“Almost there,” he said. “You’ll see.” We hit a pothole, and both of us were jolted in our seats. I grabbed onto the roll bar tightly. “It’s all right,” he said. “I’ve got it under control.” He smiled. “But you might want to hold on for this next part.” With that, he swung the Jeep off the road and onto the grass.
“Um, can we do this?” I asked.
“Sure,” he said. “All the way back here, my mother doesn’t care what the grass looks like.”
We crossed the field, hitting some very deep holes that Lucien explained had been made by gophers. He pulled to a stop at the edge of what was probably properly called a meadow, a huge open expanse of grass. But it wasn’t empty. It was filled with a menagerie of the animal-shaped topiaries we’d seen along the roads and then closer to the house. There were at least fifteen that I could see, and some that seemed to still be in hedge form, with pieces of what they would become beginning to take shape.
“Wow,” I murmured, getting out of the car as Lucien killed the engine. I walked up to the nearest one, which was a life-size horse with a garland around his neck.
“That one was for the Derby last month,” Lucien said. “It made the paper.”
“These are incredible,” I said, looking around at the creatures surrounding us.
“You really like them?” he asked.
“Of course,” I said, then registered his tone of voice. I crouched down to look at an alligator that had its jaws wide open, a tiny bird perched on its teeth. “How long did this one take you?” I asked, looking up at him.
He gave a short, embarrassed laugh. “Is it obvious?”
“You just seemed a little invested in what I thought,” I said, smiling at him. “But I can’t believe you can do this. It’s amazing.”
“It’s just a hobby,” he said, following along a few steps behind me as I walked around, watching my expression as I looked at all of them.
“This isn’t a hobby,” I said. “It’s like you’re a sculptor. You should be proud of these.” I saw a small handsaw lying next to a piece that was still half in hedge form, and something clicked into place. “Are these why you were carrying a chain saw earlier?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I was working on a few around back when I heard a car. I didn’t scare you, did I?”
I pretended to be very interested in a duck and a line of ducklings behind her. “Maybe just a little.” The ducks were incredibly detailed—they even had ridges for feathers carved into them. “How does this even happen?” I asked, looking around at all of them. “How did you learn to do this?”
“It’s not a very interesting story,” he said. “Like I told you, they’re kind of a tradition around here. I’d always liked them. And then a few years ago, we hired a gardener who was really great at it. He taught me what he knew, and that was that.” He rested his hand on the back of a wildcat with one paw raised. “There’s this quote by Michelangelo that I always liked. He said that he could see the angel in the marble, and was carving to set him free. I guess it’s the same thing with me. Except I see the wildcat in the shrubbery.” He smiled, but then shrugged. “But like I said, it’s just a hobby.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think people spend this much time or energy on their hobbies.” I turned away from a bear—bears seemed to be a motif—and looked at him, shoulders hunched in the moonlight. “You’re an artist,” I said.
He gave a short laugh. “Artists don’t make money. And gardeners certainly don’t make money. My parents put up with this as long as they think it’s just for fun. I looked at a few colleges that had landscaping programs, and you should have heard them. It was like I had betrayed them.”
“But you can’t let that stop you,” I said. “I mean, if you have a gift for something, I think it’s wrong not to work at it, just because it gets hard, or because you’re scared.” I paused after saying this, wondering why these words sounded so familiar.
“Look, never mind,” said Lucien, his face, what I could see of it in the dark, more closed off than I’d yet seen it. “I guess I shouldn’t have expected you to understand.”
“God,” I said, getting frustrated. Getting mad. I could feel my pulse quickening, but it didn’t feel scary and out of control, like when I’d been talking to my mother. Weirdly, it felt good. “I do understand. You think my parents want me to be an actress?” I paused, a little stunned, when I realized I’d used the plural—and the present tense. “I mean, they didn’t. My mother still doesn’t. Whatever,” I said, trying to push on past this and get back to what was at hand. “My father was a history professor.” I stumbled over the “was” for just a moment. “My mother’s a PhD in English. They don’t understand. They think that what I want to do is crazy. And maybe it is, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop because they don’t want me to do it. Because they didn’t want me to….” I sighed, giving up on trying to make my tenses match. “I’m just saying,” I said.
