Chapter Six
Purple salvia: A flowering herb in the mint family with upright spikes of violet blooms whose earthy, herbal scent enhances concentration
I start by walking around, getting a sense of the place, pushing aside tangles of oxalis and chickweed and crabgrass with my boots and following the paths of old pea gravel that I discover below.
Straggly mounds of overgrown boxwood hedges line the paths.
Lavender, leggy and gray with only a few meager purple blooms, presses up with admirable resilience through the weeds that have overtaken the old beds.
Surrounding the empty reflecting pool, six diminutive trees are so completely covered with vines that I can’t tell what type they are until I am close enough to spot the small lemons hanging from their branches.
Minute by minute, the garden takes shape in my mind. It’s formal, with an axis of paths spanning out from the reflecting pool. The unruly, overgrown boxwood hedges that edge the geometric flower beds were once precisely trimmed, and the petite lemon trees shaped into tidy lollipops.
Every garden paints a portrait of the person who designed it.
Agatha Pike, Donovan’s great-great-grandmother, must have been a woman who believed in the peace and beauty that can be found in symmetry and order.
I imagine her as elegant and artistic—and, considering those brightly polka-dotted lemon trees, perhaps playful and free-spirited, too.
The kind of generous woman who would insist that her friends be allowed to live out their days in her beautiful home.
I decide that I will tackle the paths first, and I spend the morning pulling and digging away at the stubborn weeds that have taken hold everywhere.
As I settle into the work, my mind becomes both still and wandering in a way that is familiar to me.
In the dark years after high school, after I left Bantom Bay and began my career, I learned that caring for plants is symbiotic; as you tend to them, helping them thrive, they soothe the broken parts within you, too.
The work is meditative and exhausting, gratifying and healing.
At least, it used to be. Since my mother’s death, something has changed. The idea of moving to a new town, taking on a new project, feels less like an adventure than a repetition. For the first time in my life, I feel as though I am missing something, that my work is not enough.
Still, I carry on, pulling up one weed after another. In time, I am sure I will return to myself.
“Yoo-hoo!”
I lift my head at the sound of a woman’s voice, but I don’t see anyone.
I straighten and put my hands on my lower back and stretch, groaning at the ache that is already settling into my muscles.
I’ve been working for hours and most of the paths are now clear of weeds, a glimmer of order restored.
I’m relieved to have discovered irrigation lines, but I’ll need to check them for leaks and broken parts.
Later, I’ll amend the soil, adding mulch.
I hope Donovan plans to fill the reflecting pool.
The garden will look beautiful when it’s complete.
“Yoo-hoo!” I hear again.
This time, when I turn toward the home, I see two elderly women on the terrace.
One waves enthusiastically. I lift a hand and wave back.
As I watch the women begin to make their way to the ramp, I feel a flutter of worry remembering how Donovan and Jill shot silent daggers at each other over the unlocked doors to the terrace, and how Donovan insisted that the grounds were not safe for residents.
I hurriedly pull off my gloves, set them on the edge of the wheelbarrow, and jog toward the women, taking one of the newly cleared paths around the empty reflecting pool.
“Hello!” I call, waving. “Wait there, please! I’ll come to you.”
At the top of the ramp, on the terrace, the smaller of the two women grins and holds out a glass of what looks like lemonade in her slightly quivering hand.
She is petite and impeccably dressed, wearing a purple blouse tucked tidily into dark trousers.
Her silver hair is pulled into a smooth bouffant that adds a couple of inches to her height.
Behind her red glasses, her gaze is sharp and observant, keen but warm.
The tall woman beside her is thin and a little stooped—older, I think, than the petite woman, and swathed in a beige sweater and loose slacks, a floaty, pale scarf weightless around her long neck. She leans on a cane and peers down toward me with a vague, somewhat puzzled expression.
“Welcome!” the small woman says in a surprisingly commanding voice. “We thought you might be thirsty.”
“How thoughtful,” I say, taking the glass. “Thank you. I’m Lucy.”
“Marjorie Swenson,” the woman says, pressing a tiny hand to her bosom. “And this is my dear friend Cynthia.” The tall woman beside her nods and smiles slightly, but does not speak.
