He clears his throat. “I’m here for your lesson.”
This gets her attention. She blinks at him, as though finally putting him into focus. “My lesson?”
He nods and walks toward her, then keeps right on going until he reaches the fountain. A wide stone bench is built into the fountain, encircling it, and Fitz opens the chess set and places it there. He takes his time putting all the pieces where they’re meant to go. Gully, who followed him, watches with interest. Once everything is in place, Fitz takes the handkerchief from his pocket and unwraps the lemon bread. He splits the bread in half and hands one piece to Gully, who takes it delicately, like the perfect gentleman he is. His snout is so soft and warm against Fitz’s palm that Fitz considers giving him the other half, too.
But he notices Lucy watching from a couple of feet away, asurprised smile finally peeking through her hangdog expression. So he holds out the other half to her.
“Adele and Vikram’s latest creation,” he explains.
She walks over and takes the bread, thanks him, and bites into it. He can see the moment the balance of sweetness and tartness hits her palate: her pretty blue eyes light up with enjoyment and it’s like a cloud has passed, leaving the afternoon sky clear.
A curious feeling of warmth spreads through him. When was the last time he gave anything to anyone? The flurry of activity created by the memories that certain residents seem to be reliving in the gardens is awful, but the resulting pastries, he has to admit, aren’t all bad.
When Lucy swallows her final bite, Fitz gestures at the board.
“Let’s begin.”
Chapter Twenty
Damask rose: A fragrant shrub with thorned stems and ruffled pink blossoms whose powerful, velvety scent stirs intense passion
“It’s not a game you should expect to learn in one sitting,” Fitz tells me, wrapping up the lesson. “Chess takes time.”
Time.How little we have left of it together. Hardly a moment has gone by since Jill told me the news yesterday that I haven’t been consumed with thoughts of the home closing. Where will Fitz go? Marjorie implied that he has no family. The whole time that he has been teaching me how to play chess, I’ve been distracted by the thought of him alone, navigating his uncertain future without anyone to help him, anyone to care where he goes next.
“Doesn’t it bother you that this job goes on forever?” Fitz asks as we put the chess pieces away. “You’ll never be done. Once one season is over, a new one begins, bringing with it another list of tasks.”
“Actually,” I tell him, “I don’t usually stay in one place long enough to watch the seasons change. I take on garden design projects all over and move around a lot.”
There is a pause, and then he says, “So you’re only here temporarily?”
He tries to hide it, but I hear the disappointment in his voice. I nod, afraid of what I might say if I open my mouth to respond. I wish that I could give him a different answer.
“Well, at least things will go back to normal when you leave,” he mutters, crossing his arms. “Everyone will stop blithering on and on about the things they’re remembering, thanks to you and your flowers.”
I’m not at all convinced by his gruffness. There is, I’m sure, a note of envy in Fitz’s tone when he speaks about the flowers. Doeshewish to return to a forgotten moment from his past?
I breathe in, searching, and the scent responds immediately: the heady, almondy aroma of pink damask roses lifts into the air and races toward me. The fragrance, warm and golden, encircles us. Roses. My favorite scent.
“There’s one for you, too,” I tell Fitz. I nod toward the shrub with ruffled, ballet-slipper-pink blossoms that grows just a few feet from where we sit. “The damask rose. That’s your flower.”
Fitz stiffens. He follows my gaze to the roses. For a moment, he is completely still. Then, suddenly, he snaps the chess box shut.
“The last thing I want to be reminded of is the past,” he says, his face flushing. “Nothing good comes from looking back—not for me, anyway.” He stands, wobbling slightly. When I instinctively put out a hand to steady him, he shoots me a look of such irritation that I pull my hand back to my lap. “I don’t want to spend another moment remembering,” he says angrily. “Not one more goddamn second. What can I do to change anything? Not a thing. Save your voodoo for someone else.”
“Okay,” I say softly.
Already, he’s shuffling away in a cloud of anger, chess set tucked under his arm and his walker complaining loudly over the path. He doesn’t even say goodbye to Gully.No, I think, watching him go. That’s not just anger clinging to him. That’s pain. That’s something so terrible that he can’t bear to revisit it—not even in his own mind.
“Thank you for the lesson, Mr. Fitz,” I call after him.
When Louis was young, he was creative. Vikram made wonderful pastries. Adele traveled with her adoring husband. What did Fitz do that was so awful that he can’t stand the thought of reliving it?
The next day, the voices of men drift over the wall into the rose garden. I step down from the ladder on which I’d been standing and roll my head from side to side. My entire body aches. I’ve been trimming and shaping the roses, weaving them back into place along the arbor, working myself to exhaustion so that I’m too tired to think about the sale of the home. I walk toward the sunken garden with Gully, kneading one shoulder and then the other as I go.
Adam’s daughter, Sophie, appears in the hole in the wall. A shadow hangs over her, darkening her face… but a flicker of a smile comes and goes when she spots Gully. She’s burying her face in his neck when I reach them.
“Hello,” I say. “Have you come to take Gully for his exercise?”
