Page 89 of Creeping Beautiful

I even asked him once, late that summer when McKay was gone and we were taking advantage of the pavilion without him. Adam was watching college football on the TV over the fireplace and I was lazing around on my bed swing. And I said, “Did you have a best friend when you were a kid, Adam?”

He didn’t look at me right away, just kept watching the football game. We had barbecued that afternoon. Hot dogs. I was still full from eating three.

But eventually his eyes found mine. “What do you mean? Like… McKay?”

“No. Did you have a girl like me when you were growing up here at Old Home? Or were you all alone?”

It came out sadder than I meant it to. Because I didn’t want to imagine Adam all alone. It made my heart hurt.

“I didn’t have a girl like you. Not until you came along. You’re one of a kind, Indie.”

I chuckled. Because I knew he was saying it to make me chuckle. But there was a stab of pain in my chest when he said that.

“I’m sorry, you know. For hitting you that day. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

His eyes went sad then. And I wanted to take it back. But I didn’t take it back. I couldn’t take it back. I had been wanting to tell him that since he woke up on Nate’s living room floor covered in blood.

Finally, he sighed. “It’s just who you are, Indie.”

His reply hurt me more than it soothed me. Because… was that girl who hit him in the head with a candlestick who I was?

I gave him a brain injury. He almost died. And sure, by this time I had killed my share of people on different jobs. I had hurt more than that too. But I never wanted to hurt Adam. If McKay had not insisted on taking him to the emergency room, he would’ve died, or at the very least gone unconscious and never woken up again. His brain was swelling up and cutting off his oxygen flow. And even though he recovered, and by this time he was mostly back to normal physically, he had to have therapy for months afterward. And learn to say a few words all over again because his mouth didn’t quite work right.

I did that to him. And I was very, very sorry.

But the truth was… I didn’t actually remember doing it. I didn’t know how that candlestick got in my hand. I didn’t know how it struck Adam on the side of the head. I didn’t remember any of it. And that scared me. Really bad. And I wanted to tell this to Adam but I didn’t want him to worry about me or think I was losing it. Because I had heard Donovan talking to McKay and Adam over the years. He was always worried that one day I would ‘lose it’ and that’s why he’d been coming to talk to me since I was a little girl. So I didn’t lose it. So I could hold everything together in a tight, tight ball and never go insane.

But I didn’t know how to say that. I should’ve started with this train of thought instead of ‘I’m sorry’. Because now it felt like the conversation was over.

So I got up from my swing, walked over to Adam, and sat in his lap. And I hugged him. And then I was just… more sad than afraid. Because I had hugged McKay millions of times by this point in my life. And Donovan, a couple dozen, at least.

But I had never, ever, not once, hugged Adam. Or thanked him for saving me from that snake. Or giving me this home. Or making sure I was taken care of by McKay. For saving my life in the early days of those jobs. Or anything else that he’d done for me since I first became his more than seven years ago.

It took him almost a full minute to relax and put his arms around me, and hug me back. But when he did, something changed between us.

We both felt it.

And then his head turned and he kissed me on the cheek and pulled my face into his neck and whispered so softly, I could barely hear his words, “I love you, Indie. No matter what you do, I’m on your side, kid. Always and forever.”

I stayed in his lap. Enjoying this new closeness between us. But then he slapped my leg and said, “Get up. I gotta go inside. Got some work to do before I go to sleep.”

And I got up, and sat back down on my swing, and watched him walk away.

But that’s how I came to be the one to plant an entire circle of daphne shrubs around the central garden that had the biggest fountain in the middle.

It’s one of my fondest memories growing up.

Nate spoiled it a little the next day when he was over and we were walking through the garden. He was scowling at them as I pointed them out and told him how much I had enjoyed working with Adam in the gardens that summer. And this made me mad because I loved those shrubs. Everything about them reminded me of Adam.

They didn’t have berries this year because we planted them when they were dormant. So I had to tell Nate about the berries and how this time next year they would be beautiful shrubs. But Nate told me they were poisonous and even though some birds, like thrushes, could eat them, nothing else would. Because they would die. And he said I should rip them all up and plant something else.

Of course, I was not going to rip up these shrubs. These shrubs belonged to Adam and me. They brought us closer together and I liked Adam when he was working in the garden.

I liked him a lot.

Everything between us had changed that summer after I turned seventeen. I finally felt like all four of us—me, McKay, Donovan, and Adam—we were all really together for the first time since I came to live with them.

And some of what Nate said came off as jealousy because Adam and I spent every day planting things, and watering things, and pruning and picking things. We talked about birds, and life in the swampy forest, and how different our garden would look in just a year or two.