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Delphie didn’t utter another word of protest. Perhaps she couldn’t. Maybe the older woman also felt a rawness in her throat that wasn’t from the smoke, full of grief and loss and the difficult choices they all had to make.
That night, Louise breathed in the scent of smoke that had seeped into her clothing and hair, waiting for a sense of triumph, relief, or even sorrow. It never came, even as she opened her window to look down on the black gouge in the lawn from above, the cold breeze carrying the acrid scent to her.
It might not be right. But it was done.
———
Louise sighed, picturing the garden that had been overlayed on the garden that was. At the time, she’d fashioned the destruction as burning away memories of her old life, with its expectations and heartbreak and failures.
Now, sitting among vines and neat furrows, she could finally admit that it wasn’t about creating a new start. It was an empty attempt at revenge. Against Oliver, her father, and even herself.
The scorched earth had long since healed. For a while, she had left it barren and scarred, like pictures she’d seen of the Battle of the Somme. But in the early ’30s, when she’d hired Hamish as her handyman, he’d suggested raking in grass seed to cover the unsightly patches, and she’d allowed it. A pristine lawn soon replaced the ruins, and now there was something growing again. Something purposeful and practical, not delicate and decorative like Father had always demanded of his gardens—and his daughter.
It was a quiet night, with only the slightest of breezes, so sheheard the footsteps behind her, and when she turned, Freddy approached.
She held up her hands to prove they were empty. “Never fear. I wasn’t going to burn it this time. Not after all the work you’ve put in.”
He looked stricken. “I didn’t think—”
“But you knew I had once.”
“Yes,” he admitted. “I’d heard.”
Of course he had. Derby didn’t keep secrets well, and certainly not about the offense that had first led to her isolation, no matter how hard she tried to invest in the community afterward. She’d allowed them to whisper all these years, hoping to be dismissed as a wealthy eccentric, hoping no one would ask further questions.
To her neighbors, rich summer people merely lounged on beaches, made extravagant demands of locals, and occasionally did unbalanced things like burn down gardens.
How old she must have looked just then, how weary, because Freddy took a cautious step closer, concern on his face. “Are you all right?”
“No.”
It was an answer she’d never uttered in all her years to that particular question. But tonight, there was no way to scrape together enough composure to answer otherwise, especially not to this disarming young man who knew the meaning of loss.
“Delphie told me the two of you quarreled last week about the garden.”
The sympathy in his voice was almost too much to bear. There was nothing keeping her here, not even social expectation. She could—should—make her excuses to the boy and turn in for the night.
Something, though, kept her leaning against the rough wooden fence, maybe only the sheer weariness of thinking ofthe effort it would take to walk into that drafty hall and climb the steps one by one.
“It’s been known to happen before. The two of us are quite set in our ways. Perhaps you’ve noticed. But it’s fine between us, really.”
“Maybe.” Frederick leaned against the fence next to her, just close enough to share the space while far enough away not to feel intrusive. “People will hurt us. The ones we love most often and deepest of all, because we’ve let them in.”
“Then perhaps we shouldn’t be foolish enough to do that.”
“It’s not foolishness. It’s courage.”
She couldn’t help snorting at that, and Freddy turned, frowning.
“Haven’t you ever hurt anyone, Louise? Disappointed someone?”
Somehow, in her exhaustion, after all those memories, it slipped out: “My daughter.”
Had she said that out loud? Or had she merely pictured the tiny, squalling infant, seen only for a blurred, drug-hazed moment before they whisked her away?
No, she’d spoken the words, but no shock appeared on Freddy’s face.
“Or son,” he said quietly.
