The Unfinished Garden (5 page)

There was a difference between persistence, which Tilly
applauded, and pestering, which she abhorred. When someone pushed too hard, her
instinct was to hunker down. It was a Tilly thing. And if her resolve had
wavered with James’s admiration of her garden, it had hardened the moment her
life had started circling the family drain and he’d begun leaving phone messages
that started with “Maybe you didn’t receive my previous message.”

And why was he wearing a black long-sleeved shirt in ninety
degrees? Maybe he preferred air-conditioning to nature. A person, in other
words, who had nothing in common with Tilly.

James crossed and uncrossed his fingers in a silent jig. “I
believe Maple View Farm’s ice cream is nationally acclaimed. And since you live
two minutes away, I was hoping, if I promised to deliver you back here in half
an hour, that you and Isaac might accompany me to their country store?”

“Could we, Mom? Pretty please with Cool Whip and sprinkles on
top?” Isaac’s grin stretched until he resembled The Joker.

“I’m a little grubby for socializing.” Tilly brushed a cobweb
from her T-shirt.

“You look beautiful.” James sounded as if he were stating a
historical fact. Okay, so she warmed to him. Not because he had thrown her a
compliment, although that was appreciated, but because she was certain James
would have said, “Yes, you look like shit,” if he had believed it. And honesty
at all times was another Haddington trait, Tilly’s favorite.

“Shall we take my car?” James asked Isaac, who punched the air
with enough excitement to spontaneously combust.

* * *

The forest often closed in around her, but on the farm
shop porch, Tilly could breathe. When the real estate agent had first driven her
by the farm, thirteen years ago, Tilly’s heart had skipped at the lowing of a
cow, the stench of livestock and the sight of a fox ambling across a plowed
field. How excited she’d been to discover this yawning landscape of green space
that reminded her of the Bramwell Chase estate.

The view hadn’t changed in thirteen years, which was perfect.
Monotony was Tilly’s life preserver. Maybe that was why gardening fed her soul.
She loved the predictability of seasonal change, the certainty that redbuds
heralded spring, that lantana was the belle of summer, that
Coreopsis integrifolia
lit up her garden every Halloween. And
yet—she shifted and her cutoffs chafed against her sweaty thighs—gardening, like
life, was about the unexpected.

She eyed the stranger sitting next to her, his waffle cone
mummified in layers of paper napkins. Now that Isaac had run off to tumble over
the hay bale, James had retreated into silence, licking his two scoops of black
walnut into a smooth, dripless nub with a single-mindedness that she had come to
associate with him after only two meetings. How did she get here, sitting on a
rocking chair next to someone she was trying to avoid? A stranger who projected
complete focus while eating ice cream but whose constantly moving fingers hinted
at something out of control.

James rose, opened the garbage can flap with his elbow, and
lobbed his untouched cone inside.

“Why spend so long deciding which cone to have if you weren’t
going to eat it?” Tilly nibbled through the end of her sugar cone and sucked out
double chocolate chip ice cream.

“Life is in the details, Tilly.”

When they were talking, she forgot they weren’t friends.
“You’ve got something against cones?”

“Ones that have been sitting out in the air all day, yes.”

“Worried you might catch a deadly disease?”

“Possibly.” His eyes were hidden behind mirrored sunglasses,
but he appeared to stare at her. Silence pressed on her chest, the silence of
strangers who had no understanding and no shared history. “I need to go inside
and wash my hands,” James said and vanished.

A mud dauber hummed under the porch roof, and a memory tumbled
out, so vivid Tilly had to gasp. Swear to God, she could hear Sebastian’s
giggle, the giggle that fizzed like soda spilling from a shaken bottle. Her
memories must be scrambled if she was confusing wasps, Sebastian and laughter.
He was terrified of wasps. Always had been, always would be, because he refused
to acknowledge it. She took a huge, gulping breath and nearly choked on a
lungful of clotted, late-afternoon heat. Sebastian didn’t deserve her thoughts.
She wasn’t allowing him to steal them.

