The Unfinished Garden (4 page)

“I’m sorry, Mum. My head’s spinning, and I’m barely awake.”
Although her heart, galloping every which way, suggested otherwise. “How did we
get from hedgehogs to deer?”

“A hedgehog. Singular.”

Tilly rolled her eyes and silently renewed her vow never to be
a mother who grasped every teachable moment and strode forth with it.

“Well, since the
gamekeeper
wouldn’t help, I came up with my own solution. Very creative, too. When I took
Monty out for his bedtime turn around the garden, I brought along that giant
water blaster Rowena gave Isaac. Thought I’d soak the muntjac if I saw him.
Works with next door’s Lab when he bursts through the hedge to attack poor
Monty.”

Poor was hardly an adjective to describe her mother’s dog. Not
since he’d mauled a baby rabbit to death and terrorized the window cleaner with
the carcass.

“What a ridiculous gift that water gun was. If only Rowena
would settle down with a nice man, start a family….”

“The deer, Mum?”

“The deer? Oh, right. The deer.”

Anxiety returned in waves. When she and Isaac were home at
Christmas, Tilly had noticed her mother developing a new habit of becoming lost
in her speech, as if she couldn’t retain her thoughts. Was this early-onset
dementia, history about to repeat itself, or wet brain from decades of drinking
gin?

“It’s quite simple really. Instead of a deer, Monty found a
hedgehog. I tripped over the blessed thing in the dark, and then everything
degenerated into a
Dad’s Army
sketch.”

Tilly laughed, remembering her’s father favorite television
sitcom, but stopped when she heard only silence from her mother. “How long till
the plaster comes off?”

“Eight weeks.”

“Eight weeks! Who’s going to help you bathe, get dressed, walk
Monty?”

“I’ll muddle through. The twins don’t leave for Australia for
two weeks, which is an absolute stroke of luck. And Marigold’s rallied my
support system. Bless her, she does have a tendency towards drama.” That was an
understatement. Marigold, her mother’s bosom pal of forty years, could create
drama out of a downed washing line. “Trust me, darling—” Mrs. Haddington lowered
her voice and sounded so far away “—this is nothing like before.”

“You’ve had another panic attack,” Tilly said. “Haven’t
you?”

Her mother hesitated for a second too long. “It was
nothing.”

“Right, we’ll arrive after the twins leave and stay until the
plaster comes off. Can you spring for the tickets? I’m strapped for cash since
the electrics went on my truck.”

If the panic attacks had returned, what choice did Tilly have?
She had safeguarded her mother’s secrets once. If need be, she would do so
again.

“Darling, don’t be rash. What will happen to the nursery if you
leave for six weeks during the peak season?”

“Sari’ll happen. She can take over.” Bummer, she couldn’t fire
Sari after all.

The night before, Tilly had found the phone message explaining
Sari’s impromptu beach getaway and how, in the excitement, she had misplaced
James’s number and been unable to cancel his appointment. Right, that made
sense. Clearly, Sari had forgotten blabbing about her terror of oceans—despite
her love of sleeping with a sound machine set to play waves. Tilly had ignored
the confession as an attempt at girl bonding. Besides, once you understood
someone’s fears, you were trapped in her world.

Could she trust the daily grind of the nursery to a person who
had lied so blatantly? An employee who couldn’t sit still for ten minutes let
alone direct nothing but a hose for five hours a day? But Tilly felt oddly
disconnected, aware only of Woodend lit up ahead, waiting for her.

“Besides, how can I miss seeing you recline the summer away
like Lady Muck?”

Tilly loved her mother’s bawdy laugh, so unexpected for a
petite woman who came down to cook breakfast every morning wearing red lipstick
and Chanel No. 5 eau de parfum. But the laughter ended. “There’s another reason
you might not want to come home.”

“The village cut off with foot and mouth again? More mad cow
disease?”

“Rowena has a new tenant at Manor Farm.” Her mother took a deep
breath. “Tilly, it’s Sebastian. He’s living in Bramwell Chase.”

Tilly dropped the phone.

Chapter 4

James slid from Warrior I to Warrior II and deepened
the stretch.
The warrior poses are about strength and
endurance.
The muscles in his calf tightened as a warm current of
energy flowed through his body and into the ground, rooting him, making him
strong. Defective, but strong. His thoughts became clouds floating away, and he
concentrated on the rhythm of his breathing, trying to ignore the feeling that
picked at the back of his mind. A feeling he must not acknowledge. A distraction
he could not afford. Not if he was going to kick-start his plan.

