I don’t want to speak with him any more than I already have, but I keep an eye on him, raising my head to look over at him from time to time over the course of the next hour. I’m not sure he should walk back up that ramp alone. As long as he remains seated, I figure it’s fine for him to stay outside. Maybe a bit of time among the flowers will help to improve his mood. It always works for me.
Gully clearly has no problem whatsoever with the man. He rests his giant head on Fitz’s bony thigh as though he’s known and trusted him forever.
“My wife would not have agreed with me, either,” Fitz says loudly, suddenly, as though there hasn’t been an hour-long stretch of silence since he last spoke. “About gardens,” he clarifies. “She liked flowers. Especially if they were red and had long stems and came wrapped in gold paper tied with a big bow. The more expensive, the better.”
He looks around, and his gaze seems marginally less disdainful than it was an hour earlier. “She would have liked all of these walls and secret nooks,” he says. “The…drama. She liked anything over the top. Costume parties. Fancy restaurants. The theater.”
Clearly there was no love lost between Fitz and his wife. And yet he brought her up.
I hesitate for a moment, weighing my options. Then I get to my feet and walk over to him. “What was her name?” I ask, stretching slightly from side to side, loosening the knots that have formed in my shoulders.
“Millicent. Millie.” He squints at me, his eyes hard. “She had yourcoloring, but her hair was shorter. This was years ago, when women wore nice dresses and kept their hair neat.”
I laugh, raking my hand through my messy hair. “I take it you don’t like fancy restaurants? The theater?”
“God, no. Millie and I were opposites.” He stares off unseeingly into the distance and flattens his lips, as though he can barely stand to think of her.
And yet, I think again,he brought her up.
“I should have seen ahead when I met her,” he says bitterly. “I’ve played enough chess in my life to know how to think things through. I should have seen all the moves that would come from choosing her.”
“Hmm,” I say. “I’ve never played chess.”
His icy blue eyes snap to meet mine. He looks as though I just told him I’ve never seen the sky.
“Anyway,” I say lightly, “my parents were a lot like you and Millie. They couldn’t have been more different from each other, but they worked.”
Fitz’s eyes flash. When he speaks again, darkness bleeds into his voice, and that acrid scent he carries cuts through the soft aroma of the garden like a knife through cake. “I suppose it’s like a match striking a stone,” he says, his voice trembling with anger. “Sometimes there are just sparks. And sometimes there is fire.”
I’m stilled by the darkness in his voice. I watch, feeling ill at ease, as he attempts to work himself to his feet. When I move closer to help, he sucks his teeth menacingly, and I leave him to manage on his own. He gives Gully a final pat and then points his walker in the direction of the home, all the while holding his head so high thathe looks to me like a man who is barely managing to keep himself from drowning.
I sigh.
And then I jog after him. Gully lopes along at my side, looking up at me with an amused, curious expression. Fitz must hear us approaching, because he glances over his shoulder and scowls.
“I think I left my trowel on the terrace,” I tell him, but I am a truly terrible liar.
He narrows his eyes. “You should keep a closer eye on your things,” he grumbles, but offers no further complaint as I fall into step beside him.
Chapter Thirteen
Rhododendron: A flowering shrub in the heath family with large sprays of vibrant, bell-shaped blossoms whose sweet and spicy fragrance denotes both protection and warning
By the end of the day, the sunken garden looks immaculate—tidy boxwood hedges edge orderly beds of purple flowers and neatly shaped lemon trees. Before I leave, I walk along the paths, admiring the tapestry of flowers that surrounds me and feeling, I realize, a twinge of melancholy that I am finished.
When I take a deep breath, the fragrance of rhododendron blossoms travels toward me through the opening in the wall. The scent is warm with pepper and clove—a warning. My skin prickles with the sense that I am being watched. I think of what Mario said this morning about the residents watching my progress, but when I look up toward the home, it’s Donovan Pike that I see standing at the edge of the terrace.
He’s wearing sunglasses and a dark suit with a bright white shirt open at his neck, and with the Oceanview Home as an elegantbackdrop, he looks like a cross between an aristocrat and a movie star. I lift my hand in greeting and he does the same.
“Lucy, you’re a marvel,” he says as I walk up the steps to join him. “I had to take a moment to stop and get my bearings. This is an entirely different garden.”
“Oh, I hope not,” I say. “Your great-great-grandmother did a wonderful job designing it. I wouldn’t want to change a thing.”
He takes off his sunglasses and squints at me, smiling. “Too late. I barely recognize the place. Wasn’t this a mess of weeds just last week? I can’t believe the transformation. It’s like stepping back in time.” He looks down at my side and then actually does step back, sucking in his breath.
“This is my dog, Gully,” I say, looking down. “He’s friendly, I promise.”
Donovan stares from Gully to me and then back to Gully. “He’s…huge.”