I take a long drink of the cool lemonade. “Oh, that’s delicious. Thank you,” I say again. I’d been so wrapped up in my work that I’d forgotten to have lunch, and had also forgotten to call and check on my father. I feel a pang of guilt.
“It’s been such a long time since we’ve been out here,” Marjorie says. She looks appraisingly around the terrace. “Long enough that it seems everything has changed. What happened to the tables?”
I glance around at the empty terrace. “Tables?”
She nods. “There used to be tables. Maybe someone put them away in the fall and forgot to bring them back out now that it’s spring.
Or maybe…” She pauses, frowning. “Or maybe they’ve been gone longer than a season or two.
There have been so many changes it’s hard to keep up.
I’ve been here… oh, ten years now. It’s difficult to keep track of all the goings-on. ”
Cynthia still has not said a word but she seems to be listening.
Her long hair is white and a bit wild, but her eyes and eyelashes are dark and almost youthful.
I have the strange thought that there are two different versions of the woman, one young and one old, looking out from the confines of her frail form.
“Ten years,” I repeat. “Then you’re just the person to tell me everything I need to know about this place.”
Marjorie looks delighted. “Why, that’s what Cynthia did for me, when I moved in!
” She presses her hand to her chest again.
“I was devastated—I’d just lost my husband—but Cynthia took me under her wing.
She knew absolutely everyone… and all of their secrets.
” At this, Marjorie raises her eyebrows meaningfully.
“She introduced me around, got me settled. We were thick as thieves, weren’t we, Cynthia? ”
Cynthia looks at her and seems to realize that it is her turn to speak. “Oh yes,” she murmurs, nodding.
“This all must have looked very different back then,” I say.
“Goodness, yes,” Marjorie says. “The grounds were magnificent. They were one of the main reasons I moved here. Cynthia and I used to marvel at how we could sit up here on the terrace and look down into the reflecting pool and see the sky.” She shakes her head, her eyes wide, as though she’s still struck by the spectacle of this, all these years later.
“That was when we were younger, of course,” she goes on, “and there were more of us and—oh, if you only knew the trouble Cynthia and I used to get into around here.” She laughs, looking slyly at her friend.
“You always used to say that some rules were meant to be broken. Do you remember that?”
“Yes,” Cynthia says again, but her tone is uncertain. Marjorie gives her a small, somewhat sad smile and then turns back to me.
“And we used to have a party every spring,” she says. “We’d invite all of our friends and family and have champagne and little tea sandwiches and live music. Vikram Neel—he’s a resident, still—would make the most divine cakes. Remember that, Cynthia? He was a very fancy pastry chef in his day.”
“Vikram Neel?” I say, astonished. “The chef from Jackson Place? That was my parents’ favorite restaurant. My mother used to rave about him all the time.”
Marjorie’s dark eyes twinkle. “Oh, I bet she did! The whole world was a little in love with him for a while there.”
Had my mother planned to visit Vikram Neel, I wonder? Had she known him personally? I hadn’t heard her speak of him in years, and even then only in the context of visiting his restaurant with my father.
“I know we were, weren’t we, Cynthia?” Marjorie chatters on.
“Now, though…” Her face falls as she lowers her voice and leans toward me.
“Well, poor Vikram developed terrible arthritis in his hands a few years ago. They’ve tried everything, but he just hasn’t responded to treatment.
Baking was his passion, his heartbeat, his magic.
Not being able to use his hands has been devastating for him.
” She pitches her voice lower still. “I overheard Isobel—she’s a caregiver here—say that he’s gone on a hunger strike.
He simply doesn’t want to live without his great love.
If he can’t cook, he won’t eat.” She clucks her tongue sadly.
“A hunger strike! Can you believe it? The poor, poor man.”
“How awful,” I say. I don’t want to imagine how I would feel if I weren’t able to sink my hands into the soil and help plants grow.
After allowing for a short, mournful pause, Marjorie goes on. “Well, the spring party was always absolutely wonderful. The grounds were bursting with flowers, and everyone was dressed to the nines and toasting another year around the sun. Goodness, I haven’t thought of that party in ages.”