Chapter Twenty-Five. Temperance
Temperance found Rowan in the greenhouse on the morning of her summer solstice wedding day, stinking of sulfur and covered with enough dirt to pot up a peony.
“I can’t believe you’re doing this today,” Temperance said.
“Have to. I’ll be busy over the next few days.” Rowan looked up from a tray of chives, eyes sparkling.
She was near the back, at a table covered corner to corner in flats of herb seedlings. Parsley, basil, fennel, dill, a few others Temperance didn’t recognize—all at different stages of growth, from just poking out of the soil to fully leafed. Temperance had known Rowan for a decade, but she’d learned more about plants from her in the past year than the entire time she’d known her. Nowadays, she rarely passed a plant without touching its leaves to feel the texture or experience the scent of the foliage. Rowan was eternally pinching leaves and sniffing them. She was the only person Temperance knew who could get away with relentlessly inviting people to smell her fingers.
There were more flats of cilantro than any other herb. Temperance ran her hand over the lacy leaves as she roamed past, releasing their citrusy floral odor. “Why’s there so much cilantro?”
“Gia loves it. She makes pesto from it. And cilantro tea! Can you imagine?” She aimed a gentle stream of water into a tray beneath basil seedlings and waved a gloved hand at the expanse of green beside her. “Everything on these tables is cut-and-come-again, but cilantro can be fussy. Harvest too much at one time and it won’t grow back very well. Also does terrible in the heat. So I grow a lot, as a buffer.”
“Rumor has it, Wegmans always has fresh cilantro available,” Temperance teased. “You could just skip all this, and Gia could—”
“Not on my watch,” said Rowan.
Temperance laughed and moved in beside her.
Rowan looked up. The panes of glass overhead reflected in her unusual amber eyes, and her expression was exquisitely unburdened. Fairy lights were still strung along the ceiling just as they had been when Temperance and Duncan hung them in May. When Harry and Duncan had tried to take them down a few days after the proposal, Rowan chased them out of the greenhouse with a broom handle.
Cut the shit, Temperance.
We’re not friends.
We are never going to be friends.
In that moment, Temperance felt no regrets for the tension with Duncan over the past few weeks. The love she had for Rowan McKinnon and Harry Brady was obviously different than what she felt for Duncan, but it was of equal magnitude and importance.
“You ready for today, honey?” Temperance said.
“In those early days, after everyone found out we were together, I didn’t recognize the person I’d become. Happy, protected. Nourished. I liked that new Rowan when I looked in the mirror, but it kind of felt like I was wearing someone else’s life.” She ran her fingers through lacy stems of lemon thyme. “Now, it’s the old me that’s unrecognizable. I wish everyone could have this, T.J.”
Temperance squeezed Rowan’s filthy hand. Outside, Will buzzed past on the Gator. Someone had mounted the flag from the Honey Moon 5K on the back. Rowan’s smiling face and ROWAN KEEP GOIN’ bounced and twitched in the wind on a long flexible rod.
They looked at each other and laughed.
For a while, they worked together in silence. Rowan showed Temperance where to snip early flower buds from oregano and basil, then she began shaping woodier rosemary and lavender in terra-cotta pots. The air bloomed with the holographic green scent of herbs.
“I need to ask you something, and I need you to tell me the truth,” Temperance said. “Not that you would ever lie, but I don’t even want you to try to tie a pretty bow on your answers, okay?”
“Yes,” Rowan said without looking up from the rosemary.
Temperance blinked. “I haven’t even asked the question yet.”
“I already know what you’re going to ask me, and the answer is yes.”
“How could you possibly know?”
“I’m good at romance now, remember?” Rowan tapped her temple with a dirt-dusted finger.
Temperance laughed and looked down to pick at a loose thread on the hem of her running shorts. She felt Rowan watching her.
“Remember after Harry left last year, and you said people in medicine don’t want to wait on forever?” Rowan said. “The impermanence of life, or something like that?”
Temperance cringed. She met her friend’s gaze. “Sounds vaguely familiar.”
Rowan had an eerily perceptive look in her eyes. “Was that a boatload of bullshit from the captain of the USS No Bullshit?”
“You and Harry don’t really want Duncan and I to be friends.”
“Do you and Duncan want to be friends?” Rowan said.
“You know the answer to that.”
“So do you, T.J. Your chemistry with Duncan is not platonic. It’s cosmic.”
“He told me he loved me yesterday.”
“That monster,” Rowan deadpanned.
Temperance laughed. “God, you’re smug. You giving me relationship advice was never something I’d have imagined on my bingo card for this year.”
