afraid to water.

I didn't come back for her.

That's what I tell myself.

But standing here, watching the empty space where she was, feeling that old familiar hollowness,

I'm not sure I believe it anymore.

I'm not sure I ever did.

The sun starts to set. The cicadas quiet. The garden grows darker, its tangles becoming shadows, its boundaries invisible in the fading light.

Somewhere on the other side, a door opens and closes.

She's home. Has been home, the whole time I was running.

And I'm standing here, twenty-eight years old and a coward, finally back where I started.

With no idea what to do next.