Enright Family Collection (89 page)

She had called Ben from her car on her way back from Bishop’s Cove, only to find out that he had, at Delaney’s request, gone to New York on business. She left a message on his answering machine: “You were right about everything. How’d you get so smart? All is well now, Ben—better than well. Give me a call when you get back.”

She stood in the enclosed section of the yard—that section that lay within the arbor, the fence, and the wall running across the back. It was like a room—sort of.
Maybe she should get a few chairs—those big Adirondack chairs would fit nicely over in that one corner. And over there, in that far corner, maybe one of those wooden gliders that she saw out in front of one of the Amish farms where they made such things to sell. She pictured herself curled up on the glider, one foot on the ground to control the gentle back-and-forth sway, a good book in one hand and a glass of iced tea in the other. There were far worse ways to spend a summer afternoon.

But first, the beds needed tending. She unlocked the garage—which, judging from the cleanliness of its concrete floor, had never housed a car—and picked through the assorted garden tools that Delia had brought for her. Selecting what she thought might be the proper rake, she proceeded to clear the beds of dried leaves and new grass, then bagged it all to clear the walkway. By noon, the worst of the debris had been raked and the beds cleaned. The last of the spring daffodils and tulips remained, their once green leaves and stems beginning to go brown. She broke off the stems and bent back the leaves the way she had seen Delia’s gardener do. She would need rubber bands or string to hold them but for now, just folding them back was an improvement.

She carefully inspected the plants that were left. Those tall, hardy-looking things that seemed to grow in every bed, she recognized as daisies. Judging by the number of buds, there would be lots of them that summer. She frowned as she bent to inspect something else, some dark blue spiky flowers the color of ink that danced in the breeze on sturdy stems that grew from ferny type leaves. What had Wally called them? She couldn’t quite recall the name, but she liked them. They looked like dancing girls wearing hoop skirts. There were white ones in another bed, delicate yellow in yet another. Oh, columbine. That was what Wally had called them.

Those big tall ruffly dark pink things across the back fence were hollyhocks, she knew that too. They were a favorite of Delia’s, who always had tons of them in her own garden. And along one side grew the daylilies—
everyone knew daylilies—in all colors and sizes. Cleaned up, the garden looked pretty, inviting. How much nicer still it would be when she planted her Shakespeare garden. She recited the names of the plants she would need: violets—got plenty of them; fennel—isn’t that an herb? and columbine—no problem there. And then there was rue—Wally said that grew wild out back by the woods; and daisies—got that covered. Pansies . . . she smiled recalling Ben standing at the gate, reciting, “And there is pansies, that’s for thoughts.”

All she would need to buy for her Shakespeare garden would be fennel and pansies.

And, oh, of course. Rosemary. For remembrance.

“Pray love, remember,” he had said.

Zoey sighed, remembering the touch of his lips against her mouth, her chin, the side of her jawline, her neck, and she shivered. Not much chance she was going to forget
that.

Zoey drove to the nearest nursery with the windows down and the radio on. She grabbed several flats of pansies in what were being touted as heirloom colors—pale cream, pale dusty rose, soft yellow, and gentle lavender. Next, a flat of fennel, and two flats of rosemary. What she would do with all those herbs, she had no clue, but there were plenty of beds and she figured she might as well plan to fill in the empty spots.

A tall dark purple flower in the perennials section caught her eye and she stooped down to read its name tag.
Monkshood.
She had never heard of it but it was striking, so she grabbed a few of those. And a few of the soft silvery green of the Russian sage would look so pretty by the monkshood, she had to have a few of those. A rosy-colored delphinium looked interesting, as did the bright yellow coreopsis.

“Now, how are you fixed for annuals?” a young woman whose name tag identified her as Angelica asked Zoey.

“What?” Zoey frowned.

“You have all perennials there. You want to plant
some annuals that last through the end of the season, don’t you? So that the garden’s not bare come September?”

“Oh, sure.” Zoey nodded, looking suspiciously at the flowers she had already pulled out and marked as hers. Would they not “last the season?”

