Chapter 3: Roots and Ghosts

Isla didn’t remember leaving the café. One moment, she’d been staring at Jonas, the lily between them, the echo of Ellie’s shy voice hanging between the clatter of cups and the smell of warm cinnamon. The next, she was outside, her boots slapping wet pavement as she crossed Main Street toward the old oak tree.

The figure was gone by the time she reached it — if there’d ever been anyone there at all. But beneath the tree roots, nestled among the damp leaves, lay another lily. Fresh. Perfect. A crimson ribbon tied its stem so tight she wondered if the flower could even breathe.

She crouched and brushed a thumb over the petals. Cold. Too cold for a summer morning. She straightened up, heart pounding hard enough she felt it in her teeth. This wasn’t just a prank. Someone knew she was here — someone who remembered everything she’d tried to bury.

When she turned, Jonas was standing halfway across the street, hands in his jacket pockets, worry written plain on his face. He didn’t call her name, just watched her the way he always had — like he was waiting for her to decide whether she’d let him in or shut him out again.

Back at the house, Isla barely paused at the gate. She pushed through the overgrown path, the wild lilies brushing her jeans like old friends she didn’t want to greet. The front door banged shut behind her. She locked it this time. Twice.

She set the new lily on the mantle next to the first two. Three white blooms lined up like accusations. She hated how beautiful they looked. How alive.

Upstairs, the bedroom door resisted her push, as if the room itself wanted her gone. She hadn’t slept there since she was eighteen — since the night Ruth had found her crying over a college rejection letter she’d never had the courage to send Jonas. She shoved the door open anyway. Dust danced in the sunbeam spilling through the lace curtain. Her old dresser. The vanity still cluttered with cheap perfume bottles and a broken hairbrush. The quilt Ruth had made for her high school graduation draped over the bed like a promise she’d never kept.

She sat on the edge of the bed and traced the stitching with her finger. Lilies, of course — Ruth had embroidered lilies everywhere. Pillows. Napkins. Handkerchiefs. Stubborn things, Ruth would say, pressing her fingers into the dirt. They’ll find a way to bloom, even when you forget them.

The floorboard under the window creaked. Isla glanced down, frowning. There — a corner of something sticking out from the gap between two boards. She dropped to her knees and pried it loose with her fingernail. A folded piece of paper, yellowed and soft at the creases. Her name written on the front in Ruth’s careful hand.

She sat cross-legged on the floor and opened it. The paper smelled faintly of lavender and old wood.

My Isla, it began. If you find this, you’ve come back to where you belong. Don’t run from the garden. It remembers everything we plant, even what we bury. Some roots go deeper than grief. Some seeds wait for the right hands. Forgive me for what I kept from you. Forgive him too. You’ll know what to do when the lilies bloom. — Ruth

Isla pressed the letter to her chest. The words felt like a weight and a key all at once. Forgive him. Jonas. Ruth had known. She always knew.

A knock startled her upright. Not the front door — the back. She shoved the letter into her pocket and hurried downstairs, heart tripping over itself. She peered through the cracked window by the back porch. Jonas stood there, muddy boots, a bundle of tangled weeds under one arm.

She opened the door just enough to see him fully. “You followed me.”

“You ran off like you’d seen a ghost,” he said, voice calm but edged with something harder. “Did you?”

She stepped aside, letting him in before she could change her mind. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

Jonas set the weeds on the counter, dirt scattering on the old tiles. He looked at the lilies on the mantle, his mouth tightening. “You’re collecting them now?”

“They keep finding me,” Isla snapped. She hated how her voice trembled.

He didn’t flinch. Just moved closer, leaning one hip against the counter, arms crossed. “You think I’m leaving them.”

“Aren’t you?” she demanded. “Isn’t this your game, Jonas? Little reminders? Trying to pull me back into something we buried a long time ago?”

Jonas pushed off the counter so fast she stepped back. He didn’t touch her, but his eyes pinned her in place. “Isla, I’d give you lilies every day if I thought they’d keep you here. But I’m not the one leaving them on your porch in the middle of the night.”

His honesty knocked the air from her lungs. She wanted to believe him. Part of her did. Part of her always did.

“Then who?” she whispered.

Jonas ran a hand through his hair, leaving a smear of dirt across his temple. “I don’t know. Maybe no one. Maybe the house wants you to stay.”

She almost laughed. “The house?”

He shrugged. “Or Ruth. She had her ways.”

Isla pulled the letter from her pocket and thrust it at him. “She left this. She knew something. ‘Some roots go deeper than grief’ — what does that mean, Jonas?”

He read the note, mouth moving silently. When he met her eyes again, something in his had changed. A door unlocked. “She was talking about the garden.”

Isla shook her head. “What about it? It’s just weeds and lilies.”

“Not just lilies,” he said. He grabbed her hand, tugging her toward the back door. “Come on.”

“Jonas”

“Trust me.”

The yard smelled of damp earth and rain-soaked blossoms. Jonas led her past the old trellis, through brambles that clung to her jeans. He dropped to his knees near the fence, fingers digging into the soft ground.

“Here,” he said, breathless. “Help me.”

They dug with bare hands, pulling weeds aside, clawing through damp soil. Underneath the tangle, the lilies were thicker, clustered in a wild ring around a patch of earth that looked too smooth, too recently turned.

Isla’s breath caught. “What is that?”

Jonas brushed more dirt away, revealing a corner of something pale — not stone, not root. Something wrapped in plastic.

A sudden gust rustled the lilies. A shiver chased up Isla’s spine. She turned her head, certain she’d heard footsteps on the path.

“Jonas,” she whispered, voice thin. “Someone’s watching.”

He didn’t stop digging. “Let them.”

The plastic shifted under his fingers — an old tin box, its lid rusted shut. He pried it open. Inside, something glinted under the soil — metal, old and sharp-edged. A locket. A key. And a folded scrap of paper, dark with years of secrets.

Before Isla could reach for it, the garden gate creaked open behind them.

They froze, dirt under their nails, breath hanging in the hush between lilies and secrets.

A voice drifted through the dusk. Soft. Unfamiliar.

“You shouldn’t have come back, Isla.”