Helga nodded slowly, her face calm, but Aron could see the storm of emotion beneath her composed exterior. "You heard me," she said quietly, almost as if she was speaking to herself, her gaze distant. "I never told Esme about you, or about anything that happened. I never mentioned the garden, or the boy I used to talk to there." She paused, her words hanging in the air between them, heavy with the weight of her confession. "I didn't even know you were a boy at first."
Aron was silent, his mind racing to catch up with what she was saying. The garden... the boy... the memories. His heart pounded in his chest as fragments of long-buried memories began to stir, the faint echoes of conversations from a forgotten time resurfacing in his mind.
