Reggie, without a single brain cell knocking around in that head of his, licked my knee.
Apparently at first, everyone at the manor thought there was something wrong with the goose, but it turned out that she simply refused to migrate and made it everyone else’s problem. So Eula Beck bought a goose dog to chase her off, but Reggie couldn’t even chase a fly. Which meant that duty fell on everyone else. And we were all failing miserably.
From the pergola behind me, someone said, “You know he’s trying his best, Sunny.”
I recognized the voice: Wykofski.
I spun, pinning the same glare on him. “And where wereyou?”
“Here the whole time,” he replied happily. Wykofski was leaning against the pergola in the shade, snacking on a handful of sunflower seeds, and I went over to join him.
Without the wind coming up off the cliffs, it was at least cooler in the shade. I didn’t know how Wykofski managed inthis sort of heat in overalls and a plaid shirt, but it was the same uniform I’d seen him in every day so far, a green cap pushed back on his head with the words World’s Greatest Goose dad on the front. He was a tall, heavyset white man with an oak-brown mullet and a formidable mustache, in his late thirties.
If I was the head gardener, then he was the head everything-elser. You name it—landscaping, maintenance, apparently he even played a pretty mean banjo. He could fix anything, and if he couldn’t fix it he knew someone who could. He was also the one behind the landscape topiary installations around the estate—the dancing swans in the Rose Court and the Adonis replica in the Lily Walk and the wild horses that galloped through the Wildflower Garden. He even kept up most of the installations in the Central Garden, and that was the trickiest place with its gently sloping hills. One, because it was the biggest garden, and there were so many old trees and tall shrubs, separating out each flower bed by type, it was an art to make itnotlook crowded. And two, because it was so easy tomisssomething in the Central Garden, especially when confronted with the ancient marred oak in the middle. I’d passed it a hundred times by now, and still I felt in awe of its will to live despite disease and lightning strikes and wind storms. He was the one who decorated the oak for holidays, too. And on top of being a great topiary artist, just yesterday he soldered my broken shovel back together. At this point, I was more shocked at what hecouldn’tdo.
He was . . . what was the word Harrie always used? Abricoleur? A handyman who uses whatever he has around him—a MacGyver.
Oh, and he gave everyone nicknames.Sunnywas one he’ddecided to ordain me with, because apparentlySophiewasn’t colorful enough. I didn’t hate the nickname, but it also meant that everyone else at Lilymoor had begun to call me that, too.
I guessed it was better thanDreary, the nickname I had throughout most of college.
“Besides,” he went on, popping another sunflower seed into his mouth, “I don’t think anyone can manage Damnit.”
“Then why doesn’t she ever chase you?”
He shrugged. “Couldn’t guess the wiles of a goose if I tried. Anyway, I left your shovel, shears, and wheelbarrow over by the Hedges for you. You sure you don’t need help?”
“Nah, it’s sort of a one-person job until I can figure out where the vines are coming from,” I replied. The Hedges were slowly suffocating from a strange vine that had started growing through them. I had ruled out kudzu because that hadn’t made it this far north yet, and it didn’tlooklike kudzu, but I was having a hard time figuring out what it was. I was sure I would instantly once it bloomed.
“I bet they’re coming from the pond behind it.”
I shook my head. “I checked. Besides, we’d be able to see them from the shed.”
“Huh.” He shrugged, scratching the bottom of his chin. “Well, that’s just Lilymoor for you, then.”
Everyone kept saying that. I didn’t really get what they meant until I’d worked here a few weeks. Oh, there’s an unexplainable sound in the attic? “That’s just Lilymoor for you.” There’s a daisy growing in the middle of the parking lot? “That’s just Lilymoor for you.” Mysterious vines? Shovels that disappear in one garden bed and reappear in another? Flowers blooming in odd seasons?
That’s just Lilymoor.
“Oh, hey, before I forget,” Wykofski went on, turning to me, “me and the dudes are gonna game it out a little tonight—eat some snackaroonies, pop some Bud Lights—if you wanna join?” It was the same invite he had given me every Thursday since I came to Lilymoor, and while I never said yes, I learned “the dudes” were just Yafir, Lilymoor’s accountant, and a few of the volunteers. Sometimes even Juliette, the Events Coordinator, showed up. The game was usually Scrabble.
And every Thursday I said, “No, thank you,” and wondered when he’d stop asking. A month in, and I was beginning to fear he never would. I added, “Let me know if you need help with the sprinklers?”
“I think that’s Tomorrow Wykofski’s job,” he replied with a wink, popped another sunflower seed into his mouth, and pushed off from the pergola to return to the shed.
Lucky him.
Unlike Wykofski, who protected his sanity with strict working hours, I hated leaving things half done, and I had too much to do and not enough time to do it in, so I often worked right up until dusk. That was nothing new. Even at the Botanical Garden in New York, my supervisor left the lights on for me most evenings when he left. I liked work. If I kept my hands busy, my brain stayed quiet. That was more important than ever here at Lilymoor.
I was on loan for the summer from NYBG to help “revitalize” the gardens for Lilymoor’s two hundredth anniversary inAugust. Then I’d be shipped back to the city before the leaves even changed. A perfect summer break, theoretically. Jeff, my supervisor at the Botanical Garden, said that he’d apply if he didn’t have two young kids running around. A summer vacation in Maine? Sounded too good to be true.
Turned out, it was.
In the ten years since I’d been to Lilymoor, it’d fallen into the kind of disrepair that showed it was still clearly loved but not well tended. Eula Beck had done her best with volunteers and Wykofski, but as the years went on, she closed off more and more of the garden as it grew too unruly, and now it was almost impossible to manage without some aggressive TLC. The deterioration wasn’t all Eula’s fault, though. Lilymoor was just an aging estate with aging plants, and a garden that evenIhad trouble understanding. It would be easier if I had access to old records and blueprints of the garden itself, but those records had gone up in literal flames about sixteen years ago when the greenhouse burned to the ground. It had been very soon after Henry Beck had died, and he’d been the last person to understand the garden, apparently.
Most everything at Lilymoor was particular. The delphiniums needed shade, and the sunflowers needed too much water, and the climbing roses needed to be guided on where to grow over the arches they were planted for. There was an infestation of mites in the dogwood trees, and an entire section of the gardens was full of abandoned willow trees that had been off-limits for years.
The estate’s decline had been steady and slow, like a portrait fading in the sunlight.
