Page 34 of Homegrown Magic

“I…I suppose I thought you preferred it that way. Though nobody could blame you for needing help, Margot. Everybody does.”

“That’s not what I meant!” she snaps, snatching back Rastanaya’s letter and dropping it to the dirt in disgust. But she takes a deep breath and says simply, “The estate doesn’t belong to my parents anymore. It belongs to yours.”

There’s a terrible sensation rising in Yael’s stomach, as though the floor of the greenhouse has fallen away to reveal a whirlpool, and it’s about to pull them down. “To mine?” they repeat helplessly.

“Well, to the Clauneck Company, so as good as.”

“But…how?”

“Soon after Granny Fern died, my parents gambled the fortune they’d inherited on ventures that were meant to expand Greenwillow Remedies—she’d died without a will, you see, so everything had gone to them—but it all went bust. They commissioned adventuring parties to chase down rumors of supposed cure-all plants that only grew in the coldest and most desolate pine forests of Thorn, and the parties came back with nothing time and time again. They bought huge amounts of stock from a so-called plant witch for a strengthening potion that turned out to be mostly fermented yeti piss. Within a year, her remedies business was mostly dismantled, and the manor house was sold off and stripped for anything of value to pay down their debts. But it wasn’t enough. So they reached out to the Claunecks to beg for an extension. We all moved into the cottage together, and I tried to help them salvage Greenwillow Remedies before…before they got sick. And I haven’t been able to do it on my own since. So that, Yael, is why I live in a cottage. And that is why my parents are in a care home. And that is why I can’t throw a fashion show in an estate that should’ve been my birthright but now belongs to a company that scraped it for parts and abandoned the shell.”

By the time Margot finishes, her chest is heaving and her cheeks have gone bright red, and Yael feels a kind of kinship with that hollow shell of a once grand house out in the woods.

Everything is their family’s fault.

Margot’s quiet country existence, which Yael had envied and thought of as some quaint little storybook life, is simply what’s left after the havoc their own family wreaked. This whole time, Yael’s fairy tale has been Margot’s unhappy ending. They feel numb, and foolish, and despise themself just as much as their family’s company for daring to feel sorry for themself.

“Margot, I—I didn’t know.”

Margot sighs and sags back against the worktable, winding down from her anger. “I wondered when you first came to town, but I believe you. And I didn’t mean to blame you. You aren’t your parents, Yael. I know you aren’t responsible for their actions. You’re just doing the best you can.”

It is more gracious than Yael deserves, and in that moment, they decide to be worthy of Margot’s grace. “Well.” They straighten their tunic as though it’s a fine silk suit. “I may not be my parents, but I am their heir, as they keep insisting. The heir to the Clauneck Company and a representative of the bank, as its employee.” That Yael has yet to work a single day at the bank (and never intends to) is another technicality. “So, as the heir and representative, I hereby give you permission to use the company’s ill-gotten assets. They are at your disposal, as am I.” Yael holds out a hand for hers. “You’re going to put Greenwillow Greenhouses back on the map, Margot, so let’s get started.”

In truth, the house isn’t nearly as bad as Yael thought it would be. The front walkway is overgrown with grass and weeds, and the steps are plastered with forest debris. Climbing ivy has crawled its way up the bricks, which could certainly use a washing. But inside the wide front doors, it’s simply dusty and empty. Yael’s sneeze echoes wildly around the marble foyer when they enter and stir up dust bunnies, as does Margot’s nervous giggle. After that, they walk through the rooms stripped of their fine woven rugs and carved furnishings and collected treasures. Only small piles of useless things remain—a chair badly broken by hasty agents of the bank here, a gray discarded mop there.

“Well, I suppose there’s room to fit everyone in,” Margot jokes sourly.

Yael is silent beside her, touring the remains of her former life.

They wander from room to room, peeking into what might’ve been a sitting parlor, the way it’s traditionally positioned in the house. On the far end is a pair of stained-glass doors, the pictures of climbing roses and briars lit from without.

“What’s through there?” Yael asks.

“My mother’s private courtyard. She wanted to throw garden parties out there, though the garden party set would rarely travel so far to see her. I know it disappointed her.”

Yael crosses to the doors then looks back to Margot for permission. She shrugs, and they push through.

Out in the courtyard, a set of marble stairs leads down to a small terrace made of the same, heavily scattered with dried leaf litter and dirt. From there, a narrow walkway winds around the garden, though its exact path is hard to trace as it vanishes into shin-high grass dotted with wildflowers. (Or perhaps they’re weeds; Yael never can tell the difference.) In raised beds, rosebushes burst from the earth. Years without pruning have left them thick and tangled at ground level, long-dead canes spilling out. Some have overgrown their own beds and matted together. But they’re flowering and still beautiful, the blossoms varied among deep wine red, and peach, and pale lemon, and blush pink. An arched trellis in the middle of the courtyard has practically become a private chamber, with tendrils hanging down in a flowering curtain, swaying gently in the breeze.

“This is it,” Yael declares, their footsteps echoing off the marble as they take the stairs down to stand amid the lovely mess of it all. “Rastanaya said she wants to evoke the wild places of Harrow, right? The magic we haven’t mastered? The show has to happen here. This is magical, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know.” Margot glances around the courtyard from the top of the steps, and Yael can tell she’s trying to see it as the designer might, or as the peers of Harrow might. “It feels strange. This was my home, at least in the summer. And then for a while before the bank came to claim it. Maybe it never felt exactly like a home, but to let rich and famous people come traipsing through, talking about how ruined and wild it is, like my family manor is some kind of art project or statement piece…I just don’t know, Yael.”

When she puts it like that, it does sound horrible. Yael hurries back up to stand on the step below Margot and slips their hands into hers so she’s looking down on them and not the untended garden. “We’ll fix it up. I’ll fix it up. Clear a path from the front entrance to the courtyard. I’ll come here after work each day. We’ll put your flowers everywhere, and nobody will see what this place used to be. They’ll only see you, and everything you can do, and how everything you touch grows better because of you.”

“Not everything.” Margot’s eyes turn shadowed in the bright sunlight, and though she presses her lips together to steady them, her chin trembles.

Somehow, Yael has made Margot Greenwillow cry—made the strongest person they know cry—and it feels like the worst thing they’ve ever done. “I’m sorry, Margot, I shouldn’t have pushed. I should’ve thought…Gods, I’m an idiot.” You never do stop to think, Yael. “Here I am blathering when this is all my family’s fault.”

“No, it’s not. Not all of it. It’s…” She looks around the courtyard one more time. “There’s something I need to tell you. But not here, all right?”

“Anywhere,” Yael promises.

She sighs and drops their hand, turning toward the manor’s interior, the dark and dusty halls, the empty rooms.

Yael follows Margot up to the second floor, then the familiar stone staircase spiraling up into the tower they stood in ten years ago. It feels smaller than it was, even if Yael hasn’t grown much bigger since then. It’s empty now too. Of course it is; Margot wouldn’t have left her strange prized possessions behind.

She crosses the circular floor and stands at the window with her back to them, looking down on the treetops between the mansion and the town. Her shadowed silhouette against the bright-blue sky outside is an actual work of art, cardigan and all. But this is clearly not the time to say so.