Page 27 of Claimed By my Father's Enemies
"I think," he says, "that we might be too early. It's going to be closed for a while."
"Come on." I'm already getting out. "I know someone."
I pull out my phone as we walk toward the entrance and send a message. Thirty seconds later, the beam of a flashlight appears on the path.
Frank comes out pulling his jacket straight. He's somewhere in his sixties, broad-faced, unhurried. He's been on this overnight shift for as long as I've been coming here, and we have the kind of easy familiarity built from years of early mornings and very little small talk.
"Sienna." A nod. He looks at Adrian with a mild assessment.
"Frank, this is Adrian."
He looks at Adrian for another second. Apparently arrives at an acceptable conclusion. "Japanese Gardens?"
"You know me."
He unhooks the latch and swings the gate open.
The path inside is gravel and shadow, the trees pressing close on both sides, and the smell hits immediately. Damp earth. Cedar. The cold green smell of moss. Adrian falls into step beside me. His footsteps are careful on the gravel, like he's aware the space asks for quietness.
The garden reveals itself gradually. You can't take it all in from one point. It unfolds as you move through it, one section opening into the next, and that's always been part of what I like about it. Stone lanterns stand as dark shapes in the pre-dawn light. The koi pond sits flat and still, its surface the color of pewter. The pavilion roof curves against the sky. There are no people. No voices. Nothing to disturb the peace.
I hear Adrian exhale.
Slow. Long. Something going out of him that he'd been holding.
I stay quiet.
He turns to look at me, and I think it’s the first time that I’ve seen him relaxed.
We start walking.
The path winds toward the moon bridge, the water sounds reaching us before we see it, a quiet constant movement fromsomewhere beneath. The cold is still here but it's a clean cold, the kind that sharpens rather than closes you down.
"So," Adrian says, after we've been walking a while. His voice is pitched low, fitted to the space. "You come here often?" The pickup line deliberate.
I laugh. "I do, actually. When I need to reset."
"And this is the reset of choice."
"Japanese gardens are intentional in a specific way." I'm watching the path in front of us, the lantern shapes, the way the moss holds the night's moisture. "Every element placed with a reason. Nothing accidental. But the intention isn't to control nature. It's to work with it." I pause. "My approach to landscape is looser, more natural. But I find something in this that I can't get from anywhere else."
I can see him listening with full attention.
We round a bend in the path and the Japanese Garden section opens ahead. The stone placement, the carefully raked gravel, the single gnarled pine growing at an angle that looks like decades of wind shaped it.
I stop at the edge.
"The point isn't perfection," I say. "It's the opposite, actually. There's a concept in Japanese aesthetics, wabi-sabi, that finds beauty in imperfection." I watch a few leaves, blown by the breeze, land on the raked gravel and stay there. "That stone has a crack in it. That tree grows sideways. And that's not despite the design. That's the design."
Same as in life I think. But I don't say that out loud.
I hear myself and wince.
"Sorry." I shake my head. "Old habits. I used to give guided tours here, years ago. Apparently I can't be here without falling into the role."
He looks at me, and he gives me an easy smile. "No apologies needed. I find it fascinating."
The way he looks at me I dare to hope he is not talking about the garden.