Lucien nodded, looking at the ground, shoulders hunched.
“I just …” I looked up at the sky for a moment, then pressed on. “I thought I was going to die,” I said. “For one really long second during the accident, I thought it was all over. And then, obviously, I didn’t, but … it was like I went the opposite way. Like I stopped living entirely, so I wouldn’t have to feel anything again. Because feeling had led to it hurting so, so much….” My voice caught again, but I took a breath and continued saying these things I hadn’t even realized until a second ago that I felt. “But since I’ve been out here, on this trip … it’s like I’ve started to remember what it’s like. To feel alive. To feel anything. And all I’m saying is that you never know how much time you have.”
“I see what you’re saying,” he said, giving me a sad smile. “And it sounds easy. But I don’t know if I can do it.”
“Well, there’s only one way to find out,” I said, getting frustrated again. I looked across the meadow and saw the Jeep, keys dangling from the ignition, glinting a little in the moonlight. Without stopping to think, I crossed to the car, breaking into a half run as I got closer.
“Uh,” Lucien called to me. “Amy?”
“Someone just told me,” I said, “that you can’t let things stop you because you’re afraid.” I walked around to the driver’s-side door and climbed in.
“Right,” he said. “But—”
I ignored him and placed my hands on the wheel. “Okay,” I murmured to myself. It was the first time I’d been in the driver’s seat since the accident. I remembered how it had felt that morning, when I’d grabbed the keys from my father and gotten behind the wheel without a second thought. I put my hand on the keys but didn’t turn on the ignition yet. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, fighting down the panic that was threatening to rise up, the panic that was telling me that I shouldn’t be sitting there, that bad things would happen if I did. I opened them and looked around.
I wasn’t at home, wherever that was. I wasn’t in California, at any rate, and I wasn’t back at the intersection at University. I was, improbably, in a meadow in Kentucky, on a warm, starry night. There weren’t any other cars around to run reds. It was okay. I turned the key in the ignition.
Before I could talk myself out of it, I shifted out of park and put my foot on the gas. The Jeep jolted forward, and I stepped on the brake, slamming back into the seat. It occurred to me now that I’d never driven one of these before, and they seemed to handle differently from regular cars. Also, the act of driving felt a little rusty. I knew all the things I had to do, but they weren’t working together in harmony the way they had a few months ago. I placed my hands at ten and two and pressed on the gas more gently this time. The car eased forward, and I pressed a little harder and slowly began doing a wide circle around the meadow.
Lucien was standing in the middle, next to his wildcat, and he rotated with me, smiling. “You’re driving,” he called.
“I’m driving!” I yelled back, pressing harder on the gas, speeding up
a little. Driving in an open Jeep was fantastic. The wind was lifting my hair as I went, making it seem like I was going much faster than I actually was. When I’d gone around in a circle once, I turned around and started going the other way, making Lucien laugh. As I braked and then sped up again, I realized how much I had missed this, how free I felt, even when I wasn’t actually going anywhere.
“Amy, watch out—,” Lucien called suddenly, his voice sharp.
“What?” I called, a second before the car dropped down suddenly on the left side, causing me to accidentally hit the gas harder than I’d meant to. The Jeep jolted forward, and suddenly it was out of my control, and for one horrible second, I was back three months ago. A second later I came back to myself and stepped hard on the brake—but not in time to avoid a looming green figure in front of me. There was a crunch and the car slammed to a stop.
“Are you okay?” Lucien asked, hustling over to the car.
