“No,” she says very confidently. “I’ve been watching for his bonded, but no one else has entered the garden. It’s very peculiar. Are you sure he belongs here?”

“Thank you,” Garnet says. “No, he doesn’t belong here.”

He turns to face me. “She must have ended up back in Ouranos. Let’s get you back to her.”

“Can you do that?” I ask.

He nods as he starts walking again, and I follow. “Lucky for you, I happen to know the way out of here.”

We pass through the garden, where we’re met with more curious stares. My grandfather smiles and says hello as we exit out the other side, leading us back into the strangely symmetrical forest.

“This way,” he says, winding down a narrow pathway lined with bushes. A cave materializes out in the distance, and he points to it.

“Through there. It will take you back to the surface.”

“How do you know that?” I ask, eyeing the dark opening warily.

“Oh, you’re not the first living person to wander in here,” he says. “Zerra does like to play.”

I curl my lip at that.

“Can you go through there? Can you come back?”

“Oh no,” he says. “I’m dead. Once, we’d had a bit too much wine, and I dared your Great-Great-Great Aunt Sophie to jump through it, and for about seven long seconds, we thought she was gone, but then poof. She appeared standing right here next to us. So we spent all night tossing ourselves into it, but alas, we returned every time.” He laughs at the memory, and I find myself smiling as I look back in the direction we came.

“I wish I could talk to them all,” I say, and he gives me a sad smile.

“It’s not your time yet. You’ll get your chance, and when you come to see us, we’ll be waiting for you with open arms. Go and live, my boy. Do better than your father did.”

“I’ll try,” I say. “Thank you.”

“Go on. I hope it will be many, many years before you return.”

He opens his arms, and I hesitate.

“What is it?” he asks with a curious tip of his head.

“You’re not what I expected,” I answer. “Given how my father is . . .”

Garnet’s arms flop to his sides as he nods. “I won’t pretend I was always a good man or a good father, either. But sickness and death have a way of softening us all. I, too, regret so many things.”

That I can understand. He spreads his arms again and with a sharp breath I fold against him. He hugs me tightly, and I allow myself to revel in the comfort of his embrace. What might my life have been if someone had been there to hug me as a child?