13. Chiara #3
“He’s writing down the instructions so I don’t have to keep repeating them.”
“Does he follow them?”
“So far.” I think about the untouched comparison patch and the flag Lorenzo moved. “I’d like to show you the trial tomorrow, if you have a few minutes. You heard enough about it while I was working in secret.”
“I can come out during my morning break.”
“I’ll be near the herb beds.”
We arrange a time, then she asks whether I have eaten. I tell her she’s interrupting my supper, and she says she’ll let me eat while it’s still warm.
On the third morning, I find the trial strip draining properly after the overnight rain. Lorenzo brings two cups of coffee.
“It held?”
“It held.” I accept a cup and stand beside him, enjoying the warmth against my cold hands. For once, there is nothing here that needs fixing before I can drink it.
Rosalia finds us during her morning break, while Lorenzo wheels a barrow of bagged compost toward the storage shelter near the arbor. I asked him to bring the supplies under cover. He checked where I wanted them, then went to collect them himself.
“I have ten minutes, signora,” she says. “May I see how the plants are doing?”
I take her down to the trial strip. She steps carefully around the little flags, asking which patch is the one I want left alone. I show her the clover and the water flowing through the new channel.
“So you’ll be able to finish it?”
“I hope so. Even if I don’t stay here. I want the records to be useful wherever I go.”
She nods as though that makes perfect sense. It does, when I say it to someone who isn’t waiting for me to turn the answer into a decision about my marriage.
When we return to the shelter, Lorenzo is stacking the last bags where they will stay dry. Rosalia notices the notebook beside his gloves but doesn’t make his effort the subject of her visit.
“I have to get back,” she tells me. “Let me know how the rosemary does.”
“I will. Thanks for coming to look.”
After she goes, Lorenzo gives me room to collect my tools. “What do you want checked before you leave?” His notebook is already in his hand. I tell him, and he writes it down without asking whether I’ll be here to supervise him tomorrow.
When I return to the rosemary, he follows with the tools I asked for. He sets them within my reach and waits for me to show him the next plant.
But when I return on the fourth morning, I find a folder on the covered potting table beside the tool shed.
This time I arrive before Lorenzo. My name is written on the folder, and a smooth stone keeps it from blowing off the table. I put my own notebook beside it before lifting the cover.
Inside are a sketch of a greenhouse and Lorenzo’s signed permission to use a plot beside the gardens. An application waits behind them, unsubmitted.
His handwritten note is on top.
For your botanicals, whatever you want to grow. The plot is yours to use even if our marriage ends. I’ve signed the landowner’s permission; the application is here for you to change, or leave untouched. Nothing will be built unless you want it.
I thought you might want to see your botanicals growing here someday. A greenhouse of your own, for the work you gave up when you came to this marriage. This doesn’t fix what I failed to do. It doesn’t mean you have to stay, or forgive me, or give me anything in return.
Even if you’re no longer mine, let me give back what I took.
I read the last line again. Then I go back to the page before it, looking for the condition he hasn’t put in the note.
The municipal application hasn’t been submitted.
The interior sketch is marked as a suggestion, and the space for naming the project is blank.
He has left that choice to me. I press my thumb against the corner of the page, remembering the narrow aisle in my rented greenhouse in Lyon and the work I used to plan there before anyone called me Signora Marchetti.
I hear footsteps on the path and look up to see Lorenzo approaching, his face uncertain as he watches me read.
“Would this still be mine to use after the divorce?” I hold up the signed permission. I need him to answer while he can see that I mean it.
“Yes.” He stops on the other side of the table, leaving my route back to the car clear. “I should have asked what you needed when you came here two years ago. I’m asking now. You don’t have to give me a different answer about the marriage.”
I look at the blank space for the project’s name. I could make this part of the estate mine in a way that has nothing to do with being his wife. I could start blending again, take orders, have work waiting for me that I chose.
Why is it easier to hold the papers if I don’t look at him?
“I haven’t agreed to anything.” I gather the pages into the folder before the wind can lift the loose sketch. “I need to see whether the site would even work.”
“Of course.” He picks up his gloves from the table and steps aside. He doesn’t reach for the folder or start explaining how perfectly he’s planned it.
I keep the plans in my hands. “Show me the plot.”