He found his focal point—the edge of his yoga mat—and shifted
his balance forward, raising his right leg and his arms behind him. If he held
the pose for six breaths, he would relax into Downward-Facing Dog and then treat
himself to a headstand. When he was upside down, everything was in sync. His
mind and body aligned.

One, two, three, four
—he began to
quaver—
five
…no, there it was again, that swell
of desire.
Let it drift by, James.
He tried hard, so
hard, to push it away but couldn’t. And with a resigned sigh, he toppled.

Lying on his yoga mat, James stared up at the ceiling. Was that
a stain in the corner? He sat up. A stain he hadn’t noticed before? Mold? He
stood. Anthrax?

Don’t go psycho on me, James. A stain is
often just a stain.

It was getting harder to find his own thoughts. The voice was
gaining strength, feeding off his lack of sleep, feeding off the stress of the
move, feeding off his attraction to Tilly.

Two days. It had been two days and she hadn’t returned his
call. What if her answering machine was broken? What if she wouldn’t call unless
he moved his coffee mug to the right of the phone? He always put his mug on the
right. Always. And this morning he’d put it on the left, which proved he had
messed with his routine, dallied on the wild side with those who put their
coffee mugs wherever the hell they pleased. See what progress he was making?

Why hadn’t she returned his call?

He was running out of time and options. Tomorrow she and Isaac
flew to England, which he only knew because Isaac had told him when he’d called
last week. Isaac said his mom was rushing around like a crazed squirrel and it
was best not to disturb her. He’d promised to give her the message, but had he?
What if he hadn’t given her the message? What if her answering machine was
broken? What if that stain really was anthrax?

Why hadn’t she returned his call?

Only two things had slowed the swarming gnats of anxiety in the
past two weeks: Tilly’s garden and Tilly’s smile. And he needed to see both.

* * *

James glanced at the fogged-up shower and tried not to
think about previous tenants, about the dead skin cells they’d sloughed off,
about the dirt they’d tracked in. He hadn’t lived in rented accommodations since
he was a student. And then he’d been too fucked-up to think about anything. He
rubbed condensation from the mirror and tossed the damp bath sheet into the
shower. The laundry would have to wait. He tried to hold on to that thought, but
it slipped away and doubt crept back in, roaming his gut, searching for a hold,
second-guessing the decision he had made ten minutes earlier.

Decision-making was exhausting, a haze of uncertainty entwining
one consequence around another. And there would be consequences for what he was
about to do, but it was a risk worth taking. Tilly could help him—he knew it.
And if the thought of seeing her again gave him a hit of pure desire, that was
an inconvenience he could overcome.

The psychologist in Chicago had told him obsessions and
compulsions were like wild mushrooms popping up constantly. That he needed to
stay vigilant, always mindful of situations that could trigger his OCD, which
didn’t help when he was attracted to a woman who lived her life in dirt. A woman
who didn’t seem to care that the flatbed of her truck resembled a bag lady’s
shopping cart. If Tilly agreed to work for him, would she let him clean out her
truck?

James admired the small tattoo of a coiled, black snake on his
right hip, his constant reminder that when it came to snakes, he was
phobia-free. Possibly even brave. And he was lucky—
might as
well monopolize on this good mood
—that his body had aged well. On the
other hand, that wasn’t so much luck as a freakish amount of exercise. Was fear
behind that, too, a determination to control his body if not his mind?

James stretched and enjoyed the air caressing his skin. Naked,
he was released from fabrics that itched and scratched. Labels were the worst
offenders. But then again, none of his clothes had labels for long. He amputated
every one.

If he didn’t know better, he might say he was relaxed, which
was not an adjective he ever used to describe himself. James didn’t
do
relaxed. Volted-up was how Sam, his best friend of
forty-two years, described James. He liked that analogy. Besides, nervous energy
had its uses. No to-do list was a match for James.

He leaned forward, the edge of the vanity cutting into his
stomach. Retirement was playing havoc with his grooming. His hair hadn’t been
this long since grad school and the beard still threw him. He barely recognized
the face staring back. Or was that the point. If he changed the outside, would
the inside follow?

