Chapter Thirty-Three #2
“I’ve been posting about the home on my social media accounts,” Katie pipes in then, appearing beside Marjorie with Louis in tow.
“People magazine reached out to me. The New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle, too. They’re all interested in doing stories on the home—its history, the grounds, and all of the programs that are run by the home’s residents.
The photography workshop. The garden club.
The voter-registration campaign. The chess club.
” Here, Fitz groans, and we all shoot him a stern look. “The pastry arts club…” Katie goes on.
Donovan stares at her. “The pastry arts club?” he repeats.
On cue, Adele and Vikram appear, pressing a plate with a slice of chai spice cake into Donovan’s hands.
Donovan, with a confused manner that implies he does not understand what he is doing or why, slowly lifts a forkful of cake into his mouth. His face softens as he chews. He peers at Katie, tilting his head. “Who the hell are you?” he asks around a second mouthful.
“She’s my granddaughter,” Louis says, sounding threatening.
Donovan slowly lifts his chin to stare up at Louis, and then quickly looks back down at Jill.
“She’s also the home’s new publicist,” Jill says.
“The what?” Donovan sputters.
“Pro bono,” Katie hurries to say. Then she leans in and gives him her most charming smile. “The home desperately needs a new website.” She pulls back quickly when Donovan scowls. “Which we can discuss at a later date…” she murmurs.
Jill waves yet another piece of paper at Donovan. “This,” she says, “is a contact list of seniors, or someone who reached out on behalf of a senior relative, who have requested to be placed on the home’s wait list ever since Katie began her highly successful social media campaign.”
Donovan stares at the paper. “But we don’t have a wait list—”
“We do now,” Jill says.
Marjorie clears her throat.
“And this,” she says, shoving her clipboard into Donovan’s hands so that he’s forced to juggle it along with the check, the budget, the wait list, and the plate of cake, “is a petition that the indomitable Cynthia Kaminski drew up. It’s signed by each and every resident and member of staff of the Oceanview Home.
We demand that you immediately agree to keep our home open. ”
A sort of panic sets in behind Donovan’s eyes as they race over the list of names on the paper.
“I find,” I say quietly, rocking forward slightly on my toes, “that the gardens are a good place to go when you need to gather your thoughts.”
“There’s still another thirty minutes before the meeting is set to begin,” Jill adds.
Donovan flicks his gaze between the two of us for a long moment. Then he strides forward so quickly that we all have to take a step back to make room for him to pass through us. I notice how Louis blocks the stairs, arms crossed, so that Donovan is forced to take one of the ramps.
We all silently watch as Donovan’s gait slows nearly to a halt when he catches sight of the old and new photographs that hang from twine along the ramp.
Then we all exchange looks. I think each of us is hoping that one of us will assure everyone that we’ll be successful, that Donovan can’t possibly go through with the deal after all of our efforts.
But no one says anything.
Marjorie peels off first. Then Fitz wanders away before I can stop him. Adele and Vikram follow. Louis and Katie sit down together at a table.
“Does the budget you made really show a way to keep the home open?” I ask Jill quietly, when it’s just the two of us left standing there.
“It does,” she says. I’m not sure why she sounds so gloomy about it, until she adds, “But I suspect that discovering a way for the home to break even might not hold the same appeal as an eight-figure real estate deal to a man like Donovan.”
Adam and Sophie arrive, and Sophie surprises me by throwing her arms around my waist even before she hugs Gully.
Adam looks on, amused. There’s something different about him today—a lightness I have not seen before.
Instead of jeans and a T-shirt, he’s wearing slacks and a crisp blue button-down shirt, the sleeves rolled up to reveal his tan forearms. It’s more dressed up than I’ve ever seen him, but somehow he looks younger.
“Hello,” I say, pulling my eyes from his to look down at Sophie.
“Hi, Lucy,” she says, but it’s muffled because her head is still buried in my stomach. Then she looks up and laughs. Her cheeks are rosy, her tawny curls pulled back in a bow. “Bye, Lucy!” She turns and runs off with Gully.
“Do you have time to take a walk?” Adam asks.
It’s unbearable to just stand there waiting on the terrace for Donovan to appear again, so I nod. We walk down the stairs, and then through an open gate into the woodland garden.
“Sophie never told me that she was having trouble remembering her mother,” Adam tells me as we walk.
“She never told her therapist, either. Neither of us had any idea that that was the reason she became so silent and withdrawn. It breaks my heart to think that she kept all of those feelings inside for months.” He looks at me and smiles and I notice that lightness again.
“But now she’s like her old self. She’s still a little girl who has lost her mom, but the weight of her grief seems different now.
There’s this sparkle in her eyes, this particular Sophie sparkle, that’s been missing for months, and now it’s back. ”
“She’s such a wonderful kid,” I say. “Even when she didn’t say a word, you could see what a big heart she has.”
“Thanks,” Adam says. “That’s nice to hear. I think she’s the best kid in the world, of course. But I might be a little biased.”
“Nope,” I say. “She’s definitely the best one.”
Adam tells me that after he and Sophie saw me in the California garden, he met his brother on the job site of a house they just started working on.
“I had that feeling again,” he tells me slowly. “The one I used to have, before my thoughts were so consumed with worry for Sophie. I walked into the house and I sensed all of its history. Not anything specific, but just this sense of the lives that had been lived there.”
