She barely glanced in Amir’s direction.
“You remember Amir, don’t you?” I asked.
“Yes, of course.” If she heard the rebuke in my tone, she hid it. “How are you, Amir?”
“Peachy.”
Rosalie smiled but Amir had already turned away. She put her sunglasses back on. “We’re leaving to go back to the city tomorrow,” she told me. “I’ve been wanting to check on you all week, but since you don’t have a phone... Anyway, I thought perhaps you might have needed some time to think...” She trailed off, looking around, still holding her hat as she gazed out toward the blue curve of the sea. Her eyes widened. “This is quite a piece of property.” She glanced down the rows of our garden. “And quite a bit of work, I imagine.”
I knelt to help Amir drape a long swath of fabric—white once, now gray after many winters of use—over the hoops we’d staked over a row of lettuces. There was the possibility of frost that night and even though the heartier winter vegetables like the broccoli and cauliflower wouldn’t mind the chill, the spinach and mesclun would.
Rosalie watched us. “Will you sell these when they’re ready?”
“About half. The rest, we split with the chickens. Come spring, we’re all sick to death of salad.”
“Even the chickens?”
I laughed. “No, they’ll eat nearly anything.” I straightened and put my hands on my hips. “Do you want a tour?”
“I’d love one.” She added, “If you’re not too busy.”
I shrugged. “There’s always something to do, but most of it can wait.”
Amir had moved farther down the row. He suddenly knelt, plucked what I knew was a snail from the dirt, and sent it flying in a high arc out of the garden, toward the sea. He could always send snails farther than I could, which he insisted was due to his perfect form, and I insisted was due to the fact that his joints appeared to be made of rubber bands.
“Are you coming?” I called.
Without looking back, he shook his head.
“It was nice to see you, Amir,” called Rosalie.
He didn’t turn.
As we walked away, Rosalie admitted that she knew nothing about gardening.
“Everything I know, I learned from Amir,” I told her. “And everything he knows, he learned from my father. There were years when I was too wrapped up in reading to pay attention to learning how to farm, but luckily Amir has been interested in it since the moment he set foot on Horseshoe Cliff eight years ago. He only had a couple of years to learn from my father, but he picked it up almost immediately. From the beginning, he felt connected to the work.”
“He enjoys it.”
I thought about this. “Yes, but it’s more than that. Heneedsit. He needs to work in the earth every day. And not just any earth—it has to be this earth, here at Horseshoe Cliff. This ishisland. He belongs to it, and it belongs to him.”
“And you? Is that how you feel about Horseshoe Cliff, too?”
I studied the ground, feeling my cheeks warm. “Yes. Of course.”
We walked through the orchard and peered into the eucalyptus grove before heading back past the garden. I circumvented the cluster of buildings that were the cottage, the outhouse, and the shed. I wanted to show Horseshoe Cliff at its best angles, and those did not include the obvious disrepair of our rotting structures. Anyway, Rosalie had already seen them—she’d parked in front of the cottage. She didn’t need a closer view. I walked with her along the path to the chicken coop. Our arrival—or Rosalie’s, really; they did not care for strangers—caused the hens to scramble and trill.
“This is Rosalie,” I cooed. “She won’t hurt you.”
“Not unless you have some barbecue sauce in there,” Rosalie murmured in a soothing voice.
I laughed.
I pointed out the paddock and lean-to that used to hold our horses but now stood empty, sprouting more weeds with each passing year. The bluff was brown but soon the rains would come and turn all the land bright and varied shades of green. We kept walking until we reached the cliff. I walked right to the edge. The ocean was quiet for a moment, as though listening. It was as close as I could be to my mother, standing on that cliff.I inched forward and sent a rush of pebbles skittering over the edge. Behind me, Rosalie sucked in her breath.
“Merrow! Be careful!”
A wave crashed on the sand below. I stepped back. Rosalie held her hand over her heart.
