It always started the same way. Those phantom arms reaching out, grabbing Mae by her shoulders and pulling her out of bed and back into the woods. The three winks, the counterclockwise spin. The girl’s dark eyes allowing approval to float up from the deep. The cold wind blowing through the trees and brushing against her skin, the loose leaves and twigs scratching the soles of her feet.
Then came the memories, so vivid in their recollection that it felt more like she was living through them again.
Dad was present in all of them.
There were the prominent ones, the ones that Mae could never forget no matter how hard she tried. The time when Mom and Dad brought her to an amusement park and Dad let her go on a roller coaster with him, the drops making her feel as if her organs had come loose and wanted to escape, the turns threatening to send her flying out of her seat despite the lap belt pressed against her thighs. None of those dangerous sensations seemed to matter when she felt Dad’s hand in hers, heard him shrieking in delight next to her.
There was the night when she walked in on him watching a scary movie, one with a lot of blood and monsters jumping out at the screen. She’d watched several minutes from behind the couch, too terrified to move but unable to bear another second. When Dad finally noticed he turned the movie off and carried her back to her bedroom, where he explained that nothing in the movie was real and that, despite what she was feeling at that moment, there was nothing to be afraid of. He held her in his arms and rocked her back and forth and whispered softly. In the moments before she finally fell asleep she could feel the tension and fear dissipating, and when sleep did come she found nothing disturbing in her dreams.
But there were also the smaller moments, the simple interactions. Every game of hide and seek in the house, every push on the swings at the playground near the apartment. All the nights when he tried his hand at cooking or baking, and all the times when she’d helped. Every afternoon when she got home from school and put on a Disney movie, and Dad would join Mom and her in singing along whenever a song came.
All these memories flooded back to her. But with them came not sadness or grief, at least not in an intense, crippling way. Instead, the memories filled Mae with warmth, a momentary sense of happiness that she could relive these moments again. Sitting there, in the forest, it felt less like Dad was gone forever.
And from that warmth sprouted the flowers. Dozens of them. Sunflowers, tulips, orchids, lilies, carnations. Even ones that Mae had never seen before. With every memory that came, another flower sprouted, bright and vivid and nearly as tall as the trees that surrounded them.
Before long, a garden had blossomed within the forest. Nestled between the bare trees, the drab browns and greens, stood a rainbow of petals that overwhelmed Mae’s eyes with their color and infused the air with their smooth, sweet scent.
And it was hers. Even with all the help she got from the other children, they insisted that it was. All the memories that gave the garden life were hers. Therefore, this was her garden.