I could hear the blood pounding in my head, and I felt nauseous. I could feel real panic rising up, threatening to take over. I forced myself to open my eyes and shift the car into park. I took my hands, which were shaking, off the steering wheel. I killed the engine and dropped my hand quickly from the keys. What had I been thinking? Why had I even tried to do this? I stood up, trying to see over the hood. “What happened?” I asked, trying hard to keep my voice from shaking.
“Well, I think the car’s okay,” Lucien said from the ground, where he was kneeling. “It looks like you hit a gopher hole. But I think Maurice is a goner.” He stood up, holding the head—with antlers—of a topiary moose.
“Oh God,” I said, staring at it. “I’m so sorry—I broke your moose?” I don’t know why this seemed, suddenly, to be funny. But it was. I could feel slightly desperate laughter threatening to get out, and I bit my lip hard against it.
“Maurice,” Lucien said mournfully, and that did it. I burst out in hysterical laughter. When it petered out, I got out of the Jeep and walked around to the passenger seat, trying to avoid looking at the severed moose body, thinking it was not quite so funny anymore.
Needless to say, Lucien drove back to the guesthouse. Maurice’s head rested between us on the seat. “Sorry, again,” I said.
“Oh, he probably had it coming,” he said, looking down at the head. “In fact, you might be onto something here. This would look great above a mantel. You know, for people who want the decoration but don’t want to kill an actual moose.”
“I like that idea,” I said. “I think there’s a future in it.” He glanced over at me, and I just raised my eyebrows at him.
He pulled in front of the guesthouse, and I looked up at the windows. The downstairs was all lit up, the second floor dark. “It looks like Roger went to sleep,” I said.
“Yeah,” said Lucien, looking at the house. A moment passed with no sounds but the crickets chirping and the rumbling of the engine. “So what’s the deal with you two?” he asked, breaking the silence.
I looked at him. “What do you mean?” I asked, knowing what he meant. Lucien killed the engine and turned in the seat so that he was leaning back against the door and facing me head-on. Then, maybe realizing that Maurice was in the way, he lifted up the head and placed it in the back. “There’s no deal,” I said, looking up at the second floor. “Roger’s in love with your sister.”
He shook his head. “I’m not so sure about that.”
I was about to contradict him when I realized that Roger had said basically the same thing in the car only a few hours ago. “Well … I know he’s still hung up on her. I mean, that’s why we’re here.”
“So there’s nothing going on between you two?” Lucien asked.
I blinked at him. My first instinct was to be incredulous that he would even think that. But … I ran my hand through my hair, trying not to pull on it too much. This was Roger. And although I’d noticed how cute he was when I first saw him, that wasn’t how I thought of him anymore. Then, completely unbidden, a series of images flashed through my mind. Roger drumming on the steering wheel. Roger sleeping next to me in bed, the blanket falling off his shoulder. Watching me carefully as we drove through a rain-soaked Kansas night, asking me to talk to him. Offering me the last french fry.
“Amy?” Lucien prompted.
“No,” I said quickly. “No, there’s nothing going on. No.”
“That’s a lot of no’s,” Lucien said.
“Yeah,” I agreed, having heard that myself. I leaned back against my seat, a little shaken by this conversation.
“I just wasn’t sure,” he said. “What the situation was, I mean.”
I shook my head. “Nothing is happening.” I paused after saying this. Was that even entirely right? “I mean, nothing has happened,” I corrected, secure in the knowledge that this, at least, was true. “I mean, we’re here for Hadley. Because Roger still has feelings for her.”
“I’m not sure how that’s going to go, then. I think Had’s going to take one look at him and run. That’s what she does. I’m the opposite. I like to stick around.”
“You grow things,” I reminded him. “You’re putting down roots. Literally. People who run off don’t tend to do that.”
“No,” Lucien said with a smile. “I guess not. But I suppose I learned to do it because someone had to be here. And Hadley has spent her entire life running away. She runs from everything. Things, people, feelings. Family. I’ve watched her do it forever. Why do you think she rides horses? She’s been trying to escape since she was little. The thing I don’t think she’s realized is that eventually you have to stop. And what happens when you do?”
