When I step inside the home, though, all of those lovely scents are immediately snuffed out by an aroma of antiseptic so overpowering that it makes my nose wrinkle. A heavy, somber feeling permeates the dark-paneled, oval-shaped lobby. Behind a mahogany desk, a small woman with salt-and-pepper hair scraped back from her lined face peers at me. She’s the only other person in the room—possibly the building, given how quiet it is.
“Hello,” she calls in a wavering voice. “Can I help you?”
My rubber boots are loud against the marble floor as I cross the lobby toward her. “Hello,” I say, smiling. “My name is Lucy. I’m here to meet with Donovan Pike.”
The woman introduces herself as Noreen and then nods toward a pair of beige armchairs that sag against the far wall. “Please have a seat. I’ll let Mr. Pike know you’re here.”
I thank her and cross the foyer. As I sink into the armchair, the strange stillness of the room makes the back of my neck prickle. It feels more like a morgue than a home. Why did my mother plan a visit here? I asked my father if he knew anything about the circled note in her calendar, but he seemed as baffled as I was.
“Lucy. Hello.” A tall, handsome man in a suit appears from a hallway and strides across the lobby toward me. “Donovan Pike,” he says, holding out his hand and offering me a polished smile. “Owner of the Oceanview Home. Thank you for coming in.”
I stand.Owner.I’d assumed I’d emailed with someone who managed the home’s grounds, not the owner himself. In fact, it had not occurred to me that the homehadan individual owner.
Donovan’s handshake is firm, but his skin is cool and soft—far softer, I’m sure, than my own. I tell him that I grew up in Bantom Bay, but had had no idea that the home was so beautiful. “I’m looking forward to seeing more of the property,” I say.As quickly as possible, I’m tempted to add. The antiseptic smell of the lobby is making my temples throb.
“A local,” Donovan says smoothly, smile deepening. “How fitting.”
He’s in his forties or early fifties with an impressively square jaw and neat brown hair that is silver at the temples. And his scent? Confusing. There are elements that are both refined and cunning—eucalyptus and green tea—dancing over his skin… and lurking below, something that makes me think of blackberry brambles, of dark, ripe fruit and hidden thorns.
A beautiful woman wearing a deeply annoyed expression appears at Donovan’s side.
“Jill Li,” she says in a clipped voice, her shiny black bob swinging forward as she gives my hand a brief, chilly shake. “Director of the Oceanview Home.”
I have the distinct sense that my presence irritates her, though I can’t begin to imagine why. And what kind of garden project is this,that it requires an interview with both the ownerandthe director of the home?
“Please, come this way,” Donovan tells me, gesturing across the lobby. “We’ll head outside through the rear terrace doors.”
Jill falls into step beside me, her heels clicking against the marble floor. We follow Donovan past a wide, curving staircase and the doors to an elevator, out of the lobby, and deeper into the home. I’m beginning to think no one actually lives here when at last we pass the entrance to a large dining room. I glance inside to see a scattering of elderly men and women sitting alone or in pairs at small tables throughout the room, here and there accompanied by a younger person in a navy caregiver uniform. There are a few low conversations, but the room is mostly silent, and heavy curtains cover the windows, blocking the natural light. Everything about the room seems muted. My heart clenches. It would be very difficult to see someone I love in a place like this, sitting among people who seem to move in slow motion, colored only in grayscale, the air so heavy and still and medicinal.
“It’s so quiet,” I whisper.
Jill looks at me sharply. “It’speaceful,” she says with such insistence that I can’t help but wonder who it is that she’s trying to convince. “Which is what the residentsloveabout living here. We only have twenty-two residents now, but many have lived here for more than—”
Donovan shoots a pointed look over his shoulder at Jill, and she immediately clamps her mouth into a scowl, her cheeks reddening. A silent battle strains the air; the tension between them feels long-standing and intricate, a dance they’ve been locked in for sometime. I glance between them, curious, but can gather no hints of what has put them at such odds.
We’ve entered a long, narrow room, a sunroom of sorts, with an entire wall of French doors that are nearly all covered by drawn curtains. Donovan pulls a key card from the inside pocket of his suit jacket, but as he approaches the one set of doors that isn’t covered by curtains, the doors open automatically with a swift, startling whoosh.
He turns and pins his dark eyes on Jill’s. “These doors,” he says in a controlled voice, “should be locked.”
Jill gives him a blistering look, but when she responds her voice is cool. “The lock must be broken. I’ll have Vince take a look at it.”
For a moment, ice spreads, crackling dangerously between them, but then Donovan seems to remember my presence. He flashes me a swift, apologetic smile. “Locked doors are strictly for the residents’ safety,” he explains. “You’ll see what I mean in a moment….”
He gestures for me to walk through the open doors ahead of him, and I happily oblige, practically racing out onto a large stone terrace in my eagerness to escape the harsh smell and gloominess of the home. And then, not quite believing my own eyes, I keep going right to the terrace’s edge, my pulse quickening with every deeply fragrant breath I take.
Ahead, a wide stone stairway leads down to a vast sunken garden—well, what wasoncea garden. Now it’s a frayed expanse of overgrown plants, a teeming sea of green. As my eyes skate over the matted mounds of weeds and small, vine-enshrouded trees and the shallow, empty pool that cuts like a long, blue gash through the greenery, I see hints of what once was. Even in its ragged state, thegarden is astonishingly beautiful. The untended, untouched look of it—and the ivy-covered walls that protect it on three sides—only add to the air of enchantment, of mystery, that rises from it like a shimmer of heat. It looks like something from a fairy tale, like it could have been torn from one of the picture books my mother read to me when I was a child.
Here and there within the tangle of green, I spot flashes of purple. Is this the lavender that I caught a hint of earlier when I stepped out of my truck? I breathe in. Yes. The scent is as gentle, as soothing, as a warm bath. There are other scents, too… alluring notes that drift toward me in soft waves. Viburnum. Honeysuckle. Sage. Phlox. Roses, so many roses…
“You don’t even see the view, do you?” I hadn’t heard Donovan walk up beside me, and his smooth voice suddenly so close to my ear makes a shiver run down my spine. “All you see is this jungle.”
He’s right. My eye had been drawn immediately to the garden, but now I lift my gaze and see that beyond the low, ivy-covered brick wall along its western edge, past a sloping meadow and then a thick line of trees, the ocean glints like a sheet of metal. I feel a strange shifting in my mind, a disorienting flash of déjà vu. There’s something familiar about all of this, but I don’t know what it is. The feeling slips away as quickly as it arrived.
“It’s stunning,” I tell Donovan. I mean all of it—the distant sea, yes, but mostly the remarkable ruin spread below us. I’ve never seen anything like it. I have to stop myself from walking straight down the steps and wading into the weeds.
“It certainly should be,” he replies. “This is theOceanview Home, after all. You can see the amount of work that needs to be done here.I want everything cleaned up and restored to the way it once was, years ago.”
I feel something twisting within me as he speaks—a nervousness that I’m not used to feeling. I want, very badly, to work on this project. Jobs come to me easily these days; every week, I open my inbox to find emails from homeowners all over the country, entreating me to design their gardens. It’s been a long time since I auditioned for the part.
