AllFreeNovel
Share Us
ChapterNine
It was almost a week now since Andrea’s return to Oak Harbor. Things had been moving smoothly. She chose a room on the ground floor of the inn to set up her office space. There were still some things that needed to come from her old office, but she delayed it for a bit. Even though Cora had insisted it was pointless to pay for the room, being the inn was theirs, Andrea was adamant.
“This way, the books can be kept up to date, and we don’t have to write this off as miscellaneous or such,” she expressed. “Besides, I love the feel of being independent.”
In the end, Cora had conceded.
She’d also been helping a lot more around the house, helping Cora with the cooking, laundry, and housework. Their mother was determined that she could still manage to do all the things she used to before her diagnosis, but the girls weren’t taking any chances.
All in all, the days went by without a hitch.
“Hi, sweetie.”
Andrea looked up from wiping down the counter in the kitchen to see her mother standing by the island in the middle of the room.
“Hi, Mom,” she returned, giving her mother a small smile. “How are you feeling?”
Becky hesitated for a moment. Andrea could see the uncertainty in her eyes. She was glad to have her mother back in her life, but at the same time, she knew the relationship they had before she left wasn’t as strong as it had once been. Some days it felt as if they were tiptoeing on eggshells around each other.
“I was wondering if you would like to accompany me to the rose garden down on the path,” Becky invited.
Andrea thought about it and saw no reason why she shouldn’t. Besides, she’d been dying to inspect the garden a bit more.
“Sure, why not.” She put down the dishtowel she’d been wiping dishes with and followed her mother out the back door.
She followed her mother along the path, and before she knew it, they were standing before the entrance to the garden. Andrea couldn’t help but admire the beauty laid out before her. When her mother pushed open the garden gates, Andrea was in awe as her eyes scanned every which way. She thought the garden was probably only rivaled by the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens— it was that spectacular. There were flowers everywhere, from the rarest and most exotic to the simplest. The place was a haven.
“Your father started sprucing up this area as a birthday and wedding anniversary gift for me on my fiftieth birthday. Ever since, the garden has seen at least one new flower species being added every birthday for the past fifteen years. This year would have made the sixteenth if he hadn’t—”
Andrea knew her mother was still mourning her father. She wasn’t sure if there would ever be a time that she didn’t miss him. She hoped with her and Cora being there that she’d be able to cope with it all.
“I want to show you something. I showed Cora, but I think you need to see it too.”
Andrea silently followed her mother further into the garden until they came upon an area with a raised circular platform made from cobblestone with concrete garden benches surrounded by pink and yellow chrysanthemums and peonies.
Just behind the platform and separated from the other flowers was a variety of rosebushes of the most exotic kind she’d ever seen. There were solid and variegated hues and short and long-stemmed bushes.
Andrea rubbed her nose gently against the soft petals of a rose, breathing in the gentle scent.
“This garden was a labor of love from your father,” she heard her mother say behind her.
As Becky settled on one of the benches, Andrea took the time to study her. Her mother’s once lustrous light brown hair that used to hang all the way down the middle of her back was now just shoulder length and flat, peppered with gray hair. Her once even-toned skin boasted a few wrinkle lines and creases, especially around her eyes. Her mother had transitioned from her once youthful self, and she’d barely gotten the time to notice it until now. Just then, her mother spoke, pulling her out of her reverie.
“I feel like there is something you want to say to me, Drea, but you’ve been holding back.”
Andrea’s shoulders slumped as she thought about her mother’s statement. One thing about the woman was that she was very perceptive and had always been able to tell whenever one of her children was holding back.
Andrea sighed before walking over to take a seat opposite her mother. “I…” She couldn’t formulate what she wanted to say in words.
“I know you blame me as much as you blamed your father for the way he treated you,” her mother started.
Andrea looked up at Becky with a pained expression, the hurt surfacing from all those years of wondering why.
“You could have stood up to him. You could have made him see that what he was doing was wrong— to try and force us to take over the business or leave. You just stood there while he went off on me, and you did nothing. Why?” At the end of her strained sentence, tears were streaming down her face as she waited for her mother to say something.
“I am so sorry, Drea. I truly am. I know that to you, it appeared that I did nothing, but I tried to make him see the reason that the inn wasn’t your or your sisters’ destiny. I tried to make him see that it would cause him to lose you, but in the end, he felt as if he failed as a parent because that’s how he had been groomed. As much as he tried to fight it and give you girls all the love in the world, he was conditioned to think that if you didn’t want to be a part of the family business, then he had failed as a parent.”
Becky reached out and brushed away a few of the tears that still spilled from Andrea’s eyes.
