“It does,” she says. I’m not sure why she sounds so gloomy about it, until she adds, “But I suspect that discovering a way for the home to break even might not hold the same appeal as an eight-figure real estate deal to a man like Donovan.”
Adam and Sophie arrive, and Sophie surprises me by throwing her arms around my waist even before she hugs Gully. Adam looks on, amused. There’s something different about him today—a lightness I have not seen before. Instead of jeans and a T-shirt, he’s wearingslacks and a crisp blue button-down shirt, the sleeves rolled up to reveal his tan forearms. It’s more dressed up than I’ve ever seen him, but somehow he looks younger.
“Hello,” I say, pulling my eyes from his to look down at Sophie.
“Hi, Lucy,” she says, but it’s muffled because her head is still buried in my stomach. Then she looks up and laughs. Her cheeks are rosy, her tawny curls pulled back in a bow. “Bye, Lucy!” She turns and runs off with Gully.
“Do you have time to take a walk?” Adam asks.
It’s unbearable to just stand there waiting on the terrace for Donovan to appear again, so I nod. We walk down the stairs, and then through an open gate into the woodland garden.
“Sophie never told me that she was having trouble remembering her mother,” Adam tells me as we walk. “She never told her therapist, either. Neither of us had any idea that that was the reason she became so silent and withdrawn. It breaks my heart to think that she kept all of those feelings inside for months.” He looks at me and smiles and I notice that lightness again. “But now she’s like her old self. She’s still a little girl who has lost her mom, but the weight of her grief seems different now. There’s this sparkle in her eyes, this particular Sophie sparkle, that’s been missing for months, and now it’s back.”
“She’s such a wonderful kid,” I say. “Even when she didn’t say a word, you could see what a big heart she has.”
“Thanks,” Adam says. “That’s nice to hear. I think she’s the best kid in the world, of course. But I might be a little biased.”
“Nope,” I say. “She’s definitely the best one.”
Adam tells me that after he and Sophie saw me in theCalifornia garden, he met his brother on the job site of a house they just started working on.
“I had that feeling again,” he tells me slowly. “The one I used to have, before my thoughts were so consumed with worry for Sophie. I walked into the house and I sensed all of its history. Not anything specific, but just this sense of the lives that had been lived there.”
“The house’s soul,” I say.
He smiles. There’s a beat of quiet and then he says, “So after this, now that your job here is done… is it back to the nomad life for you?”
I shake my head. “I don’t think so. I don’t know what happens next, but I like the idea of staying in one place for a while.”
“Maybe here?”
I smile. “Maybe here.”
I know there is more he wants to say, to ask me, and I don’t hurry to stop him. I don’t feel afraid. I trust him, I realize. I trust this man that I hardly know, this feeling between us. Or perhaps I just trust the way I feel when I am with him. We come upon a bench tucked within the snowy white viburnum, and without discussing it, we move together toward it and sit.
“I don’t understand, Lucy,” he says then, slowly, carefully. “The flowers and their scents. The memories.” The look he gives me is questioning and hopeful, like he really thinks I might be able to give him an explanation.
I think of telling Jack about my gift, the way he looked at me with such anger and disgust. The way he called me crazy. I trusted him with the truth about myself, and he broke my heart.
But now, in this moment with Adam beside me, his expressionwarm and encouraging, I think of how his mother says that he got his curiosity from her and his tolerance of splinters from his father. I think of his connection to houses, the way he senses their history. The way he looked at me when Sophie remembered her mother, his eyes full of wonder. As my thoughts turn, the scents of the flowers that I’ve cared for in each of these gardens race toward me, whispering of patience and healing and protection and love.
“I’m not sure it’s something I’ll ever really understand, either,” I say. “But I know that I’ve always had a connection to plants, an ability to care for them in a way that makes them thrive quickly, vibrantly, fragrantly. And among the flowers that I grow… I’m able to sense when there is a fragrance that will return a person to a forgotten moment in time, a long-buried memory. Scents have always been heightened for me… the scents of the flowers that I grow most of all.”
I look down. At some point while I was speaking, Adam had reached over and taken my hand in his. His skin warms mine, a fizzy wash of pleasure spiraling through me at his touch. I meet his eyes again, and he is looking at me in that way he does, that way that makes me want to lean closer to him.
“There’s a certain logic to it,” he says quietly, his gaze roaming my face. “You feel connected to gardens, and the love that you feel shines through in your work, in the flowers you tend. It’s like…” He pauses, and I wonder if he senses it, too, the way the scents of the flowers swirl around us. “It’s like when you eat a meal that’s prepared with love,” he goes on distractedly. “People always say that you can taste the difference. I think you can. And scent is so closely tied to memory… sometimes in mysterious ways. A scent can betransporting. Is that science? Magic? Can’t something be a little of both?”
I know he wants to rationalize something that falls outside of the realm of the rational, but it’s a natural impulse, and I don’t fault him for it. He’s trying to wrap his mind around everything that has happened, and I sense that as he does, he is drawing me ever closer.
“You know what?” he says, his eyes on my lips. “Why don’t we talk about all of this later?”
When I smile, Adam lifts his other hand to my cheek and it’s then that I realize he’s not wearing his wedding ring. He smells of sawdust and sunlight and chocolate, but mostly, today, of lush grass after spring rain. His dark eyes ask a question, and in response, I lean toward him at last, closing my eyes and kissing him. His lips taste of chai cake, and the spice travels through me, warming me entirely.
Later, when I’ve had time to straighten my hair a bit and catch my breath, my father finds me on the terrace. “I’m sorry I’m late,” he says, hurrying toward me. “Busy day.”
I look at him. In his blue eyes, I think I see the spark that was gone for too long. It burns low but steadily.
“Really?” I ask. “What have you been doing?”
