The Unfinished Garden (12 page)

“That nice James telephoned.” Her mother’s voice boomed along
the hall. It was her classroom voice, intended to carry to the farthest desk.
“He seemed a little miffed that you weren’t here. Said he’d ring back
later.”

Tilly unwrapped a bar of Fruit and Nut, snapped it in two and
shoved the biggest piece in her mouth.
Bugger, bugger,
bugger.
Priority number one: ditch the guy with more issues than the
crazed, cancer-riddled single mother. And where was Isaac? She ached to hold
him, and yet the thought of seeing him unhinged her completely.

Monty’s toenails scrabbled on the parquet hall floor, followed
by the clunk of her mother’s cast and the squeak of the rubber-tipped
crutch.

“Can’t talk to him, Mum.” Tilly sensed her mother in the
doorway but didn’t look up. “Not today.”
Yum.
She
crunched a hazelnut.

“Tilly? Is that…all you bought?”

“Selective memory loss.” Tilly unwrapped the second bar and bit
off another chunk of chocolate. Raisins squished between her teeth.
Delicious.

“Does this have something to do with Sari’s telephone
call?”

“Hmm.” Tilly munched slowly. Some days it didn’t matter how
much chocolate you stuffed into your mouth, it was never enough. Just as some
days stretched into a never-ending lie. Of course, the latter was a new
experience, but surprisingly easy to master as new experiences went. Go
figure.

“I thought so.” Her mother sighed. “You haven’t been yourself
since that conversation.”

Tilly reached for the rest of the half-eaten bar of
chocolate.
Myself. When was the last time I felt like
myself?

“When James phones back,” her mother said, “shall I tell him
you’ll call in a few days?”

Tilly winced as a jagged nugget of chocolate lodged in her
throat. She swallowed hard. “He’s not going to like it. I have a feeling
Vesuvius could erupt and cause less damage. Sure you can handle that?”

Her mother’s sapphire eyes sparked with mischief.
Yeah, silly question.

“Leave him to me,” her mother said.

Gratitude blasted Tilly’s fortifications, tempted her with the
lure of an emotional dump:
Hey, Mum. I have a lump in my
breast.
Confession might bring relief, but at what cost to a woman
who had buried two daughters and watched her husband die of cancer?

No, Tilly must keep this to herself until she had answers. Why
scare her mother needlessly? Two weeks extracted from a lifetime meant nothing.
And, what d’ya know?
She had enough chocolate
supplies to guide her through.

* * *

James slammed down the phone again, but this time he was
prepared. He knew the rejection was coming. Although it wasn’t a rejection.
Tilly was playing for time, and he wanted to know why. He stared at his MacBook
Pro with its oddly relaxing mandala screensaver. He needed to slow down the
world so he could push aside the voice, figure out if this was just another case
of serotonin deficiency sounding a false alarm.

His psychologist always asked him to identify the fear lurking
behind the toxic thought, behind the worry. But this wasn’t OCD fear, this was
real. This was James:
Something’s wrong, I can feel
it.
Why was Tilly using her mother as a shield? None of it made
sense, contradicted everything he knew about Tilly. God Almighty. How could he
presume to know a woman he had met only twice? But he did know her; he did. And
he could help her; he could protect her. But protect her from what? Herself?

James picked up the bottle of Maker’s Mark and his tumbler and
headed onto the balcony, back into the heat. Heat kept him on the edge, and he
needed that to bar the OCD. Worry for people he loved could pervert his
reasoning and force him to see tragedy where there was none.

He poured bourbon into his glass and held the glass up to the
sunlight to check the level. Not too little, not too much. Perfect. He took two
sips and relished the warmth at the back of his throat. Now he could think.

If something were wrong with Tilly, then Isaac was at risk,
too. Shit. Wasn’t it bad enough to feel the way he did for Tilly? After
twenty-seven years he had to develop paternal instincts, but for someone else’s
kid?

He emptied the glass in one gulp, refilled it and repeated. By
the time the bottle was a quarter empty, he knew what his next move would be. A
boneheaded stunt? You betcha. Financially reckless and potentially embarrassing?
That, too. Did he care? Not a fuck. He sat still, which he rarely managed. How
could he not do this? He wasn’t fatalistic, but meeting Tilly and Isaac felt
like predestination. Great, now he was a recovering Catholic who spouted
Calvinist doctrine. Wasn’t he messed up enough without adding religion back into
the mix? But if Tilly and Isaac were in trouble, he had to be there for them. It
was that simple.

