Chapter One #2
And then… I was back. I was standing again, somehow, beside the rosemary plant at my elementary school. All around me, children were running, playing, just as they had been. It was like nothing had happened, like no time at all had passed.
My mind spun. I should have been scared, but instead I felt the emotions of the memory still moving within me—connection, delight, the comforting presence of my mother.
What I experienced had not felt like a remembrance; I had been there again.
I had been a toddler in the Garden of Fragrance.
The fog had been cool and damp on my skin.
I had felt my mother’s hand, heard her voice, smelled the individual scent of each plant.
And yet I had entirely forgotten about that day until I was returned to it.
In the schoolyard, I felt the shape of my future shifting. The scent of the rosemary I’d planted, the memory of that day with my mother, had shown me something about myself. I wouldn’t forget it again.
That very afternoon, full of youthful certainty about the bright things that must lie ahead, I went home and asked my mother if I could plant a garden next to her studio.
Beside me in the truck, Gully’s big tail thumps on the seat, and I’m grateful to be pulled from my thoughts. I look over at him, then follow his gaze back to the house.
My father stands in the doorway now, one hand raised in greeting.
I draw in my breath, startled by how much older he looks than when I saw him last. Thinner, too.
A lump of worry forms in my throat. My father has always been a quiet, serious man—confident, if regimented, in his approach to life—but now his shoulders slope and his expression seems uncertain.
In the time since I was home for my mother’s funeral, he seems to have become a diminished version of himself.
It’s as though someone has taken an eraser to all of his sharp edges, softening him.
Oh, Mom, I think as I open the truck door. I’m sorry. I should have come home sooner.
“Hi, Dad!” I call, working to keep my voice upbeat.
“Hello, Lucy,” he calls back. He seemed distracted when I phoned from the road to let him know I was coming, and he has the same tone now, as though his mind is elsewhere.
I let out Gully and make my way up the porch steps, studying my father carefully.
There’s gray stubble on his long, usually clean-shaven face.
And there’s something about his blue eyes.
Have they… faded? Maybe it’s just that the skin underneath them is darker.
He hasn’t shrunk, though. I still have to rock onto my toes to kiss his cheek.
I breathe in and am relieved to find that his scent is the same as ever—he smells of redwood trees and pencil shavings, of newspaper and wool.
And inside, on the shelves that surround the old stone fireplace in the living room, my mother’s small, evocative paintings of Bantom Bay still emanate with her love for this town.
They’re still surrounded by the shells, the jars of sea glass, the smooth, twisting driftwood branches that she found on a lifetime of beach walks.
There is still my parents’ shared collection of books, the moss-colored couch bearing an array of patterned throw pillows, the large Persian rug faded from years of afternoon sunlight.
The house remains both quirky and neat as a pin, my mother’s colorful personality and my father’s fastidiousness knitted together in perfect, if baffling, harmony. I’m not sure if there have ever been two people more different, or more in love.
The house is just as it has always been—and yet. When I breathe in, there is no trace of my mother’s scent in the air. Six months ago, a hint of it still lingered, but now it is gone, replaced by a faint mix of lemon cleaning products, sea salt, and books.
Tears prick my eyes, but I manage to blink them away. If I start crying now, I’m not sure I’ll stop.
“Would you like… water?” my father asks as I follow him into the kitchen. “I’m afraid I haven’t been to the store recently.”
I walk over to the fridge, open it, and peer inside. It’s sparkling clean but stocked only with a quart of milk, a carton of eggs, and a wilted head of lettuce. What is he eating?
“Water is perfect,” I say, and pour two glasses. We sit across from each other at the table. It’s then that I realize that he’s studying me, too, and I wonder if I look as changed as he does. Each of us had orbited around my mother in our own particular way.
Loss changes a person just as love does, perhaps in equal measure.
“So you finished your projects in Santa Barbara?” he asks. “Everything went well?”
I nod. “Everyone seemed happy.” I think for a beat and then add, “Oh, you’ll like this.
One of my clients had a tiny chihuahua named Stinker who took a shine to Gully.