Humming “Straight to Hell” by The Clash, James walked into the
bedroom and slid open the closet door with his elbow. He reached into a rack of
black, long-sleeved shirts and pulled his lucky Vivienne Westwood off its cedar
hanger. Why not? He had nothing to lose except his pride, and that had never
stopped him when a woman was concerned.

Chapter 5

You had to admire a middle-aged woman, even one as
invasive as evening primrose, who accentuated her large breasts and rolls of
stomach flesh with Lycra. No hiding behind plus-size smocks for Sari. Although
her puce wedgies, adorned with large plastic flowers that flapped like dying
lunar moths, pushed the limits of taste.

Bucking through a sneeze, Sari tripped over an exposed tree
root. “Gesundheit,” she said.

What, she doesn’t trust me to bless
her?
Tilly continued marching toward the greenhouse.

“Time to fix the driveway, hon.” Sari trotted to keep up.

If you didn’t barrel down my driveway five
mornings a week, screeching a duet with Bruce Springsteen and kicking up
gravel, it wouldn’t need fixing.
Tilly bit back the retort.
Speedy-Sari-bumps, that’s what Isaac called the craters Sari’s tires had gouged
into the driveway. Potholes and noise, Sari had brought both into Tilly’s
life.

“You still pissed about the James thing? Is that why you don’t
want a lift to the airport tomorrow?” Sari smiled, but the gesture was laced
with menace. Her challenge might have worked three years earlier, before guilt
became a constant companion. But now? Hey, good luck on that one.

“Sari, you’ll be too busy here to drive us to the airport.”
Tilly’s voice dragged in the heat. “And ignore James if he calls.”
Just as I’m ignoring my memories of Sebastian.
But
there he was again: her first love, taking up space in her mind.

“James is…loaded.” Sari increased her pace with a pant.
“I…looked him up on Google.”

Sari rabbited on, sharing details of her Google search. James
had invented an interactive web game that millions of people were addicted to,
including Sari’s two teenage boys. She dismissed the game as having to do with
accumulating assets and dominating the world. As always, it was the bottom line
that interested Sari: James had made enough money to sell his software company
in Chicago and retire to North Carolina at forty-five.

Sari batted away a mosquito. “Tils, you need to step outside
your comfort zone, discover the world of clients rich and ready for the
taking.”

Tils. A lazy word that slid from the side of Sari’s mouth, an
abbreviation of an already abbreviated name. Tilly shook back her hair,
forgetting she’d lopped it off a few weeks earlier with the kitchen scissors.
Something clicked and scrunched in her head. Her brain rusting up in the heat?
She shook her head again.
Click, scrunch.
What
depressing sounds to come from the center of your consciousness.

“You have zilch vision,” Sari said.

“Yup. Visionless and proud of it.” There was no point
disagreeing. Tilly didn’t want vision, she wanted survival—hers and Isaac’s. The
jury was still debating the survival of Piedmont Perennials, a business that had
sprung out of the infertility of grief. Her secret fantasy niggled, the one in
which the business folded and she and Isaac retreated to England. Of course,
Issac would be devastated, which made her daydream his nightmare. No, Piedmont
Perennials had to survive, and for that Tilly needed the woman she longed to
fire.

“Come on, hon. Look around you.” Sari circled her arms as if
she were an overweight swimmer flailing in a rubber ring. “You’ve created five
acres of landscaped heaven out of jungle. You know a thing or two about
landscape design.”

How had Sari sneaked into Tilly’s life? Was it the tricolor
cookies? She had already disarmed Tilly with a nasally slide of vowels and
dropped
r
’s that screamed “Brooklyn!” before dumping
the pièce de résistance: Sari grew up two blocks from David’s childhood home in
Sheepshead Bay and still bought tricolors, moist and rich with raspberry, almond
and semisweet chocolate, from the bakery in David’s old neighborhood. She even
had a box in her freezer and had promised to share. The tricolors, when Sari
finally brought them over, were stale.

The pileated woodpecker hammered into a tree then flapped away.
He was the reason Tilly hadn’t hacked down the decapitated pine that, as Sari
loved to point out, leaned over the propane tank. See? Sari was clued in. All
would be fine, just fine.