* * *

Tilly sank back onto her heels and rubbed black cobwebs
from her jeans. She was half-buried in the cupboard under the stairs, along with
her father’s Victorian safe, a tangle of Christmas tree lights and a mountain of
cleaning supplies. The cupboard smelled dank and ancient. Who knew what nasties
lurked in the corners, nasties that once upon a time would have terrified her?
Still, living with the threat of cancer had emboldened her. To test that theory,
Tilly shoved her hand into the darkness. And yanked it back quickly.

Why did Saturdays throw a different light on troubles? Was it
the change of pace that allowed contemplation to worry away at emotional scabs
and then cause you to do something as insane as reorganize your mother’s
cleaning supplies? Or was sleep deprivation eliciting a wee bit of mania? The
last three days she had been up at four o’clock, listening for the squeak of the
letterbox and the plop of mail on the hessian doormat.

“There you are! Gracious.” Her mother peered down. “What on
earth are you doing?”

“You do realize you have four partially used tins of Brasso in
here?” Tilly heaved a box from the lower shelf and nearly gagged on the stench
of polish. Now that she thought about it, a sudden eagerness for domestic chores
was akin to yelling, “Look at me, I’m a Looney Tune!” After all, Tilly’s
housework aversion was the stuff of family lore.

Her mother gave a low
ahem before
speaking.
“Since Isaac’s checking on the pheasant poults with Rowena,
I thought we should snip some roses and take them to the cemetery. I haven’t put
fresh flowers on your father’s grave since you arrived.”

“Excellent!” Tilly sprang into action, showering the hall floor
with dusters and rags. “Give me five minutes to grab a fresh tee and detangle my
hair. Oh, and I haven’t brushed my teeth today.”

“Darling, we’re visiting the dead. They hardly care about
personal hygiene.”

“Silly me. Roses it is, then,” Tilly said, and dashed outside
before her mother could ask what was wrong.

* * *

“Hey, you.” Tilly stroked the smooth marble of her
father’s headstone and conjured up his belly laugh. Other memories may have
dulled, but not the sound of her father’s happiness.

Her mother’s secateurs snipped rhythmically and sunshine
tickled the nape of her neck. Sheep bleated across the estate, and on the school
playground beyond the lime trees, children hollered and cheered through their
end-of-year sports day.

Tilly stretched, enjoying a rare sensation of serenity. Even as
a child, she had felt the village cemetery was a place to celebrate life, not
dwell on death. She caught the intoxicating sweetness of wild honeysuckle, her
sensory marker of survival, and smiled. But the smile wavered as she watched her
mother yank dead roses from the container sunk into her father’s grave. The
stitches had been removed, but should her mother be using her injured hand? What
about the risk of tears or infection? Her mother had grown careless with her
safety, reaching at awkward angles, hobbling about without crutches, carrying
cups of scalding tea as Monty wove between her legs.

When Isaac was learning to walk, Tilly had hankered after a
future of me-time. Amazing, that she had been so naive. Her son needed her more,
not less, as he grew—more ferrying around, more guidance in a world of hidden
traps. And so, she realized with rising dread, did her mother.

“It’s going to be a beautiful afternoon. Simply glorious.” Her
mother snipped leaves off a fresh rose stalk. “After you’ve dropped Monty off at
the groomer’s, why don’t you stretch out on the lawn with a book and a nice
glass of chilled elderflower cordial? I have a fancy to take Isaac down to the
church and teach him the art of brass rubbing, and you could put some color back
in those cheeks.”

Yuck, a tan to draw attention to a body
conspiring with an unseen enemy.

“Yes. A quiet afternoon might be just the ticket.” Her mother
reached into the trug and handed Tilly the shears. “Do me a favor, darling, and
hack around the headstone. That young lad cuts the grass and thinks he’s done.
Never touches the edges. I keep telling the parish council to hire someone else.
I’ve made a decision, by the way.” Her mother dumped out fetid water from the
flower container and refilled it with fresh rainwater.

“A decision about what?” Tilly tore at the long grass around
her father’s headstone, the blunt shears squeaking with each abortive cut.
“Supper?”

