“Not every Haywood is born with the power to heal,” Irene said. “Those who can’t heal also can’t be healed by one of us. We can’t read their auras. The shadow magic doesn’t affect them. It’s like they’re immune. Nolan was resistant to our magic like Quinn is—maybe he was resistant to your family’s magic, too.”

“And you think someone in my family either killed him or arranged to have him killed because they couldn’t take that summer from him.” Kaden’s stomach twisted. Who knew what else his family had covered up over the years? What else he might have been party to without even knowing it.

“We can’t know for sure.” Irene pressed her hands together and held them over her mouth. “We’re working off flashes of memories that you thought were a dream.”

“And the fact that he literally took my memories just now,” Clem said.

Irene held up one hand. “The garden,” she said. “It gave you those memories.”

“As far as I can tell,” Kaden said.

“It must’ve recognized you. The hollyhock. I saw it move, but I just thought it was the wind, or me, or the bourbon,” Irene said. “If it sought you out, maybe it wants to give you all of the memories, but it only gave you what it had.”

“But how did it get them in the first place?” Taylor asked.

Irene shook her head.

“Maybe they seeped into the garden from the gloom,” Kaden said. “Like the pain.”

Irene narrowed her eyes. “Your mom said what you do with the memories isn’t all that different from my family’s magic.”

“I thought someone had to give up their pain willingly,” Taylor said. “Wasn’t that the whole issue with Addison’s magic?”

“Just go with me here,” Irene said. “The pain a Haywood takes, it doesn’t just disappear, and we can’t hold on to it ourselves. We have to put it somewhere. What if the memories you take work that way, too?”

“Great, so they’re lost to the cloud over Yarrow,” Clem said.

“Unless someone could bottle them…” Irene whispered.

Kaden nodded slowly. “It would be just like my mother, to keep those memories, in case she ever needed them.”

“So what, she’s literally stashed them in a bottle?” Clem asked. “One sip, and we’ll all be riding the train to memory town?”

Everyone turned to look at her. She pointed finger guns at them. When they didn’t laugh, she said, “That was a joke.”

“The memory harvest,” Taylor said.

Kaden was nodding. “What better place to hide them than in the bourbon?”

“Then wouldn’t we be drinking memories in every bottle?” Clem asked.

“You get the feeling of them,” Kaden said. “The nostalgia.”

“Refined memories,” Clem said with a glance at the family reserve. “This is the best of the best. They should be in here.”