As if reading her mind, the young woman told Zoey, “Perennials usually bloom earlier in the season, June or July, which is why all of those”—she waved her hand at the selections Zoey had made—“are already blooming. If you deadhead them all summer long, you’ll still have some bloom come September, but to keep the color going until frost, you want annuals. They are slower to bloom—your zinnias and cosmos, for example, won’t start blooming till maybe August, depending on sun and water conditions.”

“Oh. Okay.” Zoey nodded. “I’ll take some of . . . those things that you said.”

“Do you want your zinnias mixed or all one color?”

“Mixed, please.”

“Flats?”

“Sure.” Zoey shrugged as the woman pulled out several flats having what looked like several rows of small flower pots, each holding several small plants.

“Now, you’ll plant these in full sun and you’ll have gorgeous blooms till November, if you’re lucky,” Zoey was told.

Zoey just smiled, not having any way of judging just how lucky she’d be in the garden, but willing, all the same, to make a go of it.

By the time all of her selections had been gathered at the cash register, she realized that little of it would fit into her little car. Not one to lose a sale, the young woman quickly offered to have the plants delivered to Zoey’s house by two that afternoon.

That being done, Zoey took the long way back to Brady’s Mill. When she arrived at the house, the work crew was just finishing up and preparing to leave. She
walked with the contractor to the second floor to inspect her new living quarters.

“It’s gorgeous, Alan. You’ve done an incredible job!” Zoey beamed as she glanced around the bedroom that had been created on the second floor of the bungalow. Once the plans had been agreed upon, the carpets and wallpaper selected, Zoey had deliberately avoided her new quarters, wanting to be surprised when the job was completed. The newly installed plush green carpet stretched before her like a well-mowed lawn, and the floral wallpaper with its strong colors seemed to bring the outside in, which was exactly what she had had in mind. The skylights would open to the sun by day, the moon and the stars by night. It would be perfect when she got that big canopy bed put together. . . .

“Come see your new bath.” Pleased with her reaction, Alan grinned and pushed open the door.

“Wow!” she exclaimed. “Oh, wow! It looks exactly like the sketch! Oh, and doesn’t it look sinful!”

Alan laughed and turned on the water in the oversized whirlpool tub to demonstrate its usage.

“Oh, just what I need after a long day.” She smiled. “I can’t wait to try it out.”

“You can try it out tonight,” he told her. “It’s all set up.”

“It’s just what I wanted. You did a wonderful job.”

“Thank you. I’m glad that you’re happy. Now, what will you do about getting your furniture up here?”

Zoey frowned. She had thought to ask Nick to help her, but with the wedding three weeks away, she couldn’t very well ask him to come to Brady’s Mill to help her with a little interior decorating.

She bit her bottom lip. Wally was out. Lifting her big marble-topped dresser would just about kill him. Besides, how to get it from the basement, where it was stored, to the second floor of the bungalow would be a problem regardless of who was doing the lifting.

“Don’t know,” she replied.

“Look, my men are headed out for lunch, but we can
stop back in an hour or so and give you a hand with that No charge.”

“Really? Are you sure?”

“Positive. You’ve been a great customer, Zoey. It’s the least we can do.”

“Thanks!”

Zoey followed Alan downstairs, going into the kitchen after he left to fix herself a quick lunch of soup and crackers before going back up to her new room. She swung open the double doors on the space that would serve as a small dressing room and walk-in closet. She couldn’t wait to begin to move her clothes in here, and she would do that tomorrow, taking her time to organize things. She went back into the bathroom and admired her new dark green fixtures, white tile accented here and there with small hexagonal tiles of deeply hued wildflowers. The course around the top was solid green and a stripe of ceramic dots in greens and blues ran around the wall halfway up. Even the whirlpool tub was dark green, and she envisioned how wonderful it would be with hanging ferns and baskets of flowering plants—maybe even orchids, she mused—on the window ledges.

She turned on the water and let it steam and bubble for a moment before turning it off. She sighed. Definitely luxurious, she thought. Lying in that tub would be a totally sybaritic experience. It would be a shame, she told herself, to bubble away alone.

