“You coming?” said Amanda to Finley, who was still raking.
“Call me when it’s ready,” she said with a smile. “I’m going to bag up the mess.”
We all have our time and season in this life. And I have had mine. Now I can do what I think has been expected of me all along. I just wasn’t ready to let go until now.
Finley bagged up the clippings and the weeds. She liked the work, just like Eloise had, the tending, the cutting and clearing away of dead things, making room for the fresh green buds of new life. Finley trimmed away a few brown branches on the Devil’s Walking Stick.
For years Eloise had tried to get rid of the plant, she’d told Finley, only to find it coming back year after year. Finally, she just let be the native plant that she had thought was just a weed. She discovered that its flowers and berries were a valuable nutrition source for butterflies, wasps, and bees. That its fruit drew robins, bluebirds, towhees, thrushes, and rusty blackbirds to her yard. It wasn’t a plant that she had chosen for her garden, but there it was nonetheless. Ralph Waldo Emerson thought of weeds as plants “whose virtues had not yet been discovered.” Eloise decided that she would take the same position. She let the plant grow, only to discover that it flowered in autumn, enjoying a final color show before winter fell.
You have been a joy to me, Finley. You are so much more native, so much more in charge of your gifts than I ever was. The road you walk will be easier and more fulfilling than mine, I’m sure. And I will always be here for you. My great love for you does not end with my passing. You, better than anyone, must know that. So hold that love in your heart and let me go.
Finley heard her mother calling, but she wasn’t ready to go inside, even though the sun was dropping and the air growing colder. When the bag was full, she tied it and sat on the little bench, spent. Her body ached from the work, reminding her that she was horribly out of shape. She took a deep breath and surveyed her work, as the sun dropped lower.
“Finley!” Her mother’s voice carried on the air, faint and beckoning.
“Coming, Mom!”
She was about to go inside when something caught her eye, a glitter, a rush of shadow. When she turned back, Eloise and her grandfather Alfie stood over by the garden gate, looking as bright and giddy as a pair of lovebirds. Finley half expected to see a robin come down and land on Eloise’s finger as they approached.
Finley wanted to be angry, to rage, to cling to her sadness, but instead she felt the energy of a smile. Finley never realized how much she looked like Eloise when her grandmother was younger and happier with everything before her.
“Are you ready to let me go?” asked Eloise.
Eloise told Finley long ago that a haunting was a relationship, that the dead clung to the living only as much as the living clung to the dead.
Finley felt a fresh wash of tears, a desire to run toward Eloise, to cling and to hold on. But she didn’t. She had already learned the most important lesson Eloise had to teach, though it still hurt like hell: Fear holds on. Love lets go.
“Yes, Mimi,” said Finley. “I’m ready.”
Eloise offered that slow, considering nod, that warm, loving smile Finley so adored. Then she looped her arm through Alfie’s, and together they walked through the gate and disappeared into the gloaming as if they’d never been there at all.
“Who were you talking to?” Amanda had come to sit beside Finley.
Finley thought about lying. That was her instinct, to pretend for Amanda that she was something other than what she was.
“I was talking to Mimi,” said Finley. “She’s with Grandpa, and she’s happy. She wants me to let her go.”
A rainbow of micro-expressions flashed across Amanda’s face—fear, sadness, worry. She put a strong arm around Finley’s shoulder and squeezed.
“Can you do that?” asked Amanda.
Finley stood and reached out a hand to her mother, helping her up off the bench.
“Do I have a choice?”
“I don’t suppose you do,” said Amanda, sounding very much like Eloise.
THIRTY-FIVE
The next day, Alfie offered to drive her to school, but Finley wanted to take her bike. She needed the air, the roar, the vibration of the engine. When she took off down the road, it felt like she had wings.
She arrived late at class, earning an understanding nod from her professor who was talking about Jung’s break from Freud.