“Listen, you and Frankie had a Cheesesteak Friday bet about Harry and I.” Rowan glanced up with an indulgent smile. “We’re even now.”
Temperance chuckled. “So what’s payback for Frankie going to be?”
Rowan pinched her lips between her teeth. “Hm. That one’s still marinating.”
“Oh my god, wait—was Frankie in on this, too?”
Rowan’s cheeks pinkened. “Let’s just say—she didn’t have as many photo shoots as she said she did while you were bedridden a few weeks ago.”
Temperance pinched her lips together. “Risky, though. Don’t you think?”
“You take a risk every time you light a fire, T.J. The important thing is knowing how it’s going to burn.”
Behind them, the greenhouse door creaked on its hinges as it opened. It was Harry, looking fresh and handsome in lightweight khaki shorts and a pale pink polo. “Am I interrupting?”
Rowan virtually levitated to get to him. Temperance turned to give them a moment, but she could still see their reflection in the glass. Rowan’s arms stayed loose at her sides so she didn’t get soil on him, while Harry had her face cupped in his hands, kissing her with back-arching thoroughness.
“Hi there, Dr. Brady,” Rowan purred.
“Well hello, Dr. Brady,” said Harry.
“Not for another eight hours.”
Harry murmured something inaudible, and Rowan giggled. She honest-to-god giggled.
“I’m still here,” Temperance sang.
Harry laughed. “Hey, T.J. You can turn around.”
“Are you two still clothed?” Temperance teased. “Do you have anything for me to decorate today, Harry? Maybe some errands that need running?”
Harry looked to Rowan, and Rowan laughed. “She knows,” she said.
Temperance looked up at the fairy lights. “Harrison Brady, did you seriously leverage your own marriage proposal as an opportunity to meddle in other people’s love lives?”
Rowan chuckled. “I’m sorry, have you met him?”
“I had enough data to figure it was worth the risk,” Harry said.
“What if it doesn’t work out, though?”
Harry and Rowan looked at each other. They both raised their eyebrows in mirrored miniature shrugs.
“Never occurred to us that it wouldn’t,” said Harry.
“I wish I had the same kind of faith,” Temperance said.
“Well.” Harry lifted a dried leaf out of Rowan’s curls. “The great thing about faith is that there aren’t any prerequisites. You can just… decide to have it.” They stared at each other for so long, Temperance legitimately thought they’d forgotten she was there.
Rowan was the first to snap out of it. “Shoo, you.” She swept her hand in front of her face. “Unless this is the way you want to marry me tonight. I have so much to get done.”
Harry touched a fingertip to the streak of dirt on her cheekbone. “I’d marry you every way.” He headed for the door. With his hand on the jamb, he turned and leaned into the open doorway. “Oh, T.J.?” He grinned. “You’re welcome.”
“Wow,” Temperance said once he was gone. “He’s seriously insufferable.”
“I know.” Rowan crinkled her nose, beaming. She grabbed a broom and began to sweep the floor. “Isn’t he the best?”
“I almost asked if you two wanted me to give you a few minutes alone.”
Rowan hummed a quiet little sound. She pinched her lips together and moved away, brushing some potting soil off a table into her hand. She let it rain down into a bin by the door. Her ears were crimson.
“Rowan,” Temperance breathed. “You and Harry did it in here?”
Her cheeks and neck blotched with red. “Well, ‘did it’ implies—ah, a singular instance.” She picked up a broom. “The first time was a turning point for us. He was so angry with me, T.J. He’d been holding back an entire side of himself.”
Temperance frowned. “He didn’t—hurt you, did he?”
“Oh my god, no, no. He just—unleashed all of his frustration. It was—” She paused with a faraway look in her eyes. “It was really, really hot.”
“Okay, okay.” Temperance laughed. “I don’t need specifics.”
“The point is—when Harry let me see his mess, it made it easier for me to show him mine. Real love can be messy, T.J. Anyone who says otherwise is either doing it wrong, or they just haven’t gotten down to the bones of it yet.” In one hand, Rowan picked up a tiny plastic pot filled with fluffy black soil. In the other was a little round seed. She tucked it down into the dirt and smiled softly. “In the dark is where the growth begins.”
SINCERowan had moved into the carriage house with Harry in the fall, the gardener’s cottage next to the greenhouse had served as the break room for Cloud Tide’s vineyard crew, air-conditioned in the summer and heated in the winter. Several times a week, Will Brady would drop off a plate or two of his bed-and-breakfast menu experiments, and everyone could leave anonymous feedback in a wooden box with a slot cut in the top. He had some of the more complimentary notes pinned on a corkboard in the butler’s pantry at the house. It was one of the sweetest things Temperance had ever seen.