“Zoey?” Alan called from the bottom of the steps. “We’re back. Want to show us what you need done?”

“Yes! I’m on my way!” She ran down the steps excitedly, anxious to see her carefully sought and accumulated treasures once and for all where they had been intended to go.

Later, when the last of the workmen had followed Alan out the back door and Zoey had thanked them for the twentieth time for their help, she went back upstairs to look at her new room. It was perfect, exactly as she had seen it in her mind’s eye. The canopy bed of verdigris stood angled in one corner, the skylights perfectly
positioned overhead. All that remained to be done was for Zoey to make up the bed. She hummed as she fitted soft white sheets with a sprinkling of pale yellow roses onto the bed, and plumped the pillows after sliding them into their cases. Across the bed she draped a plush blanket of sage green that matched the old lamp she had found at a house sale some months before. How pretty it would be, she thought, when she bought fabric to drape around the bedposts and over the canopy. And how perfect a big bowl of fresh flowers will be on the dresser, maybe a smaller bouquet on the painted table next to the bed. . . .

She sighed with total contentment and peeked into the bathroom one more time. She had stacked some big fluffy towels on a wicker table and filled a small basket with lavender-scented soaps. She couldn’t wait till she finished in the garden and could reward herself with a long, sensual soak amid the swirling waters.

A honk from the driveway drew her to the window.

“My plants!” she said aloud.

She ran all the way to the backyard.

“Right there will be fine! Thank you!” she called to the teenage boys who had been sent to deliver her purchases.

Zoey cast a concerned eye upon the rows of pots and flats that lined her driveway. Whatever had she been thinking when she had bought what now appeared to be miles of green things, all of which would be looking to her for survival?

With a groan, she swung open the garden gate and looked at the waiting beds.

“Oh, brother,” she muttered. “What do I do now?”

The best place to start, she decided, would be to carry the plants into the garden and put the pots where they would be planted. An hour later, she was still moving pots around, but had pretty much decided where each would go. The tallest plants would go along the fence, so she moved the monkshood, delphinium, and hollyhock to places in the back of the garden. The Russian sage, she decided, would look nice in front of the tall things, so she
moved those pots to the back also. The rosemary and fennel would go with the daisies and the columbine in the Shakespeare bed. The coreopsis with its bright yellow color would be pretty along the outer edges of the long beds. That left the pansies—low growers, they would go in the front of the beds—and the annuals. She didn’t know what to do with them. The zinnias and the—she looked at the tags again to check the name—
cosmos
—how tall would
they
get?—would wait until everything else was planted.

Searching in the garage for a shovel, Zoey attacked the warming earth and turned it over, just as her mother had cautioned her to.

“Air out the soil Zoey. It’s been covered up all winter,”
Delia had told her.

“Okay, Mom, the soil is aired,” she announced after another hour of backbreaking work.

On her hands and knees she planted, wishing she knew a better way of getting the little buggers out of their pots besides digging them out with her fingers. Too late, she realized, she should have been wearing gloves. Her fingernails were a mess—and she would have a full hour of rings to sell on Friday morning. She inspected her nails with a frown.

“Oh, well,” she muttered. “The damage has been done. Looks like it will be fake nails for me for a while.” She continued going from one bed to the other, until all but the annuals were planted, before stepping back to admire her work.

“Not bad for someone who has absolutely no idea of what she is doing.”

Newly planted, all would need water. Zoey unwrapped the hose and attached it to the spigot at the end of the garage, soaking all the new plants. She stripped off her old sneakers and ran the cold water over her hot, tired feet, then washed her hands before turning the hose onto her face. The water felt like ice as it ran down the front of her old T-shirt, but Zoey could not have cared less. It was wet and it washed away the sweat and the grime and
cooled her hot skin that had soaked up more sun than she had realized.

“I have a farmer’s tan,” she smiled to herself as she rolled up the sleeves of the shirt and ran the hose water over her arms. One more spray on her feet and she turned off the water.

“Oh,
duh!”
she exclaimed. “No towel to dry off with.”