Chapter 7 Talia
Talia
The text from Hollis came Thursday morning while I was elbow-deep in sourdough starter, trying to coax life back into the culture I’d neglected for three days.
Beautiful day. Would you like to see my grandmother’s garden? I think you’d appreciate it.
I stared at the message, flour dusting my phone screen.
In the week since our long conversation over tea, Hollis and I had fallen into an easy rhythm.
I’d stop by Pine & Pages most afternoons, and he’d have a book waiting that he thought I’d like, along with whatever herbal blend Elias had recommended that day.
We talked about everything and nothing. Food and literature and the particular quality of mountain light in autumn.
But this felt different. More personal than tea in a bookstore reading chair.
I’d love to. When?
Now? If you’re free. It’s the kind of afternoon that won’t come again until spring.
I looked at my sourdough starter, at the recipe testing I’d planned for the afternoon, at all the practical reasons I should say no.
Then I texted back: Give me twenty minutes to clean up.
I’ll pick you up.
Twenty minutes later, I was climbing into Hollis’s ancient Subaru, noting the collection of books on the back seat and the faint scent of chamomile that seemed to follow him everywhere.
“Thank you for saying yes,” he said as we pulled away from my cottage. “I don’t bring many people there.”
“To your grandmother’s garden?”
“To anywhere that matters.” He said it simply, like stating a fact rather than making a confession. “But I wanted you to see it.”
We drove in comfortable silence through town and up into the foothills, taking a narrow road that wound between properties marked by split-rail fences and sprawling meadows.
The October afternoon was exactly what he’d promised.
Perfect blue sky, aspens turning gold, that particular slant of light that only happened in autumn when the sun hung lower but still carried warmth.
“How long since she passed?” I asked as he turned onto a gravel drive.
“Three years this November.” His voice was steady, but I caught the thread of grief underneath. “I inherited the bookstore and the house. She even left me with instructions about the garden and how to keep it growing.”
“Have you?”
“I’ve tried.” He pulled up in front of a small craftsman bungalow, white paint weathered to soft gray. “But I’m not as good at it as she was. Plants require a kind of attention I’m still learning to give.”
We got out, and he led me around the side of the house to a gate set in a stone wall. When he opened it, I understood immediately why he’d wanted me to see this on a day like today.
The garden sprawled across what must have been a quarter acre, terraced into the hillside with stone walls that looked like they’d been there forever.
Late-season flowers still bloomed in defiant bursts of color.
Asters and sedum, chrysanthemums in rust and gold, ornamental grasses gone to seed and catching light like they were made of spun sugar.
But it was also slightly wild. Overgrown in places, like the person tending it was doing their best but couldn’t quite keep up with nature’s insistence on sprawling.
“Oh, Hollis.” I moved forward without thinking, drawn to a patch of herbs that had clearly been carefully maintained even as other areas ran riot. “This is beautiful.”
“It’s a mess,” he said, but there was affection in his voice. “She would have had everything in perfect order by now. I let things get away from me.”
“It’s not a mess. It’s alive.” I touched a sprig of rosemary that had grown woody and wild, releasing its sharp scent into the afternoon air. “Gardens aren’t supposed to be controlled. They’re supposed to be tended.”
He came to stand beside me, close enough that I could feel the warmth of his body in the cooling air. “That’s very diplomatic.”
“It’s true. Look at this thyme.” I crouched beside a patch that had spread across the stone pathway, tiny purple flowers still blooming despite the season. “It’s thriving because you let it do what thyme does naturally. Spread and fill spaces and offer itself up.”
“My grandmother would have kept it contained to a specific bed.”
“Your grandmother probably also didn’t work full time running a bookstore while trying to grieve her death.” I looked up at him, squinting against the sun behind his head that gave him a halo of gold light. “You’re keeping it alive. That’s what she asked you to do.”
Something shifted in his expression, softening around the edges. “You’re being kind.”
“I’m being honest. There’s a difference.” I stood, brushing dirt from my knees. “Show me the rest?”
We walked the garden paths together, and he told me about each section.