Today, the gardener’s cottage was repurposed as Rowan’s bridal suite.
The ceremony was due to begin in about an hour, and Temperance was tasked with keeping Rowan out of the tiny bedroom at the back of the cottage. The big picture window there would give a clear view of where Duncan and his brothers were setting up the arbor he’d built.
With rollers in her hair the size of soda cans, Maren sat on the bed, painting Mercy’s nails a pearlescent pink.
Temperance’s phone suddenly blasted the Halloween theme. It almost vibrated off the edge of the table. She pointed at her sister with the wand from her mascara. “Maren, is this your fault? Were you thinking about them?”
Maren laughed, then grimaced at the clamoring phone. “Not this time. Promise.”
Mercy looked at them like they’d lost their minds.
“Our parents seem to call every time Maren mentions them. It’s witchcraft,” Temperance explained.
With her free hand, Mercy lobbed her phone to Maren on the bed. “Do Tom Hiddleston for me.”
Temperance snorted.
“What is it with them now?” Maren said.
“I still haven’t answered them about the DORA pediatrics program. Last time, I got the ‘This is your chance to do more with your career than gen peds’ line.”
“Gross,” Maren said. “That’s as bad as ‘We didn’t spend six figures of Capewell-Talbot money so you could be a housewife and a stay-at-home mom.’”
“Listen.” Temperance swept a thin layer of mascara on. “If they’d actually parented either of us, they’d know what a hard job it is. And you’re incredible at it.”
Mercy blew on her nails. “Your talent isn’t a currency for them to spend, ladies.”
“Thank you,” Temperance and Maren said in unison.
Frankie slid into the room and quickly closed the door behind her. She went straight to the window and pulled back a sheer curtain to peek outside. Heavy clouds scrolled across the sky, temporarily blocking the sun.
“How’s Rowan?” Temperance said.
“She’s a goddess.” Frankie’s attention was still out the window. “Nary a speck of dirt under her fingernails. Astonishing, really.”
“Sweet Jesus, Frankie,” Mercy said. “What is that smell?”
“You smell it?” Frankie wafted her hand in front of her face. “Good, good. It’s my insurance policy for tonight.”
Temperance looked over her shoulder. “She ate most of a bulb of roasted garlic at lunch.”
Maren made a face. “Are we expecting, ah, vampires on the guest list?”
“She kissed Mal earlier this month at the Honey Moon,” Temperance said.
“Pardon?” said Mercy.
“I knew he was a vampire.” Maren twisted the lid onto the nail polish.
“It was a hate-kiss,” Frankie muttered.
“You’re on the path to the dark side now. Hate-kissing leads to hate-sex,” Maren said. “I don’t make the rules.”
Distracted, Frankie dropped the curtain and murmured, “I’ll make sure to stock up on cranberry juice.”
“The science on that is limited at best, Frances,” Temperance said.
Arden plowed into the room in an oversized flannel and a pair of cutoffs so short it looked like she wasn’t wearing any at all. Creases from a bed pillow still marked her left cheek, and she smelled like fresh toothpaste. She had to turn sideways to squeeze past where Frankie had set up to braid Temperance’s hair.
“Oh my god, it’s like a clown car in here,” Arden said.
Everyone went silent.
After an awkward beat, Arden looked from Mercy to Maren to Frankie to Temperance. “Oh, please. If I had a dime for every time I overheard people talking about my brothers, I wouldn’t be using loans to pay for college. Malcolm definitely needs a Frankie-shaped wake-up call, and you”—she pointed at Temperance and swirled her finger in the air—“you don’t hide anything nearly as well as you think you do. Honestly, the way you and Ducky have always avoided each other is far more telling than anything you actually say or do.”
Arden blithely stripped to her underthings in the center of the room, then wiggled into her dress for the wedding.
Mercy broke the silence with a bubbly laugh. “Thank god someone finally said it.”
Frankie met Temperance’s eyes in the mirror, and something inside her broke loose.
“We’re in it again.” Temperance closed her eyes. “It’s like I’m looking into a clear lake, and I’m confident I know the depth, but after I dive in, the bottom isn’t where I thought it was. So I sink. And sink, and sink. Then when I start to drown, I realize it wasn’t a lake at all. It’s an ocean, and I’ve already fallen so far in that I’m never getting out again, because it’s so much bigger than me. Indifferent to my smallness. And I belong to it now, sinking forever until I’m just—” She swallowed hard and opened her eyes. “Bones.”
