I look Donovan in the eye. “Of course,” I tell him. “I can do that.”
I’m confused to hear Jill blow out an annoyed breath at my words, muttering something I can’t catch. Donovan ignores her and so I do, too. I can only hope that he has final say on the matter of my hiring, because Jill clearly, for reasons I can’t begin to guess, does not want me here.
“The garden has gorgeous bones,” I go on. “I have a feeling a lot of the old plants are still hanging on underneath all of that overgrowth. It will be stunning. I can see it already.”
Donovan has a practiced poker face, and I have no idea what he is thinking as he studies me. “I took a look at your website,” he says after a moment. “Your work is impressive. The before and after pictures of your clients’ landscaping… those are remarkable transformations.”
I smile. Years ago, I created a garden for a graphic designer, an introverted artist who had loved me, but who had not wholly known me. He thought that since I moved frequently, I should at least have a permanent home online, a home made up of all of my many projects. The website was a lovely gift. And yet the photographs on it do not—cannot—tell the full story. The images don’t reveal how flowersbloom more quickly, more fragrantly, their colors becoming more vibrant, when I care for them. How could they? These things cannot be photographed. Only the finished gardens can be captured, and they’re all that is remembered, anyway—the unusual speed at which they grow is a contented blur in all minds but mine.
“But I can’t figure out where you’re based,” Donovan goes on, frowning slightly. “You seem to have worked everywhere. Do you live in Bantom Bay?”
I explain to him—and to Jill, who I sense is listening closely, if petulantly—that I travel throughout the West Coast, moving wherever my work takes me, usually completing the design and installation of two or three jobs in one city or town before another project brings me somewhere new. “But my father still lives here, in Bantom Bay,” I say, “and I’ve decided to stay with him for a bit.”
Icouldstop here, and perhaps I should. But Donovan’s handsome gaze meets mine, an intriguing mix of curiosity and calculation in his eyes, and I find myself continuing.
“I’m not sure my father is taking very good care of himself,” I say. “My mother passed away six months ago. It was a shock to him… to both of us. I think he could use some company right now.”
It’s Jill who responds first, stepping forward and saying softly, “I’m so sorry for your loss, Lucy.”
The sincerity in her voice both surprises and moves me. “Thank you.”
After a beat, Donovan clears his throat. “I’m very sorry, as well. I lost a parent myself recently. My father. It’s a terrible club to join.” I note how Jill steps back, her jaw tightening, the moment Donovan speaks.
“I inherited the Oceanview Home from him,” Donovan goes on, “just as he inherited it from his parents, and so on through our family for more than one hundred years.” He squints out toward the horizon. “This home used to be incredibly special. But things have changed.Timeshave changed. These days, this place looks like it’s held together with duct tape and crossed fingers. The grounds, as you can see, are certainly no place for the elderly. Not anymore.”
I think about the men and women I saw sitting in that pale husk of a dining room, the lonely sound of silverware scraping against porcelain plates, the air so still that it felt claustrophobic. Outside, all of that depressing beige is replaced with green, and the air is filled with sound of the breeze in the trees, and of birdsong, and of the distant rumble of the ocean, and the scents—that surprising collection of scents—that drift up from the overgrown landscape.How wonderful it would be, I think,if the residents could safely venture outside and walk among flowers again.
“I can help you,” I tell Donovan. “I can restore this garden.”
He seems to consider my words, but now his eyes have an eager glint that I recognize. “You’d need to get started right away.”
“Good,” I respond, smiling.
A moment passes before he pulls his eyes from mine and looks down at his watch. A small furrow appears between his brows. “Ah,” he says. “I’m afraid I have to run to another meeting, but Jill can fill you in on all of the particulars of the project.” He nods at Jill, and she steps forward, arms crossed in front of her.
“Send me your bid tonight,” Donovan tells me, even as he’s already turning toward the home, “and we can work out the details.” He’s nearly inside, the automatic doors open on either side of him,when he pauses and turns. “One more thing,” he says. “I need the job completed by the first of May. That’s a hard deadline.”
And then he’s gone, the doors closing decisively behind him.
I turn to Jill, my mind snagging on that final dash of information. “May first? But that’s still a month away.” The garden is a mess, but it won’t take me—or anyone else, for that matter—an entire month to get in order.
“Four weeks,” Jill confirms coolly, “andfivegardens. He didn’t mention those other four, did he?” She aims a manicured nail at the high wall to the north. “There are two more beyond that wall, and”—she points at the south wall—“two more on that side. No one has been in them in years. You can’t even see their entrances anymore, but they must be somewhere underneath all of that ivy.”
I swing my gaze from one tall, vine-covered wall to the other.Fivegardens. I breathe in again, understanding the tangle of scents in the air slightly better. These aren’t just the scents of the large garden before us that I smell—they’re the scents of the four hidden ones that surround it, too.
“Donovan’s great-great-grandmother, Agatha Pike, was an avid gardener,” Jills says, arms crossed again. “She spent years designing the property.”
I turn toward her. “This was a private home?”
“Yes. Or, well… it’s complicated.” Jill seems to forget herself, her demeanor softening as she explains that it took years for Agatha and her husband, Calvin Pike, a sugar tycoon, to build the home, and that in the end only Agatha lived to move in. She was in her eighties by then, and she hired a nurse to stay in the home with her. Donovan’s great-great-grandmother ran in affluent circles, butshe’d had a fairly bohemian group of friends; over time, she invited some of these friends—also widowed but without her safety net of wealth—to move into the home with her. More caregivers were hired. Agatha and her friends walked the grounds every single day. She attributed their good health and longevity to all of the time they spent outdoors, and to the companionship they offered one another. She kept making little adjustments to the gardens, adding in components to enchant her friends, right up until the end.
“Agatha died when she was one hundred and two,” Jill tells me. “In her will, she stipulated that her friends be able to live out their final days in the home. Her son and grandson—Donovan’s great-grandfather and grandfather—took her wishes a step further and had much of the home renovated into apartments, creating accommodations for additional elderly residents and staff, and a sliding payment scale so that the home isn’t only accessible to those who are wealthy.”
“She sounds like an amazing woman,” I say, adding, “with a generous family.”
Jill’s face hardens. “Yes, well, there you have it,” she says tersely. “The Pike family has run the home as an assisted living community ever since. It’s Agatha Pike’s legacy.”
I look down at the sea of weeds below us. “But why hasn’t anyone been taking care of the grounds?”