She waved to Isaac, who was tumbling around with two smaller
kids, making buddies with ease thanks to equal doses of his father’s charisma
and his grandfather’s canny way with people. She had never been as open and
trusting as a child. Of course, she had been painfully shy for most of her life.
Amazing how widowhood had knocked that out of her.

The shop door jangled and James reappeared. He shook his hair
from his face and smiled at her. She grinned back; it was impossible not to.

* * *

Her smile, her smile doused the swell of anxiety.

“This is very noble of you,” James said as he resettled next to
her. He tugged at a loose thread on the hem of his shirt. “Going to look after
your mother.”

“My mother doesn’t need looking after.” Tilly took a tiny,
birdlike bite from her cone. “I’m merely helping out.”

James stopped moving. He recognized self-talk when he heard it,
the belief that positive words could lead to positive thoughts. How he wished
that were true. In an instant, he wanted to know her hopes, her fears, her
family story. The works.

“Do you have siblings?” he said.

“I have two sisters, twins. Eight years younger than me. They
were preemies, so it was a case of join in the mothering or fall by the wayside.
And then my father died and—” Tilly strained to keep Isaac in her sights.
“Boring family stuff.”

Of course, that explained the big-sister bullishness, the duty
run back to England. Finally, he had context within which to place her. “You’re
the family glue.”

“I guess so.” Her approval gave him a kick of triumph, the
pride of being a kid with his first gold star—hell, his first trophy! When was
the last time he made someone feel good about herself, paid attention long
enough to
want
to make someone feel good?

But her expression suggested sadness, and failure swamped
him.

“We used to be closer.” Tilly paused to chew a fingernail, and
James suppressed his revulsion. “Truth is, I’ve distanced myself. Widowhood’s
streamlined me. What you see today is the leaner, meaner Tilly.”

Shit, he didn’t see that one coming. “I assumed you were
divorced.”

“I wish. God, no, I didn’t mean that. You’re not…are you?”

“No. Never married.” Thankfully, one mistake he hadn’t made.
But Tilly, a widow? Had he become so self-absorbed that he no longer recognized
the emotion he understood better than any other: grief?

“How long?” He tried to make eye contact, but she was focused
on another fingernail. She wasn’t going to chew that one, too, was she? Couldn’t
she see the speck of dirt down by her cuticle? Anxiety curdled inside him,
waiting to contaminate his thoughts. James shifted and silently counted six cows
in the field opposite.

“Three years.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. The bottom may have fallen out of my world, but I
have two passions, motherhood and gardening, and I get to indulge in both.” Her
voice was overly bright. “Hey, who needs Prozac when you can get down and dirty
in the soil?”

God Almighty, how could she say that? James shot up and jabbed
his hands into his hair. The chain that anchored his rocker to all the other
rocking chairs clanked, and Tilly stared at him. He should try and explain, but
he couldn’t. His mouth was dry, and words wouldn’t form. All he could hear was
his father’s voice, slurred with Jack Daniel’s and his Irish heritage:
You fucking eejit, James.
This, this was why he stayed
away from women, why he’d expelled desire from his life. It was too hard, too
fucking hard.

Isaac waved and James tried to walk toward him in a straight
line, but the impulse was too strong. He had to step on every other dandelion,
otherwise he’d die, die from the cancer breeding in the soil. Tilly was
watching; he could feel her eyes on him.
Don’t do it,
she’ll think you’re crazy.
But he could smell disease and death
waiting in the soil, ready to pounce. Fuck, he must look like a kid zigzagging
through a game of don’t-step-on-the-cracks.

The panic eased, shifted like a rusted-up gear moving again.
James’s pulse slowed to its normal beat, but nothing mattered beyond his
failure. Once again, he had succumbed to the compulsion. And what of Tilly? He
glanced over his shoulder. Was she embarrassed, shocked, or scared to be out in
public with a freak?

* * *

Did she miss something? One minute they were talking,
the next James shot up and began weaving toward the hitching post in the most
bizarre manner, like a child playing a game of don’t-step-on-the-cracks. But
that wasn’t nearly as weird as him glancing at her and then turning away before
she had time to respond. Embarrassed. He was embarrassed, which made her want to
run after him, arms wide-open for a big hug. And that might be a little kooky
for both of them, so best not. It was sad, however, that he had such a low
opinion of her. She may be strung out on her own needs, but the day she became
judgmental, someone should bonk her on the head.

