Millie’s cheeks flared red. “Andyouwill go to any length to remain an utter stick-in-the-mud! Flirt with other girls, Fitz! Have a little fun for once! See if I care.”
Fitz sank onto the bed as though she’d shoved him. He hung his head in his hands.
“Other girls?” he said quietly. “Millie, there’s only you for me.”
This knowledge left him feeling raw. The martinis he’d had at dinner turned in his veins, making him sick. He was a hopeless, blind fool.Lovehad made him this way, love that had turned into something else so quickly—a stunned neediness, a soft belly so easily poked. How wasthiswho he had become?
He looked up when he realized she’d pulled her suitcase from the closet and was throwing things into it.
“Millie w-wait—” he stammered, standing unsteadily.
She clicked the suitcase shut and whirled to face him, the case swinging in her hand. “I may not be who you thought I was when you married me, but let me tell you something, Mr. High Horse, you’re not who I thought you were, either! I thought I was marrying a strong man, a man who wanted to go places. But you’re weak, Fitz. You know that? You couldn’t hold me down if you tried with all your measly might.”
Fitz scrambled to follow her as she strode from the room. “Where are you going?” he demanded. “Millie! Where are you going?”
She said nothing. Everywhere Fitz looked, he saw the crimson red of her satin dress. The scent of her perfume stung his eyes.How could she?he thought.How could she do this?“Millie, you can’t just leave—”
He reached out and grabbed her wrist. She spun around, twin tornados of fury in her eyes. He felt her pulse in her delicate wrist beating against his palm.
It is torture, Fitz thought, his mind churning wildly, red bleeding into his vision,to love like this.A terrible roar rose in his ears, and through it he heard his wife say, in a low, taunting voice:
“Is that all you’ve got?”
When the doors of the home whoosh open, Fitz sucks in his breath, startled… and then relieved. He puts a hand to his chest and feels his heartbeat thrashing like a caged animal.
Why, oh why, can he not seem to stop thinking of Millie? He’s been alone for thirty years!
Is that not penance enough for what he did?
“I brought you a slice of lemon bread, freshly baked by Adele and Vikram,” Isobel says, setting a plate, a fork, and a cup of coffee—black, just as Fitz likes it—on the table in front of him.
“Thank you.” Something in his voice must reveal the sincerity of his gratitude at being pulled back to the present, because Isobel tilts her head and studies him.
“Would you like company?”
“No,” he replies immediately. He surprises himself by feeling a little bad then. He doesn’t want to hurt the girl’s feelings. But that’s ridiculous, he reminds himself. She’s only asking because she’s competent at her job.
Still, he’s relieved when she shrugs. “Good,” she says. “I’m busy.” Then she winks and smiles, straightens the blanket on his knees before he can stop her, and abruptly turns to walk back inside.
The lemon bread is actually very good. He eats half of it before setting his fork down and turning his attention to the coffee. Behind him, the sun is spilling over the roof of the home and pouring down over the flowers, burning the mist away. There’s still no sign of the gardener or her dog, but they must be out there somewhere. Maybe in that wooded garden.
Fitz’s eyes fall on the chess set someone has left on the table. It’s one of those travel sets that folds into a neat box. When they lived on Spruce Street, Millie came home one day with an intricately carved chess set that she displayed on a mahogany table in the front parlor. Fitz was thrilled—at last, an activity that they could do together, at home! But when he asked her to play, she laughed and said no. She didn’t know how, and she refused to let him teach her. She’d bought the set on a whim, impressed by its ludicrously high price tag.
Fitz looks over at the travel chess set again, and remembers suddenly that Lucy told him she did not know how to play. It strikeshim as a shameful gap in her education. He gets to his feet and tucks the game under his arm. As an afterthought, he takes a clean cotton handkerchief from the breast pocket of his shirt and wraps the uneaten half of the lemon bread in it. He drops the little bundle into his pocket and points his walker down the ramp, along the path, and through the opening in the wall.
But he doesn’t see Lucy. The garden is layer upon layer of green, cool and shaggy and shadowed, its stone path cleared and somehow smoother-looking now than when he was last there. He sees the chairs and benches that dot the path, all now remarkably clean and inviting. He waits a few moments, but Gully doesn’t emerge from the thick beds of ferns and flowers. There’s only quiet here.
Fitz turns, surprised by his own disappointment. And then he sees it. A second opening within the ivied wall, down a bit from where he stands. His heart does something funny at the sight of it, bouncing a little.
When he steps through the opening this time, he sees her right away. Lucy stands on a flagstone path below a long, arched arbor that is draped with roses in darkening shades of pink. She clips thoughtfully at the roses, letting little snippets of vine fall around her. Gully lies nearby on a bed of rose petals, but he gets to his feet, tail wagging, when he spots Fitz.
“Good morning, Mr. Fitz,” Lucy says, looking over at him. Her face is pink and glistening with the effort of her work. As he watches, she pulls off her gloves and wipes her cheeks with the backs of her hands.
“You’re working hard,” Fitz notes, scratching Gully’s ears. She is as devoted as ever to her task, but she is not, he thinks, her usual,upbeat self. She looks tired and possibly under the weather. A small lump appears in his throat at this thought.
“There’s a lot to do,” she says.
Is there a tremble in her voice? He studies her for another beat before pulling his eyes away to look around. There are roses everywhere—not just on the soaring arbor that leads to the fountain, but in the beds, too, and climbing in disarray all over the walls. He can’t imagine how long it will take her to get all of this in order. Weeks? Though she does seem to be remarkably efficient, with two gardens somehow already under her belt. He wonders why she is moving so quickly. What’s the rush? She’s young; she has decades to work here, if that’s what she wants. It’s the sort of job that never ends, isn’t it? Just when everything is perfect, the season changes, and the work continues.