Something in what Lucien said was ringing a loud bell, and I had a quick flash of Charlie, seeing his head disappear over the porch railing as he snuck out, night after night. “I think my brother does the same thing,” I said slowly. “I don’t know if he runs away from stuff. But I think he likes to go places where people can’t follow him.”
“Yeah?” Lucien asked.
“Yeah,” I said, feeling the absence of my brother. I had spent so long carefully not talking about him. But suddenly I wanted to. I knew without being able to say why that Lucien would understand. “He’s in rehab,” I said out loud, for the first time.
He looked at me for a long moment, then up at the sky with a short laugh. “So’s my mother,” he said. He shook his head. “She goes almost every summer and dries out. She and my father tell everyone that they’re just on a trip, so they can get some golf in. I even believed it until a few years ago, when Had set me straight.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, hoping he would know that I meant it.
“Me too,” he said, looking at me with a smile. “God, we’re a regular Norman Rockwell painting, aren’t we?”
“Happy families are all alike,” I said, quoting from a book I’d once overheard my mother and Charlie talking about.
Lucien nodded. “Exactly.”
I leaned my head against the back of the seat and looked up at the sky. “Hey, do you know the Kansas state motto?”
“I don’t. Enlighten me.”
“It’s Ad astra per aspera—that’s the Latin. In English, it means ‘To the stars’—”
“Through adversity,” Lucien finished. I glanced over at him, impressed, and he knocked on his skull. “Not just a hat rack.”
“Impressive,” I said, leaning my head back again. “I just thought of it tonight. It’s beautiful out.”
“It is,” he murmured. “Amy …” I turned my head to look at him and saw that he had slid a little closer to me. As I watched, surprised, he slid even closer, reached out, and tucked a stray lock of hair behind my ear. His hand lingered there for a second, and then traced the curve of my cheek, stopping at my chin.
“Oh,” I murmured. “Oh. Um …” I had not been expecting this. And it felt like it had been a long time since I’d had to deal with something like this. I liked Lucien, sure, he was really nice, but …
He slid a little closer, his arm res
ting along the back of the seat, and now right behind my shoulders. And as he did this, I did feel a little thrill. Here was a boy who liked me, who seemed to want to kiss me under the stars. I was still trying to figure out what I was feeling, and what I was going to do, when he leaned even closer and tipped his head toward mine.
At that instant, the light in Roger’s window came on, and I looked up at it, effectively ruining the moment. Lucien looked toward the light as well and slid back a little bit to his side of the car. “Looks like Roger’s awake,” I said, stating the obvious, just trying to cover some of the awkwardness.
“Looks that way,” Lucien said, with an embarrassed smile.
I smiled back and slid away. “I’d better go to bed,” I said, getting out of the car. I closed the door and leaned over the open window. “But I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“See you tomorrow,” Lucien said easily, though I noticed that he was blushing a little—at least, his sunburn appeared more pronounced. “You drove tonight,” he said, looking at me. “That’s huge.”
“Yeah,” I said, feeling the panic begin to rise when I thought about it, the moment when the car had slipped out of my control once again. I pushed the feeling away as best I could and tried to tell myself that I was okay. Unfortunately, the same could not be said of Maurice. I turned and headed to the guesthouse.
“One thing,” he called to quietly to me, and I turned back to him. “Do you have a favorite animal?”
I was not prepared for this question. I don’t think I’d been asked it since the age of eight, at any rate. Amy! would have known the answer immediately. It was probably kittens. Or unicorns. But she never would have had this night—she wouldn’t have taken a chance and gone out barefoot to drive a Jeep around a meadow. And I had. “I don’t know,” I said, considering the question. “I’ve always liked owls, I guess.”
“Owls?” he asked. “Really?”
“Yeah,” I said, with a laugh. “But that might just be because I like lollipops. And potato chips. The ones with glasses, I guess. Why?”