Chapter 5 ya’aburnee #2
The woman laughed. It was a bright, joyous sound.
“Even death fears me, it seems,” she declared, taking a sip.
“Though, even so, my lawyer reminded me of a part of Henry’s will that I must honor.
Even though he passed the estate on to me, there is one obligation that he requested when we first made it out that I happily agreed to.
It was thirty years ago, and the bicentennial felt like a lifetime away.
But now it is upon us, and wills have to be followed, it seems. At least that’s what my lawyer said. ”
Wykofski scratched his beard. “What exactly do you gotta do, Euls?”
“I must find Lilymoor’s next steward, my dear friend.”
We all stilled.
She went on lightly, her words at odds with her tone, “Henry and I both knew that we wouldn’t be here forever, so we gave ourselves time, but time goes much too quickly when you’re having fun.
” She winked at us, but there was a sadness to her words.
“Henry and I knew that when we were gone, Lilymoor would go on without us—what that looks like … I can’t yet say.
We never discussed what came after. We just focused on the seeds, and flowers, and the gardens as each season came to us.
It seems rather shortsighted now,” she added, a little bitterly, “considering it all. We thought we had time.”
Quietly, I fixed myself a cup of tea, plopping two sugar cubes into it. While this was terribly sad, I felt like I wasn’t privy to this conversation—I was just passing through, after all. I’d be back in the city by autumn. I wasn’t really sure why I was invited to listen.
“So,” she went on slowly, rolling the idea around on her tongue, “I believe I would like to use the bicentennial party to announce both my retirement and Lilymoor’s successor.”
I shifted my gaze between Wykofski and Juliette, who both seemed blindsided by the revelation, staring at Eula with open mouths. I sipped on my tea, then added another cube of sugar to it.
Finally, Juliette broke the silence. “Well. That’s … that’s interesting—”
“It’s so soon,” Wykofski interjected, saying exactly what Juliette was too polite to. “You sure about this, Euls?”
She set down her teacup. “Yes, I fear I am. Besides, I don’t have much of a choice—and I wouldn’t want to disappoint Henry,” she lamented, turning her gaze out onto the garden.
Almost instinctually, her hand went to the chain around her neck, and finally I saw that it was connected to an unassuming, rusted skeleton key.
It looked like any of the ones Juliette or Wykofski or I kept on our estate key ring.
“He entrusted this to me. So I must be brave.”
“But …” Wykofski started to say, his voice fading as he sank back into his chair. “Euls, if you’re gone, then who will . . .” His mouth twisted sharply as if inherit the place was a dirty phrase.
It kind of was, in all honesty.
I thought back on the documentary, the storied history of this estate, and how the Becks gave it new life.
She and her husband poured their hearts and souls into every garden and every design.
They even gave it a name—Lilymoor House.
While it had had two owners before, it didn’t become Lilymoor until the Becks bought it at an estate auction.
Famously so. It was a house ready to be condemned, and instead they found a way to sturdy its walls and tame its roses.
I couldn’t imagine what this place would be like without a Beck, like a sky without birds, or springtime without flowers.
It was almost impossible to imagine.
“That is what I have to figure out,” Eula finally said with a foreboding sort of gravity. “Henry’s niece? Perhaps one of my great-nephews—Oliver? Or Cyrus?”
Juliette and Wykofski winced at the names, even though they tried to hide it.
I didn’t know who either of those men were, but I knew for certain that I hadn’t met them in the month since I’d started working.
If they were Becks, or related to one, maybe they also loved Lilymoor?
But then why didn’t Juliette or Wykofski seem all that excited by the idea?
I sipped at my tea again, though I was the only one enjoying the Earl Grey. Both Juliette and Wykofski had set theirs down, forgotten in the sudden news.
“Jules,” Eula went on, “I’d like you to make some calls.
I have contacts at some papers and gardening magazines—use them.
Let’s announce my retirement . . . really make a thing of this bicentennial.
One last big hurrah. What do you think?” She waited, expectantly, for us to be overjoyed by the idea, but none of us seemed particularly excited, and that annoyed her. “Well? Thoughts?”
Juliette seemed to be making calculations in her head, while Wykofski looked like he didn’t want to think about this at all. I was trying—in vain, apparently—to keep my emotions in check.
Eula saw our pinched faces and waved her hands in the air dramatically.
“Oh, come on! It’ll be fun! And don’t any of you worry, I’ve already instructed my lawyer to set aside provisions looking after all of you.
I’m not abandoning anyone, and I’ll stay at Lilymoor as long as its new successors would like.
