“I did try to warn you, Lucy,” Jill responds quietly.
I remember how she warned me not to be taken in by Donovan’s charm, and told me not to interact with the residents. I hadn’t realized that she was trying to protect me, to keep my emotions from getting involved. I hadn’t had any idea why she loathed Donovan the way that she so clearly did. Now I understand completely. I’d thought that, at his core, Donovan was a good person—but I can’t fathom how he could do this to the residents, to his employees, to everyone who makes this place so special.
“How can you stand to keep working here, knowing what is just around the corner?” I ask. A part of me wants to march straight out on principle, to not give Donovan another minute of my help now that I know what it is that I’mreallyhelping him do.
“I concentrate on what is in my control,” Jill says. “Right now, the lock on those doors is under my control.” She waves her hands around the terrace. “These tables? My control. And the gardens?” She points at me. “Your control.” She leans back and crosses her arms. “I plan to give everyone here the best care—the bestlife—that I possibly can for as long as I possibly can.”
“So that’s why you haven’t had the lock fixed,” I say. “Youwantthe residents to come outside.”
Jill’s lips twist into a small, mischievous smile. “They should enjoy every part of living here while they can. And when they learn about the home’s sale, I will do everything I can to help find them new homes.”
“And in the meantime,” I say miserably, “I’m just supposed to keep working as though it’s all for them?”
Jill looks at me in surprise. “Oh, Lucy, what you’re doingisfor them. I see that now. I’ve been so angry at Donovan for what he is doing, and for hiring you only to prepare the grounds to be sold. I took it out on you when of course you didn’t know a thing about his real plans. I haven’t been at all welcoming to you, or particularly kind. I’m sorry. My anger was completely misplaced.
“You must try to remember,” she goes on, “that what you are doing for the residents is remarkable, and nothing Donovan is planning can take away from that. You could have come here with your head down, your eyes only on the task at hand, but instead you’ve fast become a part of this place, sharing your gorgeous flowers and your big, happy dog with everyone. The time the residents are spending with you in the gardens is changing them, one by one. Adele, Vikram… even Mr. Fitz is leaving his rooms willingly.”
I nod, but my heart is heavy. My shoulders slump with the weight of worry and doubt. Because, really, is giving the residents hope, is helping them find joy in this beautiful place where they live, in their newfound friendships and rekindled community, really such a good thing to do… when I know that soon they’ll have to leave every bit of it behind?
“What’s wrong?” my father asks, looking up from his spot on the couch when I step through the door that evening.
I tell him that the home is closing, that I’ve been hired not to restore the grounds for the residents, but for the sale. “The residents are all losing their home,” I say. “Some have lived there for more than a decade.” I’m barely able to say the words; they catch in my chest, my throat. I’m heartbroken by the news, but I’m also angry at myself. I should have seen through Donovan’s smooth performance—I should have understood his scent of blackberry brambles and hidden thorns for what it was. I thought I was a better judge of character.
My father has closed the book on his lap. He watches me sadly. “I’m sorry.”
I sit beside him. The silence of the home, the absence of my mother’s scent, presses in uncomfortably around us.
“Do you think Mom knew?” I ask. “Do you think she wanted to try to save the home and that’s why she was planning to go there?”
My father’s brow furrows. “How would she do that?”
“With a painting. A painting that could convince the owner to change his mind.” Even as I say these words, I know in my core they are not true. My mother was too cautious with her gift to use it in this way. In all my life, I had never known her to use her gift to do anything more than nudge her students to be more confident artists. She had made her magic small, just as I have done for the last ten years, giving people beautiful gardens but never forgotten memories. I know why I shied away from my magic… but why had my mother shied away from hers?
“No,” my father says, his expression taking on the sad, farawaylook I’ve come to know well. The one that gives me the disquieting feeling that he is fading away. “No, your mother wouldn’t have done that.”
It’s only later, as I’m lying in bed that night unable to sleep, that it occurs to me that my father did not, for once, merely indulge talk of my mother’s gift—he acknowledged it. He agreed that she would not have used her gift to help the home stay open.
I have the unsettling thought that my father might know more than he is saying, that he knows the root of the regret that I always sensed haunted my mother.
Does he know the reason why she never did more with her gift?
Chapter Nineteen
FITZ
Fitz takes one glance around the dining room and freezes right there in the door frame, hands tightening around his walker. Things have been getting out of hand for days, and he has done his best to ignore this new world order. But now—with every table filled with people merrily jabbering on at each other, bits of pastry stuck in every wrinkle of their faces—the circus has become impossible to avoid.
And there, of course, is Marjorie Swenson, right in the middle of everything, her voice somehow even louder than it is when it’s jackhammering through the walls of Fitz’s apartment.Sheclearly thinks the dining room is wonderfully festive, with the music blasting and the curtains flung open, and the thick scent of sugar and dough settling on everything like volcanic ash. Fitz thinks it’s a nightmare. Whatever happened to a bit of peace in the morning? A quiet think over a coffee and the paper?
No, he thinks, looking around the room. His lips plunge into a scowl.Absolutely not.
“Mr. Fitz?”
The voice calls to him as he makes his escape down the hall toward the sunroom. He stops, releases a deep, long-suffering sigh, and turns. There is Isobel, poking her head out from the dining room, her expression carefully washed of any good cheer.
“What can I get you?” she asks in that brusque way of hers.
Fitz waves her off. “Not hungry. I saw those new tables on the terrace from my apartment. I’m going out there for some quiet.”
