Chapter 25
Garden & Table
Patricia could not have come at a better time. Officially, she’s here to see her son. Unofficially, she’s here for the island’s acres of wildflowers, its salt-laced air, the way time slows enough to let you breathe, wander, and dwell.
The moment we embrace, I know she’s also here for me. She smells like fig and fresh linen, and her arms feel warm, familiar.
There’s something tucked behind her smile, something she’s not saying yet, like she’s savoring a secret she plans to enjoy telling.
Once we load her suitcase and she’s buckled in, she turns to me. “We’re going straight to the garden, right?”
Her enthusiasm catches me off guard, lifting me more than I expected.
We drive up Main Street toward the village, the afternoon sun flickering across the bay, the wind in our hair. I park in front of the garden, suddenly aware of how much I want her to love it. I value her eye—her instinct for beauty—and now that we’re here, I realize: I’m nervous.
We step through the new wooden gate. Patricia pauses just inside, taking it all in slowly, as if she’s giving each detail her full attention.
“This was a patch of nothing,” she says. “Just dirt and dying trees and weeds.”
The crushed granite paths catch the light in fragments. Raised beds spill over with kale and rainbow chard, their leaves bright and unruly. Mint patches crowd the corners where there’s partial shade. Tiny-leafed thyme warms in the sun. Lavender hums under flitting bees, and nasturtiums ramble like they’re trying to claim as much of the garden for themselves as they can. I trimmed back the lilac last week to show off the l’orangerie. Now it frames the glass as if it were part of the design. The rebuilt fence by Ezra, a local woodworker, is a piece of art made of weathered cedar. It creates a quiet border for everything we’ve coaxed into growing.
“You did all this?” Her voice is soft now.
“Isabel and Kiki and some new island friends helped.”
I hesitate.
“And Gavin, in a way. He gave me free rein of the space and encouraged me to keep using it. Said the island needed something like this.”
“That son of mine. Handsome and smart.”
I don’t reply. But my thoughts lead to an image of him: shirt sleeves rolled up, laughing in the garden at dusk, a quiet steadiness that’s more comforting than I ever expected. I try not to smile thinking of him. I’m not supposed to think about him like that. Not with his fiancée somewhere in New York, planning a wedding. Their wedding. But the truth is, it’s getting harder to pretend I don’t notice the way he watches me when he thinks I’m not looking.
Patricia wanders toward the greenhouse and steps inside, hands clasped behind her back like she’s in a gallery.
Sunlight streams through the glass panes. The trees have bloomed, their fruit just beginning to show: lemon, blood orange, more pomegranate—hints of what might be, if given time.
She claps her hands together in delight. “It’s a real l’orangerie. Like the ones in Paris that grow the citrus trees in the winter. This,” she says, “will be magic in the winter. Snow falling on the glass, candles on the table, velvet accents, the scent of apples in the air.”
“I feel like I should be taking notes,” I laugh.
“And the food is farm-to-table, right?”
“Tide to table, too,” I say, with a grin.
“What a setting. Texture, fragrance by nature... edible petals from the garden to scatter on cakes and salads.”
I nod, heart knocking.
“It started as a distraction. Then I needed it. Now I think I want it to be a kind of supper garden. Culinary pop-ups by reservation. For people who want to love better, or differently. After heartbreak. During it. Despite it.”
She tilts her head. “For the heart-hungry.”
I smile. “Yes. That.”
I watch her, the way she moves through the space, seeing it, really seeing it. My mom would’ve done that, too. She had a quiet reverence for things people made with their hands: Gardens. Meals. She would’ve loved this place. She would have loved Patricia.
I swallow against the lump that always rises when I think of her. Would she have believed I could do this? That I might build a life out of broken and dying things?
“I was talking to Marisol,” Patricia says, breaking the silence.
My stomach knots. I never called Marisol back after I left Pulse. Not even when she left a kind, confused voicemail. I pulled an Irish exit and never looked back. I couldn’t bear to explain how someone like Valerie had made me feel small in a job I once loved.
“She fired Valerie and left her husband. She wants to host her divorce party here. She saw Kiki’s Instagram post—the dinner you made last week. She said it looked like hope on a plate.”
“Seriously?”
“She wants to celebrate starting over. And this is the place. You are the person.”
That undoes me. I press my hand to my chest. This little space that has helped me stay upright. Could it be that for someone else, too?
“I wish my mom could’ve met you,” I say, the words out before I can stop them, then more quietly: “She would’ve wanted to be part of this.”
“She’s here,” Patricia says. “In everything you’re growing.”
She puts her hand on my back to comfort me.
“Would you consider doing the flowers?” I ask.
She points toward the ceiling of the l’orangerie. “A chandelier made of fir boughs, fresh peony, and dahlia blooms would look amazing. Candles nestled in. Something wild but romantic.”
“Is that a yes?”
“You didn’t think I’d let you and Kiki have all the fun, did you?”
“We’ll need more seating,” I say. “And decor.”
“Which is why we’re going to Sm?rg?sbord,” she says, triumphant. “You have to meet Melanie Trygg. She’s a designer with the best eye for textiles and is completely ruthless about cushion quality. She’ll have what we didn’t know we needed. Then we’ll swing by the pop-up for 45 Three Modern Vintage. Staci’s bringing in furniture from her shop in LA. It’s always crawling with celebrities. You’ll want to be friends with her. Everyone does.”
Sm?rg?sbord and the vintage pop-up are even better than I imagined. Melanie has us dreaming about linen and velvet, and Staci somehow manages to talk about mid-century Danish teak as if it were poetry. They are one more example of the island’s strange gift for assembling the right people at precisely the right moment.
We find a dozen mismatched wooden chairs, sun-worn and quietly elegant. Two antique garden benches, and moss-colored velvet cushions so lush they pull us to their side of the shop. Patricia picks one up and holds it up to me.
I raise an eyebrow. “Velvet? On an island that gets nine months of drizzle?”
Patricia doesn’t blink. “They’re absurdly beautiful.”
“They really are.” I run my fingers along the fabric, and there’s no going back. “Fine. We’ll pretend we’re impractical artists who believe in microclimates and miracles.”
She grins. “We are.”
Patricia runs her hand over a stack of soft ochre linen napkins. “This palette—ochre, lichen, mushroom—is beautiful. But we’ll need height and some contrast. Maybe some purple delphinium. Something architectural.”
We end up sketching the floral displays and layout on the back of a napkin, crouched beside a stack of brass candlesticks. The party begins to bloom in ink: chairs arcing under string lights, florals suspended from the greenhouse ceiling like a baroque painting.
My breath catches. It’s more than one party starting to take shape, and I remind myself that everything about this island is like a summer love: lush, intoxicating, temporary.
We load the last cushion into the hatch, and Patricia pauses, gazing out toward the view of the Salish Sea. Sailboats and catamarans drift past as if they have nowhere in particular to be.
She says it almost offhandedly, like she’s trying the idea on. “Liam and I have talked about retiring here.”
I see it for them. Morning walks in the fog along the rugged coastline. A steaming Hot Stella at Darvill’s Bookstore on snowy days. The endless summer flowers, the farm fresh fare, and the way the community folds around you like a quilt.
“I can see you here,” I tell her confidently.
For me, there’s the garden. The meals pulled from the land and the sea. The work that feels like tending, not just surviving. It’s not just a distraction anymore. It’s a rhythm. A kind of quiet belonging I didn’t think I’d ever feel again.
And softly, finally, I let it surface: I can see myself here, too.