She was always racing out of the house and prancing around him, darting all over the place while I was working in their garden.
I think my clients started to worry that either Gully or I might not notice Stinker and accidentally step on her, so they put a bell on her collar.
” I pause meaningfully, but my father looks at me blankly.
“They put a bell on a dog named Stinker,” I say.
“Oh. Oh, I see,” he says slowly. “Stinkerbell. That’s funny.”
“Well, if you have to say it’s funny, I’m not sure it is,” I say, grimacing but laughing a little. “Anyway, what’s the latest here? What’s new in Bantom Bay?”
He gives me a sad smile. “I’m afraid you’re asking the wrong person.”
Around us, the house falls quiet. If my mother were here, she would be bursting with news.
Otis Redding would be playing on the stereo.
One of her friends would be knocking on the door, or calling on the phone, or sitting right here at this kitchen table, drinking coffee or playing cards or telling stories.
Instead the stillness of the house presses down, a weight too heavy for anyone to bear alone.
I reach across the table and rest my hand on my father’s.
“It’s really good to see you,” I tell him.
“It’s good to see you, too,” he says, patting my hand. “I’m glad you’re home.” The warmth of his words doesn’t quite reach his eyes—there’s a sadness there that seems to leave no room for other emotions.
I swallow. It’s one thing to run from my own pain, and quite another to run from my father’s.
I’d thought I might stay in Bantom Bay for a few days—enough time to sift through the emails that I’ve received from interested clients over the past few months and settle on my next job—but now, seeing my dad like this…
I know that I can’t leave him. The speed at which I resign to stay surprises me.
Maybe I am more tired of my perpetual moving than I realized.
“I was thinking I’d stay for a while,” I announce, before I can think better of it. “That is, if you don’t mind the company. I’m sure I can find work nearby. There’s always someone who needs a gardener.”
My father’s eyes widen, then narrow. He gives me that look again, like he’s studying me. “You want to stay in Bantom Bay?”
He has every right to be surprised. I haven’t visited for more than a few days at a time since I graduated from high school over ten years ago.
He thinks this is because I become restless if I stay in one place for too long, that wanderlust is as deeply ingrained in me as my love for flowers.
I’ve never told him, or anyone, the real reason I keep moving.
“If you don’t think Gully and I will get in your way,” I say.
Gully is lying near my feet and at the sound of his name, he lifts his gorgeous head and gives me one of his soulful, slightly apologetic looks as though to say he realizes that his size means he will always, inevitably, be somewhat in the way.
I reach down and run my thumb over his velvety black muzzle.
“Lucy, I’m retired,” my dad says. “I’m sure I’ll be in your way more than the other way around.”
It was a mere month after he retired from the accounting firm in San Francisco where he’d worked for decades that my mother died of a heart attack—no warning at all, their plans for their golden years disappearing along with her.
Though I call my dad every week, I’ve yet to get a straight answer as to how he has been spending his time.
Now that I’m home again, I feel more acutely aware than ever that our little family is just the two of us. There are no aunts, no uncles, no cousins. Only this town, the neighbors who have always known us. Where are those neighbors now? I wonder.
“How is it, being retired?” I ask, trying to keep the worry from my voice. “What have you been up to?”
He shrugs. “Oh, this and that. House projects, mostly. All of the little things I never got around to when I was working.”
I glance over his shoulder into the living room.
It strikes me that it’s not just clean, it’s immaculate.
It’s like no one actually lives there. He’s left everything exactly as it was when my mother was alive, but without her presence, without the whirling, joyful mess she so often left in her wake or her complicated, lovely scent, it feels more like a museum than a home.
I look back at my father. “Do you ever have company over? The Hummels? The Constantinos?”
He shakes his head.
I stare at him. “But you must see them. They invite you to dinner?”
He shrugs. “They invite me, but I’m not up for much socializing these days. I keep myself busy, though. There’s plenty to do around here.”
“Oh, but Dad,” I say, “aren’t you lonely?”
He levels his gaze on mine and says gently, “Aren’t you?”