“Sari, you’ve been a godsend.”
True, until
the James debacle.
“If you didn’t load up my truck and not return
till every shrub was sold, I’d be donating plants to the Salvation Army.”
True again.
“But you want to rush around corners and
see what’s next, and I want to poodle along. Wholesale customers are easy. They
demand x, y, z on such a date and I, or rather you, deliver. But design
clients?” Tilly shuddered. “They’d suck up all my make-nice happy juices.”

Sari harrumphed, and they trudged on.

Be nice, Tilly. Or at least fake
it.
“Look. My business is thriving, so why gamble? You have to dig
in, hold on, because in twenty-four hours your whole life can come crashing
down. One afternoon you’re plowing along I-40, late for school pickup, when your
husband draws alongside in his MGB, laughs—” Tilly stumbled over her most
precious memory “—blows you a kiss and speeds out of your life. Twelve hours
later you’re watching him die from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a hereditary
heart condition no one in his family has heard of.”

Not just watching him die, letting him
die.

Tilly ground her fist into the pain spiking out across her
forehead. Silence, rare in the forest, followed.

They had reached the greenhouse and next to it, the studio,
David’s office and hallowed lair. The thick, sweet scent of wild honeysuckle hit
Tilly like a sugar rush, but it also brought the familiar letdown, the sinking
in her stomach. This place should resonate with David’s presence. Standing here,
she wanted to believe some essence of him watched her, that if she swung around
she could catch him as easily as Isaac caught fireflies. But despite the
tommyrot she encouraged their son to believe, David was nowhere. Death led to
nothing.

Through the trees, a pair of turkey vultures tugged at the guts
of a groundhog splattered across Creeping Cedars Road. At least in nature death
led to some great, cosmic recycling of life. Roadkill became a feast, fallen
leaves nourished new growth and rotting logs became bug suburbia. Tilly stared
up at the giant oak, now a mutant thanks to the limbs the tree surgeon had
removed from one side. Despite his dire prediction that the tree was dying, it
was still home to a spectacular trumpet vine; and she would never give
permission to fell such a magnificent piece of living history. The oak was safe
on her watch, because she was just as mulish as David had been.

Tilly smiled at her
Piss Off I’m
Working
sign and swung open the greenhouse door. Usually once she
stepped inside, the greenhouse worked its calming magic. With a membrane of
opaque plastic that let in only light, it was as if nothing else existed. But
today, Sari followed, filling Tilly’s hidey-hole with the powdery odor of
department store makeup halls.

Tilly grabbed the edge of the potting sink and breathed through
her mouth.

“Jesus.” Sari gagged. “If I were in charge, I’d rip off the
plastic and put in glass. Open the place up. I feel like I’m simmering in a
Crock-Pot.”

Tilly carved out a dirt angel with her foot.
Please, God, protect my nursery from this woman.
Sari
didn’t have to like this part of the job, but she did have to come in here every
day for the next six weeks. Tilly appraised her artwork and smiled.

“What?” Sari said. “You think it’s funny this place freaks me
out?”

“Of course not.” Tilly looked up. “Although it’s hard to
imagine you scared of anything.”

“You don’t think everyone has fears?”

Tilly picked up a bundle of white plastic plant labels and put
them back down. “Okay, then. What’s the deal with you and oceans?”

“I nearly drowned as a kid. Would’ve, too, if some stranger
hadn’t jumped in while my dad stood on the beach yelling, ‘Kick your legs.’ And
afterward all he said was, ‘You need to listen.’ Pretty rich since the bastard
couldn’t swim.”

Bastard,
never a word Tilly would
use to describe her own father, who had taught her to swim in the freezing ocean
off the Cornish Coast, his hands floating beneath her. Whole weeks went by and
she didn’t think of him, but there would always be a gap in her life where he
had stood. And, inexplicably, she thought of James Nealy’s comment about
childhoods.

“I’m gonna get some quotes on a watering system while you’re
off playing happy families,” Sari said. “I mean, c’mon. How cost effective can
manual watering be?”

Tilly sighed; Sari had blown the moment.

“We’ve been over this, Sari. The electric bills would tear into
my profits.”

“Yeah? What about your time? Is it better to spend five hours a
day watching a hose piss or five hours a day potting up saleable plants?”

“Watering systems fail, but the worst thing a hose does is
leak. Besides, if I can feel the water flow, I know the job’s being done.”