The vegetable beds where his grandmother had grown enough food to supply half the neighborhood.
The herb garden that now provided plants for Elias’s apothecary blends.
The cutting garden where she’d harvested flowers for the bookstore every week.
“She believed gardens were supposed to be useful,” he said, running his hand over a stand of ornamental grasses. “Beautiful, yes, but also productive. She didn’t have patience for flowers that existed just to be looked at.”
“Sounds practical.”
“She was. Practical and kind and absolutely certain about what mattered.” We’d reached a bench built into the stone wall at the garden’s highest point, looking out over the valley.
“She knew everyone’s story. Not just the surface things, but the real struggles people were facing.
And she always seemed to know exactly what book they needed to read or what plant would help. ”
We sat, and I noticed how careful he was to leave space between us. Respectful distance that somehow made me more aware of the gap than if we’d been touching.
“You do the same thing,” I said. “With the books, I mean. You always seem to know what I need before I know it myself.”
“She taught me that. How to pay attention to what people aren’t saying.” He turned to look at me, and the afternoon light caught in his eyes, turning them amber instead of their usual hazel. “It’s easier with books. People reveal themselves in what they choose to read.”
“And what have I revealed?”
“That you’re healing. That you want to believe the world can be kind but you’re scared to trust it.” He said it gently, without judgment. “That you’re building something important and you’re terrified it won’t be enough.”
The accuracy of his observation made my chest tight. “That obvious?”
“Only because I’m paying attention.” He shifted slightly on the bench, angling toward me. “Most people don’t. They see what they want to see and move on.”
“Is that why you don’t let people close? Because they don’t pay attention the way you do?”
The question surprised him. I watched him process it, saw the defensive walls start to go up before he consciously lowered them again.
“Maybe,” he admitted. “It’s easier to help people from a distance. Give them what they need and let them leave before they start expecting more than I know how to give.”
“That sounds lonely.”
“It is.” He looked out over the valley, and I saw something raw in his profile.
“My grandmother was my only real family. My parents died when I was sixteen. After that, it was just her and me. She taught me how to run the bookstore, how to live in this town, how to find meaning in helping people find the right stories.”
“And then she left too.”
“And then she left too.” His voice had gone quiet. “I know she didn’t choose to die. I know cancer doesn’t care about timing or fairness. But it still feels like everyone I love eventually leaves, and I’m just here maintaining things they built while trying not to need anyone too much.”
The vulnerability in that admission made something ache in my chest. This gentle man who created sanctuary for everyone else, who always had the right book and the right tea and the right quiet presence, was desperately lonely underneath all that careful caregiving.
“I’m sorry,” I said softly. “That’s a terrible way to live.”
“It’s safe.” He turned back to look at me. “If you don’t need people, they can’t hurt you when they leave.”
“But they also can’t stay if you never let them in.”
We looked at each other for a long moment, something passing between us that felt significant. Like we were acknowledging truths neither of us had been ready to say out loud.
“Why did you bring me here?” I asked. “Really?”
He was quiet, considering. A bee droned past, late for the season and moving slowly through the cooling air. Somewhere in the valley below, a dog barked and someone laughed in response.
“Because you’re the first person I’ve wanted to share it with,” he said finally. “The first person who felt like they might understand what this place means. Not just the garden, but the grief and the beauty and the weight of keeping something alive that someone you loved created.”
“Like the bistro.”
“Like the bistro.” He smiled slightly. “You’re building something that matters to you, and you’re terrified you’ll fail and prove Vincent right about your worth.
I’m maintaining something that mattered to my grandmother, and I’m terrified I’m letting it die slowly because I’m not her and I’ll never be able to do it justice. ”
“We’re both carrying other people’s expectations,” I said.
“We’re both trying to prove ourselves to the past while building something new.” He corrected gently. “There’s a difference.”
We sat in comfortable silence while the afternoon light shifted across the garden, turning everything golden and soft.
I found myself studying his hands where they rested on his knees.
Long fingers, slightly ink-stained at the knuckles from handling books all day.
Careful hands that tended plants and brewed tea and created space for people to heal.