Chapter Twenty #2
Cosima’s stomach dropped away, leaving behind a whirling hollow. Edie had frozen with a biscuit halfway to her mouth. The look in her eyes was how Cosima would have felt if she’d been the right person to take charge of her mother’s company.
Morag came around the table as Edie watched, her face pale. The older woman sat down on a stool and leaned toward Edie.
“I’ve known I ought to sell for a long time, but I’ve been resistant, because as much as I’ve let this place go, I can’t let it go.
My sister won’t have anything to do with it, and she’s as old as I am.
My niece works in the C-suite of Tesco and shows miniature dachshunds.
She doesn’t have children. When I saw Cosima’s reservation come through, well, I don’t believe in fairy tales, but it felt like a sign that something was coming.
Imagine my surprise when the something was you. ”
Edie shook her head. The tip of her nose had gone red, and her lips were clenched so tight that a dimple appeared on her chin.
It was the kind of moment Phoebe Frank would’ve loved. The kind she would have hired John Williams to score.
And, for once, Cosima was right at the center of it.
She moved her stool closer and put her hand at Edie’s hip. This one was hers. And, if Cosima could make it happen, so was the two-acre garden of Gregory Place that deserved Grade I registration after a jaw-dropping restoration.
“Your phone may not work, but I can do research,” Morag said. “Fauxmage was good. But I’m not convinced this Wisconsin is the right place for you. Don’t you have dual citizenship? Because of your worthless father?”
“Yes,” Edie said. Her voice was almost a whisper.
“Maybe you don’t want it,” Morag told her. “But you understand this place, and you’ve learned the lessons I never did.”
“I have negative money,” Edie said. “I don’t know anything about running an English inn. I have a job already. I went to the factory and had a meeting with HR to fill out all my paperwork.”
Morag stood up. “This is the part I mentioned that I don’t plan to be here for.” She set her mug down on the drainboard and looked at Cosima. “Be a duck and let Tam know I’m on my way. I don’t know what the state of Bronwyn’s heart might be, but I’d hate to be the reason it stopped in shock.”
“There are still some Lenten roses in the garden,” Cosima said. “If you’d like to take her flowers.”
“No, I would not.” Morag took her coat. “Can you imagine giving that woman flowers? I’ll give her a new silk necktie if she doesn’t turn around and run back to Wales when she sees me.”
And then she was gone.
“Edie.” Cosima shifted over to Morag’s stool to be closer. “How are you doing?”
“What is that woman’s long game, Cosima? Is this the first temptation in a gauntlet of torture? Or, more likely, I take her devil’s bargain, and then I’m doomed to run this inn for eternity, my skin bursting into flames if I walk more than ten yards from the threshold.”
“I think she just wants you to have the inn,” Cosima said, as gently as she could.
She knew Edie was making jokes because her fear and overthinking were taking over.
“I don’t think there’s anything behind her offer but her belief that you’re the right person to carry on a legacy.
And she’s right. Edie, look around! This inn is already a legacy.
You can be the next person in an unbroken line of people, some of whom were very damaged, who have taken care of it.
Someday, you’ll pass it on, probably in better shape than you received it.
This building, I am absolutely certain, will be here a hundred years after you’re gone. That’s the goddamned dream, isn’t it?”
Edie closed her eyes, her cheeks flushed, and when she opened them, they were tide pools. Forest ponds. “But where will you be?”
“Come with me.” Cosima slid off her stool and waited.
When Edie rose, she led her out the back door and along the path to the garden gate.
It didn’t squeak when she opened it, because Cosima had repaired and oiled it.
She’d had to watch six YouTube videos, but she’d managed it.
Then she stepped aside, hoping Edie could see not what she’d done, but what it would become.
“Oh, shit,” Edie said. “It doesn’t look like a place the cops should bring ground-penetrating radar to and look for bodies anymore.”
Cosima laughed. It was the earliest part of the spring in England, but she could see where the roses would come in and make a path to the step-over apple trees she had just started to retrain.
Beyond that, there was the pond to clean out and replant, more marginal plants to edge it with.
There were the box hedges that needed to be looked at for blight.
She’d found the remains of a sunny dry garden, and the greenhouse was a disaster, but it would be gorgeous when it was repaired.
It was a kingdom, and she had laid claim to it as its queen. And king, if she were being honest about her ambition.
“This is where you want to begin your takeover of the world of gardening? Here?”
Edie’s face was still too pale. Cosima could see that the brokenhearted part of her hadn’t caught up to the part that was already running the inn. Kissing Cosima every day. Making everybody in town her new best friend.
“This is a two-acre garden, the oldest parts of which date to the beginning of the eighteenth century, even before the inn. It’s older than the gardens at Gregory Gregory’s manor.
There are important artifacts of pre-Victorian pleasure gardening around every corner, some of which would be the first of their kind to be restored.
There is stained glass in the greenhouse by an English artist whose pieces are in the British Museum. So yes. Here.”
Edie wrapped her arms around herself, scanning the muddy garden. “I suppose no other garden in the world has me—might have me—if you’re cataloging its features.”
Cosima bit her lip to keep from scaring Edie off with her excitement. “Nope. No other one.”
“Do you think we could charge twelve pounds to tour it?”
“Let’s say eighteen. It would be Cosima Frank’s, after all.”
Edie stepped farther into the garden, looking at a table where Cosima had been keeping tools organized and the pile where she was putting good pots where she found them, when Cosima’s phone buzzed in her back pocket.
It was Duncan.
She held up a finger to Edie and walked away, taking the call to a private space by the garden wall.
“I’m glad I got you right away.”
The air in Cosima’s lungs went cold. Duncan never forgot his polite greetings.
“Duncan? What is it?”
As she listened to what he said, the cold reached every vein in her body. When he was done, she told him what she would do.
What she had to do.
“Edie.” Cosima found her, still by the table with the tools. She’d rearranged them by size. Some of the color had started coming back into her face.
Cosima hated that she didn’t have any time.
That she couldn’t be with Edie in this moment—one of the most challenging in her life, given Edie’s history.
As it was, she would be pressed to get to Los Angeles by five o’clock.
She reran the time-zone calculations in her head, the same ones Duncan had patiently explained to her even though it was so late in California.
It was morning here. Harlaxton was eight hours ahead.
Cosima would be on a plane for twelve hours if all went to plan, and she had to get to the airport, check in, go through security, board.
“I need to leave. I’m so sorry. In fact, I think I have to break whatever rental agreements we signed and take the Mini. ”
“You have to go back.” Edie’s voice was low. She didn’t sound like herself, which made Cosima think she must have been able to hear at least part of the phone call.
“Burbank. I have to leave right away so I can make it before the end of the day. Not the end of the day here. The end of the day there. I’ll take the bag I packed for Spain.” Cosima tried to calm her racing brain, her stomach cramping already.
She had no means and no time to wipe the confusion from Edie’s face. She had to hope that showing Edie the garden was enough. Telling her that this was where she wanted to be. Showing her that she trusted her decisions, her ideas, her ambitions.
She went to Edie and put her hands around her beautiful face. “This is my garden. I won’t let anyone else have it. You have to keep it for me. Don’t go anywhere, okay? Even if you don’t hear from me. This is not good-bye.”
She kissed Edie’s forehead, hoping she could beam her feelings right into Edie’s brain so that she wouldn’t lose faith.
Maybe she could call her from the plane. Or on the drive, if she had a moment when she wasn’t focused on traffic. “I’m so sorry. I wish I could be a part of this for you.”
And then, just like before, she ran away, with no idea when she would return.