“The house’s soul,” I say.
He smiles. There’s a beat of quiet and then he says, “So after this, now that your job here is done… is it back to the nomad life for you?”
I shake my head. “I don’t think so. I don’t know what happens next, but I like the idea of staying in one place for a while.”
“Maybe here?”
I smile. “Maybe here.”
I know there is more he wants to say, to ask me, and I don’t hurry to stop him.
I don’t feel afraid. I trust him, I realize.
I trust this man that I hardly know, this feeling between us.
Or perhaps I just trust the way I feel when I am with him.
We come upon a bench tucked within the snowy white viburnum, and without discussing it, we move together toward it and sit.
“I don’t understand, Lucy,” he says then, slowly, carefully. “The flowers and their scents. The memories.” The look he gives me is questioning and hopeful, like he really thinks I might be able to give him an explanation.
I think of telling Jack about my gift, the way he looked at me with such anger and disgust. The way he called me crazy. I trusted him with the truth about myself, and he broke my heart.
But now, in this moment with Adam beside me, his expression warm and encouraging, I think of how his mother says that he got his curiosity from her and his tolerance of splinters from his father.
I think of his connection to houses, the way he senses their history.
The way he looked at me when Sophie remembered her mother, his eyes full of wonder.
As my thoughts turn, the scents of the flowers that I’ve cared for in each of these gardens race toward me, whispering of patience and healing and protection and love.
“I’m not sure it’s something I’ll ever really understand, either,” I say.
“But I know that I’ve always had a connection to plants, an ability to care for them in a way that makes them thrive quickly, vibrantly, fragrantly.
And among the flowers that I grow… I’m able to sense when there is a fragrance that will return a person to a forgotten moment in time, a long-buried memory.
Scents have always been heightened for me…
the scents of the flowers that I grow most of all. ”
I look down. At some point while I was speaking, Adam had reached over and taken my hand in his. His skin warms mine, a fizzy wash of pleasure spiraling through me at his touch. I meet his eyes again, and he is looking at me in that way he does, that way that makes me want to lean closer to him.
“There’s a certain logic to it,” he says quietly, his gaze roaming my face.
“You feel connected to gardens, and the love that you feel shines through in your work, in the flowers you tend. It’s like…
” He pauses, and I wonder if he senses it, too, the way the scents of the flowers swirl around us.
“It’s like when you eat a meal that’s prepared with love,” he goes on distractedly.
“People always say that you can taste the difference. I think you can. And scent is so closely tied to memory… sometimes in mysterious ways. A scent can be transporting. Is that science? Magic? Can’t something be a little of both? ”
I know he wants to rationalize something that falls outside of the realm of the rational, but it’s a natural impulse, and I don’t fault him for it. He’s trying to wrap his mind around everything that has happened, and I sense that as he does, he is drawing me ever closer.
“You know what?” he says, his eyes on my lips. “Why don’t we talk about all of this later?”
When I smile, Adam lifts his other hand to my cheek and it’s then that I realize he’s not wearing his wedding ring.
He smells of sawdust and sunlight and chocolate, but mostly, today, of lush grass after spring rain.
His dark eyes ask a question, and in response, I lean toward him at last, closing my eyes and kissing him.
His lips taste of chai cake, and the spice travels through me, warming me entirely.
Later, when I’ve had time to straighten my hair a bit and catch my breath, my father finds me on the terrace. “I’m sorry I’m late,” he says, hurrying toward me. “Busy day.”
I look at him. In his blue eyes, I think I see the spark that was gone for too long. It burns low but steadily.
“Really?” I ask. “What have you been doing?”
“I went back to the community center to help with the theater again. That place needs a lot of work. Actually,” he says, “Tim Marshall runs the place now, and he asked if I’d be interested in teaching a basic home maintenance workshop.
Can you believe some people don’t know how to replace the caulking around their windows?
Or do a minor repair of a wall?” He shakes his head, then looks at me. “Did you know they have a chess club?”
“I did not know that,” I say, smiling.
He turns to take in the view from the terrace. “This place is really something, Lucy. You did all of this?”
“There are four walled gardens, too,” I tell him. “Two at each end.”
“Will you show me?”
I have not seen even a glimpse of Donovan since he arrived. I haven’t seen Jill lately, either. I scan the terrace for them one last time, and then fetch my father a piece of chai spice cake to eat as we walk.
“Do you recognize it?” I ask when he takes his first bite.
He looks wistful as he chews. “Your mother’s favorite.”
I show him through the California garden and the cottage garden, and tell him that Adam restored each of the gates.
My father seems impressed. As we walk into the rose garden, I point out the arbor of pink blossoms, how the colors of the roses deepen as they near the stone fountain, and the seating areas I unearthed from under tangled webs of overgrown vines.
It’s as I’m turning toward the woodland garden that I notice Fitz over my father’s shoulder. He stands in the open archway of the wall, just a few feet away, clutching his walker and staring in our direction with a strange look on his face.
“Hi, Mr. Fitz,” I call, and gesture for him to join us.
My dad turns, and for a baffling moment the two men simply stare at each other.
When my father at last breaks the strange, uneasy silence, it is to say the most extraordinary thing:
“Hello, Dad.”