“Holy shit,” Maren said.
Arden said, “Is Duncan the ocean, or—?”
“I think it’s a metaphor for love,” Mercy said.
“Deep,” said Frankie.
“Yeah,” Temperance said. “So’s my salty ocean of feelings.”
“Do you want to know what I think?” Arden pulled a brush through her hair. When Temperance nodded, she said, “I think, when someone makes you feel those big feelings, that’s your heart telling your brain to let them.”
The door cracked open, and Gia poked her head through. Her eyes were dewy. “She’s ready.”
ROWANstood in the little living room of the cottage, limned by gauzy evening sunshine through the windows. She wore a simple cream off-the-shoulder dress with flowy sleeves and a floor-skimming hem. Her burnished curls were crowned with a garland made of braided grapevine and wildflowers.
She was the most radiant bride Temperance had ever seen.
As the women filed out of the cottage for photos before the ceremony, Gia’s ring snagged on the back of Temperance’s dress. They hung back to untangle it.
“We’ll catch up,” Gia told the others.
Gia sat on the little painted yellow bench on the cottage porch while Temperance faced away. As far as she could see, the sloping lawns and vineyards of Cloud Tide were an embroidered tapestry of greens and yellows and reds.
“I expected you to marry one of my boys before a stranger did, you know,” Gia said.
The muted music of a small string quartet came from the direction of the vineyard, accompanied by a chorus of familiar voices. Duncan’s big, full-throated laugh resonated over the rest. Longing laid a heavy hand around Temperance’s throat.
She deflected. “You didn’t let Rowan stay a stranger for very long, Gia.”
The sun emerged from behind the intermittent clouds, and for a moment, a mist too delicate to be called rain drifted over them. Like standing too close to an ocean breaker.
Gia hummed a curious sound. In Gallego, she quietly said, “O lobo está a casar co raposo.”
“Hm?”
“It’s a sun-shower. In Galicia, we say that the wolf is marrying the fox. My mother said it was always the most unexpected pairings that created the most beautiful unions. Salt and sugar. Sun and rain. Wolf and fox.”
The story encapsulated everything Temperance loved about Gia Brady. Earnest and lovely and a little bit weird.
A cloud dimmed the sun again, and the mist was gone as quickly as it had come. Temperance hoped the rain held off long enough for the ceremony.
Over her shoulder, she said, “So who is the wolf, and who is the fox today?”
“I wasn’t talking about Harry and Rowan, love.” Gia stood and smoothed her hand over the lace of Temperance’s dress. “All fine, now.”
Temperance knotted her fingers together and turned. “Thank you,” she murmured.
“My son—” Gia began, nodding in the direction of the laughter. “He defines his self-worth by his readiness to help people. How much of himself he can give away without disappearing entirely.” Gia didn’t specify which son she referred to. But she didn’t need to. She took one of Temperance’s hands in her own. “And you, darling. You only feel worthy if you can be brave. To handle everything alone.”
Temperance captured her bottom lip in her teeth to stop it from trembling.
“You two can’t be those people all the time,” Gia said. “When you can’t be brave, be ready. But when you can’t be ready, be brave.”
Duncan’s laughter came again, and for a few seconds, Temperance couldn’t breathe. She steadied herself with two fingers against the back of the little porch bench.
“Did I ever tell you about my ring?” Gia held out her hand. The ring was dainty and old, with two clasping hands carved into the gold.
Notably, there were no rough surfaces or stones that could have possibly gotten caught on her dress to necessitate them staying behind. Gianna Brady was a wily one. Temperance swallowed and shook her head.
Gia looked fondly at her finger and twisted the ring off. The fit was a little snug over her knuckle. “William and I had been married for a few years before we could afford to get a ring. Victorian, the antiques jeweler told us. Found sewn into the sleeve of a wedding dress that had belonged to a woman’s great-great-aunt, discovered over a century after she’d died. But the woman had never married.” Gia handed the ring to Temperance. “See the engraving, though?”
It was smoothed by age, but still legible. Temperance turned it toward the sun and read it aloud. “I will find you.” She met Gia’s eyes and returned the ring. “They must not have found each other. That’s so sad.”
“I like to imagine that William and I gave a second chance to the love that this ring originally symbolized.”
Gia slipped it back on, caressing the underside with her thumb.
“So you believe the story, Gia?” Temperance asked. “Have you ever had the ring dated?”
“We never bothered. An appraisal would have cost us money we didn’t have.” Gia gave her a tender smile. “Believing is free.”