“Jesus, Tils. Lighten up. You wanna spend your life worrying
about what might happen?”

If they were friends, Tilly would point out how ludicrous that
question was. After all, the thing she had dreaded most
had
happened. What did a person have left to worry about after that?
The mister system whooshed on, spraying a film of water over the newly rooted
cuttings. The paddles of the fan whirred into action, and a belt of hot air
walloped Tilly across the face.

“This is why you have to check the greenhouse
every
day.” Tilly pointed at the fan and then drew a
diagonal line through the air with her finger. “See how the fan blows the mist
away from this flat? These cuttings will die if you don’t watch that.”

“Understood. That it?”

“No. See this mister up here?” Tilly poked a spluttering
nozzle, and tepid water drizzled down her arm. “It gets clogged. Then
these
cuttings will die.”

“Yup. Cuttings die, excellent. I’m outta here. See ya up at the
house.” Sari tugged the door open, and a pale vehicle, probably the FedEx van,
flashed past. At least Sari could sign for a package without killing
anything.

Sod it.
Tilly gave the mister head
another poke. She was tempting disaster, but if the nursery went belly-up, so be
it. She and Isaac would have to stay in Bramwell Chase. Or maybe not, now that
Sebastian had decided to nest there. Tilly pinched absentmindedly at her left
breast. What was he up to? Bramwell Chase had never been his home. Sebastian was
a Yorkshire lad, and according to his mother’s last letter, happily ensconced in
Hong Kong.

At fourteen, Sebastian was her life. By nineteen, he was her
ex-lover, and even though they drifted through two reunions and a near miss
before she met David, Sebastian remained part of her life. When her father was
dying, Tilly flew home alone, insisting David fulfill his commitment to a
well-paid lecture in Montreal. (If he had ever balanced the checkbook, he would
have known how desperately they needed the money.) Tilly had swept in,
determined to take care of everything, but the magnitude of family grief had
nearly crushed her. Until Sebastian had stepped forward to handle the practical
side of death, freeing Tilly to console her mother and sisters. After that,
their friendship was sealed. Or so she thought.

Tilly made plenty of excuses for his lack of contact in the
years that followed. He had a new wife, a new baby; they moved and had another
baby. But then her world imploded. David died, grief eviscerated her, and
Sebastian mailed a condolence card signed by his family like a corporate
greeting. And for that—Tilly tugged open the greenhouse door—she would never
forgive him.

* * *

A basketball pounded the concrete and a man laughed.
No, absolutely not.
Tilly curved around the
giant red oak and groaned. Tucked between Sari’s bumper-sticker-covered Passat
and the tumble of logs that passed for the log pile, was a sparkling Alfa Romeo
convertible. Oh, this was too much. She had a thousand things to do, half of
which she couldn’t remember, but would if she wasn’t being harassed by a wealthy
retiree who was giving her son advice on free-throws and encouraging her only
employee to giggle like a sixteen-year-old on date night.

Tilly paused at the end of the driveway, hands on hips. She
was, if no longer a Haddington in name, a Haddington in heart.
One never has an excuse for rudeness.
Although James
Nealy was testing her on that particular philosophy.

Since the conversation with her mother two weeks earlier, Tilly
had developed a strategy for handling James: ignore him. She figured by the time
she left for England, he would have lost interest. No one could be
that
persistent. No one, it seemed, except James.

“How many times do I have to say, ‘I can’t help you’?” She kept
her voice light, jovial even, but anger foamed inside.

“I like repetition.” He grinned, flashing even, white teeth.
So, James thought he could whittle her down, did he? Big mistake, because she
could play a mighty fierce game of chicken.

“Well, gotta run.” Sari headed to her car. “James? It’s been
real.”

“Want to tell me why you’re here?” Tilly said to James. She
could take him, no problem.

“Want to tell me why you don’t answer your messages?”

Tilly threaded her thumbs through her belt loops and gave her
bring-it-on smile. But as the Passat squealed onto the driveway, she glanced at
Isaac, and the fight drained out of her. Poor love, even the promise of
hostility brought a flush of dread to Isaac’s cheeks.

“Now I feel as if I’m the one who’s always apologizing,” Tilly
said. And how unreasonable was that, since James was at fault? “But I’m sorry.
As Isaac told you last week, I have a family emergency to handle in England. We
leave tomorrow. That makes me kinda busy.”