Chapter 1

1

When I open the pink wooden gate with the sunburst pattern—it squeaks a little and needs to be oiled—and step into the garden of 9 Willow Street, I burst into tears for the first time since Nana Ellen died. I couldn’t even cry on the one-year anniversary of her death last month, but here, in her garden, I finally let go.

Nana’s beautiful garden, her pride and joy, is terribly overgrown and neglected, and if she saw it, she’d be so angry. My darling, spitfire great grandmother, who’d passed away peacefully and unexpectedly in her sleep three days after her hundred-and-ninth birthday, did notapprove of neglect in any way shape or form, especially not for the things in life she valued the most, like me or her garden.

She had a temper until the day she died, and as I look around with tears streaming down my face, assessing the damage, I can almost hear her spitting and hissing. I knew you fools would contest the will of a poor, old woman, but the least you could have done while my lawyer kicked your behinds was make sure my garden was taken care of.

The grass is so tall, it looks more like a meadow than a lawn. The flower beds and the gorgeous flower-shaped pebble mosaic pathways she’d spent hours and hours keeping in check are taken over by weeds and barely visible. The bushes are screaming for a trim, and the early apples have already started falling from the trees and are littering the lawn

I don’t even want to go around to the back of the house and lookat the herb and vegetable garden, where I spent so much time with Nana, learning everything about plants and their medicinal properties. My heart hurts just trying to imagine the state of it, and I can’t do it just yet.

Instead, I make my way to the porch and sink onto the top step, curl myself into a little ball, and let my tears fall freely, allowing myself to grieve properly, finally able to let go of the stoic mask onto which I’ve clung the last year.

Thirteen months ago, when my father had called and told me Nana was dead, I thought he’d lied to me at first. I’d spoken to her on her birthday, sad and heartbroken that I couldn’t visit her, bake her a cake, and give her the present I’d already bought. All the flights had been canceled because of a terrible storm and I’d had no way of getting to her.

But she wasn’t upset. “Pish-posh, my dearest Hannes. You’ll be here when you can, I know it. Just text me a picture of your lovely face and I’ll be happy.”

So I did. I took a selfie with my hands shaped like a heart, and before I texted it to her, I wrote Nana And Hannes Forever on it. That’s what she always used to say whenever I was upset over being misunderstood by my family, or other teenaged woes.

Nana sent me back a picture of herself with her head tilted back, her hand pressed against her forehead in a dramatic fake swoon, and the ever-present twinkle clearly visible in her eyes. I promptly set the picture as a background on my phone.

So was it really so weird I didn’t believe Father when he told me she had passed away?

“Are you sure?” I’d asked, thinking it couldn’t be true, considering the last time she’d even had a common cold was fifteen years earlier when she was ninety-four.

“I am a realdoctor…unlike some people,” Father replied. “Obviously I know what I’m talking about.”

Great. Even when he called me with terrible news, when his own grandmother had died, he still found the time to mock my career choice and remind me of my status as the family outsider. The “herbalist quack”—as though we were offering to cure cancer with herbs!—in a family of realdoctors. My father’s a surgeon, my mother an oncologist, and my three older sisters and brothers are all doctors, too. Then there’s me. The black sheep. The heathen among scientists.

When we’d hung up, I called Nana’s phone, only to be met by Father’s tired voice. “I knew you wouldn’t take my word for it, Hannes.” He was less condescending than usual; I had expected that put-upon sigh at which everyone in my family excels when talking to me.

“I wish he would grow up sometime. Is he happy now?” my mother added in the background.

My father gasped, then exclaimed, “Malin.”

I hung up without saying “goodbye,” unable to listen to them anymore.

Is he happy now?

What kind of thing is that to say about someone who’s just gotten the most dreadful news of his life? Mom was never very fond of Nana—except for when it came to her money and the house—but this was low even for her. At least Father seemed to agree.