What had he said on the phone about “one of my more annoying
habits”? Was this goofy walk another one? Some kind of tic, like his twitching
hands? Maybe he had a muscular problem. Okay, so now she was flat-out
intrigued.

Tilly pushed up from the rocking chair and followed James
quietly.

“Hey, James.” Isaac rushed toward him. “Why’re you walking
funny?”

Excellent question, Angel Bug. Wouldn’t
mind hearing the answer myself.
Tilly stopped and made a big deal out
of scratching a no-see-um bite.

“It’s a habit I have, one I can’t stop,” James said. “Does that
make sense?”

Bingo.

“Sure. My best friend says that when he gets into trouble at
school.”

“What habits does your friend have?”

“He jumps up and down. It helps with his sensory integration.
If he bounces out his wiggles—” Isaac demonstrated, and Tilly smiled “—he feels
less buzzy. Do you feel less buzzy when you walk funny?”

“For a moment. Then I feel worse. More buzzy.”

Fascinating.
Buzzy
sounded more mental than muscular. So James
had some psychological thingy, like sensory integration, that caused him to act
a little doolally? Sweat trickled down her armpits, but she didn’t dare
move.

“If it makes you feel worse, why do it?” Isaac said to
James.

The answer slammed into her:
he doesn’t
have a choice.
Man, she knew how that felt, to be stuck going through
the motions, trapped in a life you were never supposed to live. Behaving as a
widow, when every instinct screamed that you were still a wife.

James took two folded tissues from his pocket, arranged one and
then the other over his hand and bent down to pick something. “I do it because I
have to step on every other dandelion.”

“Why?”

“My brain tells me I have to.” James handed Isaac the
flower.

“Can’t you tell your brain you don’t want to?” Isaac chewed on
the inside of his cheek, the same way he did when working through an advanced
math problem.

James tossed back his hair, twice, and laughed. Some women
would likely find him attractive. Rowena would label him a sexy beast. The
stunning eyes helped, the kilowatt grin, that deep, warm laugh. But it was also
the way he spoke—carefully, as if he’d given life a great deal of thought. Or
maybe, like Tilly, he’d seen too much of it.

“Do you ever get hiccups?” James asked Isaac.

Isaac rolled his eyes. “
Allllll
the
time. Especially after eating little carrots. Yum.”

“Yum indeed. Little carrots are my favorite snack. Fortunately
they don’t give me hiccups, which is good, because I get terrible hiccups. But
mine are silent. No one can hear them except me.” James paused, and Isaac
nodded. James still hadn’t hinted that he was aware of Tilly, but she sensed he
was talking to her, too. “You see, I have a hiccup in my brain. My brain hiccups
out the same thought, again and again. Let’s say you get this idea, to step on a
dandelion. You do it and then skip off to the hay bale. The original thought, to
step on the dandelion, has gone. But if I have the same idea, my brain repeats
the message—
step on the dandelion, step on the
dandelion,
” James said in a booming, theatrical
voice, and Isaac giggled. “There’s a technical name for my hiccups, but the
easiest explanation is that my thoughts get stuck.”

My thoughts get stuck.
Tilly nodded
slowly.
A phrase that makes sense.

“You mean like getting stuck on the idea of my mom doing your
garden?”

“Exactly.”

Isaac sucked in his breath. “How do you get unstuck?”

Good question. Do I have an out clause if
I end up working for this chap?
Of course, going to England the next
day made that whole scenario pretty unlikely. James seemed to be on a mission to
start pronto and she couldn’t commit to anything before the school year
started.

“How do you get rid of your hiccups?” James asked.

“My mom drops an ice cube down my back.” Isaac gave an
exaggerated shiver. “Yuck.”

“Well, if your mother can help me create a garden—” James
tugged off his sunglasses and gazed at Tilly “—that will be my ice cube.”

“Cool,” Isaac said, and reached for James’s hand.

James hesitated. “I’m not good at holding hands. Another bad
habit.”

“No biggie.” Isaac slotted his arm through James’s, and they
smiled at each other.