Her mother straightened up and rubbed the small of her back.
“Goodness, so stiff these days. No, I’m selling Woodend.”

“You’re—” Laughter sneaked out. “What?”

“Selling Woodend. I’m putting it on the market next week.”

The shears clattered onto the marble base of the headstone.
Tilly’s legs wobbled and then crumpled. She collapsed to the grass, unable to
move despite the damp that seared through her jeans and pressed wet denim
against her skin like cold steel. The rain had petered out two days before, but
the dew had been heavy that morning. An invisible mass of high pressure now
hovered over Southern England and gleeful weather forecasters popped up
everywhere predicting fine weather for weeks to come. Some even talked of a real
summer. Amazing, how people desperate for sunshine could latch on to the
smallest ray of hope.

Her mother wasn’t serious. She couldn’t be. She couldn’t punch
a hole in the frayed bottom of Tilly’s world, because then Tilly might fall
through. “This is a joke, right?”

“I’m sorry, darling. I’ve been trying to find the right moment
to tell you. Then I realized there was no such thing. Go ahead, ask your
questions.”

Tilly looked up into her mother’s eyes and read resolve. Her
mother had found her own position in the middle of the road. She had dissected
the whole aging-woman-alone-in-a-big-house problem and had settled on a solution
without consulting her family. And why shouldn’t she? Virginia Haddington was a
seventy-year-old widow entering a new phase of life, one no longer steered by
the demands of motherhood.

Tilly asked the only question that mattered: “Why?”

Her mother continued arranging flowers. “The accident was quite
an eye-opener, you know.”

“Oh God. You have osteoporosis, don’t you?”

“Lord, no. Why would you think that?”

Tilly grabbed the cardigan that was tied around her waist and
struggled to put it on. But the sleeves were inside out; everything was
twisted.

“My life is changing, Tilly, and I can no longer ignore the
inevitable. I’m not saying that I’m a decrepit relic, Lord forbid. But I lay on
that sodden grass for over an hour. Cold and alone, calling out in the dark. A
weekender from one of the barn conversions heard me. Do you have any idea how
humiliating it was, to be found by a stranger?”

A tsunami of failure swamped her. Her mother had needed her,
and Tilly hadn’t even been in the same time zone.

“The ambulance men addressed him as if he were responsible for
me.” Her mother clutched at her pearl necklace. “They called me Virginia, for
goodness’ sake.”

“I hate to point out the obvious, but you are Virginia,
Mum.”

“They should have called me Mrs. Haddington. It was
disrespectful. Lying there, remembering that summer nine years ago, I can’t be
that person again. Not if it means depending on strangers who call me
Virginia.”

“But Woodend has been your home for over forty years. You can’t
sell it.”

“It’s too big, Tilly.”

“Hire help.”

“I have help.”

“Hire more.” Tilly’s anger rose with her voice. Selling Woodend
wasn’t a solution. It was a ridiculous act of sacrifice, a misplaced desire not
to be a burden.

“It will solve nothing,” her mother said. “Woodend is a house
for children, not memories. Marigold and I have been talking about one of those
nice cottages along Badger Way.”

“What if Isaac and I come live with you?” Maybe life was
offering her an opportunity, the
get out of jail
free
card Isaac would need if the lump were cancerous. With Rowena,
her mother, and her sisters around, he would be immersed in love and protection.
And besides, if she had to stare down death, wouldn’t she rather do it at home?
Tilly leaped up. “It’s so perfect I can’t believe I’ve never thought of it. I’ve
always wanted to return to Bramwell Chase. Why not now? I could start a new
gardening business. Here.”

“Why, in heaven’s name, would you want to come back here? Your
life is in North Carolina.”

So, not a good idea. But she had sprung it on her mother, and
her mother hated surprises. Tilly needed to examine the financial implications,
talk to a banker—talk to Sebastian. That would impress her mother. Her mother
always listened to Sebastian. Tilly jiggled from foot to foot, eager to get home
and call him.

“My life
was
in North Carolina, but
now it’s a place of ticks and snakes and hurricanes that play havoc with my
homeowner’s insurance. But Woodend—” Tilly swallowed, aware that her voice was
running ahead of her thoughts. “You’re right, Mum. Woodend needs a family. And
you shouldn’t be alone. None of us should be.”