Page 19 of Guarded by My Gargoyle

Toby considered this with immense gravity. “Did it take a long time?”

“Yes.”

“Did the same person do all of them?”

“No. Six men. You can tell them apart if you look.” Garrick pointed, and Toby’s gaze followed the line of his arm. “That corner one. See the rose in the middle?”

Toby squinted. “It’s crooked.”

“That was the youngest carver. He got better. By the far wall, his roses are almost perfect. But I like the crooked one best.”

Toby studied it for a long, serious moment. “Because he was learning.”

“Because he was learning.”

Toby nodded, as though a matter of policy had been settled between them, and Garrick felt, absurdly, that he had passed a test.

When he stood, Eric was watching him over the rim of his coffee mug with an expression Garrick did not like at all. Not amused, the way Aidan was amused, but thoughtful, the way he looked at tracks he was trying to follow.

“The kitchen table has the best light,” Garrick said to Maris. “For the folder.”

“Send me the site plan for the ridge when you’ve got it,” Aidan said, as he and Eric followed them to the kitchen.

“I’ll send you the survey.”

“The site plan, Garrick.”

He ignored him and turned to Maris. She spread the estimate out on the long refectory table while Toby wandered the perimeter of the kitchen, reading the labels on cans with silent concentration. Garrick made himself look at the drainage plan. It was, as promised, grim.

Maris had caught the collapsed line under the east lawn and priced the repair three ways. In the margin she had written a small dry note—or we do nothing and it becomes a bog garden, your call—and he read it twice.

“I’d want to see where the old pipe surfaces before you sign off,” she said. “It should be near the wall by the east door. Two minutes. Toby, sweetheart, with me.”

“He can stay,” Garrick said. “If he wants.”

Toby looked up at his mother, and Maris looked at Garrick and then at her son, and something in her face gentled in a way he felt all the way down.

“He can come point out the crooked roses along the way,” she said. “So he doesn’t touch the cans. Come on, bug.”

They went. Garrick heard Toby’s small voice float back along the corridor—“This one’s oak too, isn’t it?”—followed by Maris’s answer, and then the east door opened and closed.

The two males remaining in Garrick’s kitchen said nothing. From those two, silence was considerably worse than shouting.

He turned around. Aidan had his arms folded and one shoulder against the doorframe, wearing an expression Garrick had learned to distrust.

“So,” Aidan said.

“Don’t.”

“She found a rare fern.”

“Aidan.”

“I’ve known you for nearly two years, and I’m reasonably sure that’s the first time I’ve heard you volunteer a compliment about someone’s professional accomplishments while simultaneously looking as though you wanted to remove my hand.”

“You held it too long.”

Aidan blinked, and Eric lowered his coffee mug.