“?‘A little encouragement’?” Marjorie scoffs. “Listen to you, Adam! Who lied and told you it pays to be modest? This gate looks like a million bucks. If I hadn’t already asked you to repair it for free, I’d tell you to charge us up the wazoo for the miracle you’ve worked.”
With the ivy clipped carefully around it, framing it, the gate looks both inviting and intriguing, like it welcomes your curiosity, encourages you to open it and discover what grows beyond it, just as others have been doing for one hundred years.
“I’ve always felt there’s a bit of magic in every garden gate,” I admit, almost without thinking. “I think this one might have more than most.” I feel Adam’s eyes on me, and when I meet his gaze, my cheeks grow warm.
“Oh, I agree,” Marjorie says, nodding.
Vince is peering at his cell phone and frowning. “Yikes,” he says.“Plumbing emergency on the second floor. I’ll be back as quick as I can.”
After Vince has hurried away, Adam nods toward the gate. “It’s my pleasure. It was nice to work on something with such history.”
“Do you know what it reminds me of, Lucy?” Marjorie asks, a sly look in her eyes. “Your work in these gardens. You’re bringing them back to life, restoring them to their former glory but also adding a certain something I’m not convinced was here before. Why, just look at how all of these flowers have affected Adele and Vikram! I thought maybe we’d come out here this morning and find that you’d turned the reflecting pool into the fountain of youth!”
“I’m afraid not,” I say, smiling.
Cynthia seems out of sorts today. There is a weary, confused look in her dark eyes as they move over the garden. “Itisbeautiful,” she says, and glances warily at Marjorie, as though she is not sure she has said the right thing.
“It is,” Marjorie tells her firmly. There is sadness and fear behind Marjorie’s brave expression as she looks at her friend. “It is absolutely beautiful. That is just the right word.” She turns back to Adam and me. “We’ll leave you both to your work. Cynthia and I are going to take a stroll and see if we stumble upon any of that youth serum that I’m convinced is hidden out here somewhere.”
Adam and I watch them go. Cynthia’s cane thumps rhythmically against the path, her pale scarf floating behind her. Marjorie looks up at her as they walk, chatting to her contentedly despite the fact that Cynthia rarely seems to respond. There are a few other residents out walking in the sunken garden, too, and I wonder whether they’re all searching for an experience like Adele and Vikram’s.
Adam squints up at the home through his glasses. “Hopefully Vince will be back soon to help me take down the next gate.”
“I can help,” I say.
“Okay. If you’re sure you can spare a few minutes.” He looks around. “Which one’s next?”
I point to the gate farther down the wall. We walk over and I hold it steady while Adam begins to remove the lower set of pins from the hinges.
“What do you think we’ll find inside?” he asks.
A decadently romantic fragrance drifts over the wall, cool as silk against my skin.
“Roses,” I say. “Lots and lots of roses.” A beat passes and then I ask, “How’s Sophie?”
“She’s… okay. She wanted to come today.” He hesitates, then adds, “But she had a therapy appointment.”
I nod. I’d like to understand more, but I don’t want to pry.
There’s a beat of quiet and then Adam, keeping his eyes on the gate, says, “You know, I’ve been thinking about what you said the last time I was here. About how you believe that the soul of a person lives on in the garden she cared for.” His soft brown eyes briefly meet mine, and then he looks back toward the hinges again. “I used to feel the same way about the homes I worked in. I sometimes…” He pauses. “Well, I could have sworn that Ifeltthe history of those houses. That the home’s history remained there, held within its walls. And I wonder if that’s a little like what you were saying—like the soul of the home and its inhabitants and its history remain through the decades that it stands. A sort of collective soul of the people who have lived there.” He meets my eyes again. “Does that sound crazy?”
“Not to me,” I say. “It explains how you were able to restore that gate so beautifully.” I sense that there is something about his own words that troubles him. “You said youusedto feel that way? But not anymore?”
He runs a hand through his dark hair and sighs. “I haven’t had that feeling in a while. I used to walk into a house and feel… a connection. Maybe something similar to how you feel in a garden. But I haven’t felt that way for months.”
I’m tempted to ask him if something happened that changed his relationship to his work, but just then he’s removed the last hinge pin and we’re lowering the old gate slowly, carefully, down to the path.
The first thing I see is a wash of pink. The scent of roses pours toward me in a steady stream, flooding freely through the opening in the wall. I breathe in the soft, silky fragrance, aware of how it sweeps and swirls around me, mingling with the lavender-and-lemon scent of the sunken garden.
Adam looks at me and raises his eyebrows. “Roses,” he says, impressed.
Ahead of us, repeating arches of wrought-iron trellises form an arbor over a weed-choked flagstone path that leads to a large, ancient-looking stone fountain encircled by a bench. The roses that cover the arches have fewer blossoms than they should, and they are overwhelmed with vines of invasive ivy, but still, they are lovely, blooming in shades of creamy pink that darken, like a deepening blush, as they near the fountain.
As we walk under the long arbor, I look around, taking in the garden’s dramatic beauty and thinking through the work I will needto do to bring it back to health. Sunlight filters through the buds and blossoms, making them seem to glow. Here and there, a rose petal loosens from an overhead vine and drifts to the ground like pink-tinted snow. The heady scent of roses is so thick in the air that it seems like something I can grasp in my hands.
Along the walls, rose vines that had once been trained into a diamond-shaped pattern are now overgrown and shaggy.I’ll start there, I think. Even though I’m studying the wall, it still takes me a moment to realize what I’m seeing.
“Look,” I say, pointing. “Another gate.”
