Estrella wished she could pry the ground open like the shell of a pomegranate, spilling out its secrets like shining red seeds.
Beneath the sharp color of the flower beds and the gray of the flagstone paths, this land would always be its own. It would always hold its own rage, its own vengeance. Estrella and her cousins, and their mothers and grandmothers, could draw a hundred thousand blossoms from the earth, but it would never belong to them. It would never belong to the Briar family, either, even if, on paper, it was theirs.
If it had ever belonged to the Briars, it had gotten away from them when they buried the awful things that had happened here. Their own carelessness caused the rock fall, and by covering it, they had turned it into a worse violation against this ground.
This garden, and all the loss here, had haunted the Nomeolvides women, and none of them had realized. It had grabbed them, trying to speak of what it had witnessed. It had tried to make them see it.
The loss of their lovers had been less its wrath and more it trying to make them pay attention.
It wanted them to look deeper and see the stories buried here.
These unspoken things had their own pull. Spun together, they were heavy as a moon.
The colors of the sunken garden swirled around Estrella.
Of course La Pradera would not let them go.
A hundred years ago, Nomeolvides women had hidden the jagged rock of the quarry walls with so many trees and climbing flowers, no one could tell there had once been a landslide big enough to kill so many men. Her family had cast a veil of vines over the sunken garden, a place they had never thought of as more than a rocky canyon.
If they did not know how many lives the quarry had taken, those first Nomeolvides women on La Pradera would have thought they were doing nothing but tending land that could not be farmed. The steps of the quarry, broken by the rock fall, would have looked like nothing but forbidding ground.
They had turned this place from a graveyard into a fairy tale.
“Estrella?” Dalia said.
Even with the soft echo of Dalia’s voice, all Estrella could see was this place they had made.
With dahlias and azaleas, calla lilies and morning glories, Estrella’s cousins had painted this ground. With roses and countless bulb flowers, her mother and her cousins’ mothers had kept this blood-soaked land a bright garden. With branches of blush and yellow flowers, her grandmother and great-aunts had spun this place from a tragedy to an enchantment.
They had given this place their hands. They had sealed the Briars’ lie with so many petals they could not be counted. And for this, the land would not let them leave. It made them stay, hearing its voice. If they tried to run, it drew blood and pollen from their lungs.
They had to uncover the ground again. They had to let it speak and be seen.
They had to kill all the beauty they’d made.
Estrella ran down into the sunken garden, the place that had once been a quarry. She knelt next to one of the flower beds. She plunged her hands in, and dragged out a border of blue starflowers.
The rushing of steps on the stone stairs made her look up. Bay and Fel and her cousins were following her down, her cousins watching Fel like he might be some figment of these gardens. An imagined boy.
Fel reached the path and then stopped. He watched her with his head a little tilted, like he hadn’t decided whether he should stop her. She didn’t blame him. She could see herself now, wild-eyed, her hair tangled as brambles.
She pulled stems so fast the indigo blossoms flew. Pink blooms and buds the color of dark wine fell to the dirt. Between flower beds, she dragged her fingers through the forget-me-nots dotting the grass.
She caught her breath. She found Fel’s silhouette in shadow.
“Are you gonna help me or not?” she asked.
He took a few steps toward her. His uncertainty held him. He must have thought that tearing up these flowers, these gardens her family had made, was its own violation. She could read the hesitation in him.
She took his forearms and pulled him down with her.
This was his story, too, all that had been hidden under leaves and blooms.
He was slow pulling the first ones out. But when he saw the recklessness in her hands, the borraja arcing through the air, he tried again. This time he mirrored her, clutching the stems and tearing them away.
She went faster, grabbing not just at the stems but at the ground. Wet earth got under her fingernails and stained her dress. It dyed her shoes.
She and her family had made all this. She was not too delicate or clean to tear it all down.
Her cousins stood on the brick and stone paths. They watched, eyes following Estrella’s and Fel’s hands. Azalea stood with crossed arms. Calla kept near Gloria, Gloria’s palm resting on her shoulder.
Dalia’s eyes landed on Bay. The look between them wove so thick through the air Estrella thought she could reach in front of her and touch it. It was invisible, but solid as the kind of satin ribbon Estrella and her cousins once offered La Pradera.
Dalia dragged her hands through the ground like she was stirring the surface of a pond, grasping at something that had just slipped beneath the surface.
Their cousins reeled back. Dalia was ripping at flowers like she was stamping out flames. Her fury turned to a thing that looked like madness into a luring light. Estrella could see it on her cousins’ faces, their heads inclining toward her.
Dalia spun through the sunken garden, her hands fast as moon-silver over water. Calla slid from Gloria’s light hold. Gloria trailed after, not to stop her but to join her. Azalea followed, hands ready.
They took up flowers by the roots, the amethyst-colored calla lilies, the bright azalea bushes, the pastel rounds of dahlias. They tore down the morning glory vines purpling the quarry walls.
Dahlias spun like stars. Stalks of calla lilies in every color from cream to near-black flew. Blue morning glories fell from where they’d crawled up the balsam poplars. Azalea petals fell away from their centers.
They tore it all into a bright confetti. The petals caught in their hair and on their clothes.
Estrella felt the ground drawing back, like the sunken garden was taking a breath. She felt that breath spreading through the irises and hydrangeas and through all of them.
Their mothers and grandmothers appeared at the top of the sunken garden. Their faces showed their wonder as they recognized the lost Briar daughter in this auburn-haired stranger. They took in Fel, this brown-skinned boy with his sleeves still cuffed up, like he was a saint bearing sacred roses.
They watched him, this boy they thought had disappeared, earth flecking his skin. They watched Bay, this woman they had all claimed as their daughter. They watched their own children and grandchildren, each wrecked vine drawing both their horror and their thrill.