I know this is sudden,” she added reassuringly, taking both Juliette’s and Wykofski’s hands and squeezing them tightly, though her eyes settled on me.
“But let’s give Lilymoor the love she’s given us all these years.
Nothing lasts forever, but that doesn’t mean we can’t celebrate it as it goes.
What do you say?” she asked one final time, and smiled at us.
Finally, Juliette squeezed her hand back and returned the smile. “We’re going to throw the best party, Eula!”
“Better than the best,” Wykofski agreed, then looked at me for confirmation. “Right, Sunny?”
“Yeah,” I agreed, hoping my smile looked genuine. “We absolutely will.”
No pressure at all.
By the time we finished our tea and Eula dismissed us, fire-flies blinked on across the garden, mimicking the flicker of the lights on the veranda.
The air was cool, and the stars were bright, the night made perfect for curling up in a hammock and falling asleep.
Harrie would’ve called this kind of evening cozy.
Eula’s retirement and successor announcement changed nothing about my job; I still had to prepare these grounds for the bicentennial regardless of who took it over afterward.
As I dumped out my cold tea in the kitchen sink and washed the cup, Wykofski came in with the uneaten cookies and returned them to the bread box.
He jostled my shoulder with his, and I blinked, realizing that I was staring out the window. “You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah.” I set my cup on the drying rack and offered to wash his. I wasn’t sure how to feel about the fact that he could tell something was bothering me. I’d tried to keep a polite distance from him and Juliette, since I’d only be here for the summer. Goodbyes for me were—
Well, I hated them.
“Just been a long day,” I said.
“Tell me about it. Euls is good at surprises, but I didn’t think she’d drop this,” he lamented with a sigh.
“Yeah,” I said noncommittally. “She’s really something.”
I should have asked how he was, since he’d been working here for about eight years, and how he was feeling about Eula’s retirement, but that felt too personal—like it would open a door to, what, friendship?
So I didn’t, and he bid me good night as he left out the back to lock up the shed and finally go. Was he still going to hang out with people tonight, or did the news drain him like it had me? No, I doubted it. Nothing got Wykofski down.
I put his cup on the drying rack, wiping my fingers off on a towel embroidered with titmice.
On my way back to the veranda to make sure all the other cups were gone, I caught Juliette grabbing her jacket and purse from the office upstairs.
She fixed her hair in the big mirror in the foyer, and Eula said, still sitting on her walker, “Ooh, those are your date shoes!” She motioned to the red heels Juliette had in her other hand.
I hadn’t even noticed them. Eula’s eyes sparkled. “Big plans tonight?”
Juliette beamed sheepishly. “With a dentist! I’ve never dated a dentist before. We’re going to an all-you-can-eat buffet and he wants to pay, so you bet I’m going to eat my weight in lobster. Free food and a nice chat? Sounds like a lovely way to spend an evening.”
“It’s a little late, isn’t it?” Eula asked.
“Oh, he said he couldn’t until after nine. He goes to the gym or something every evening. Stress stuff.”
“Have fun,” I said, and she looked about ready to explode with happiness.
“Obviously!” she replied, pulling her purse over her shoulder, and promised to update us tomorrow on how it went.
This was her fifth date since I’d come to Lilymoor, and I envied her optimism.
When I first arrived, I took one look at my dating options and immediately deleted the apps.
I never had time for romance, anyway. And even if I had time, I wasn’t sure that was how I wanted to spend it.
I was about as romantic … well, as a dentist appointment, something Harrie often bemoaned.
“You work with flowers!” she used to point out. “That’s inherently romantic! I mean, don’t you obsess over Victorian flower language? Isn’t that all about love?”
“And spiting your enemies,” I had corrected.
“Okay, well, mostly about love. And yet your love life is as dry as the lint trap in my dryer.”
“I’m surprised you know what that is, considering I always had to clean ours out in college,” I had remarked, and she’d gasped over the phone.
“I just forget!” She gave an indignant sniff. “I can’t be perfect in every way.”
“Just most ways.”
“Just most,” she echoed, and I could hear her smile even a thousand miles away.
That was six months before the doctor’s appointments—the ones I didn’t know about.
Seven months before I caught a red-eye across the country and showed up at her door with a bottle of wine and an electric shaver when I finally caught on.
A year before she died, leaving a fiancé and a half-finished book and hopes of traveling the world and dreams of a white picket fence and a dog and kids and—
No, I’d leave the romance to Juliette. It was safer that way. “Ah,” Eula said with a soft sigh, “to be young and have time!”
I thought about Harrie and begged to differ.