Barbara White - The Unfinished Garden

Tilly screwed up her face. Was that a compliment?

“The plants all grow into each other,” he continued, his speech speeding up. “But they’re balanced in height and color, contained by shrubs shaped to fit. Individuality within structure. It’s perfect.” He cupped his long, thin fingers into a chalice. “It’s perfect.”

“Thank you.” I think. Did he really believe there was a thought process behind her garden? She worked on instinct, nothing else, and after thirteen years of hard slog, had barely begun. How could this man, who was in such a rush that he had extracted his checkbook and a pen from his bag, understand?

“Shall I pay half up front and the balance when you’re done?”

“Listen, flattery’s lovely, but I have no experience in garden design.”

“No experience? What do you call that?” He pointed to the woodland path that snaked through arching sprays of poet’s laurel and hearts-a-bursting to open up around a small border edged with fallen cedar limbs. Mottled tiarellas wove through black-stemmed maidenhair ferns; a mass of Indian pinks with tubular flowers embraced the birdbath she’d rescued from the dump; the delicate arms of native Solomon’s seal and goldenrod danced behind.

“Instinct,” she said.

“Fine. I’ll pay $50,000 for your instinct.”

She would laugh, but the heat had siphoned off her energy.

“Mr. Nealy.” Tilly leaned toward James and gave what she hoped was a firm smile, like opening your door a crack to a stranger but not letting him inside. “I appreciate your willingness to pay such a large sum for my instinct. But Sari told me that you’re building a house.” Tilly pulled back. “You should be searching for a landscaper, not a nursery owner.”

James picked a single, dark hair from his black T-shirt. Was he even listening? Mind you, offering to double his payment without so much as a peeved expression suggested more money than sense. According to Sari, he had made appointments with every local business listed in the yellow pages under landscape architects, landscape designers, landscape contractors and nurseries. That was beyond thorough and not the behavior of someone she wanted to work for…if she were wavering in her decision, which she wasn’t.

“I don’t have the right qualifications for this job,” Tilly said. “My answer has to be no.”

His hand shot to his hair, then jerked down to massage his shoulder awkwardly. “You have a gift, and I’m willing to pay for it. How are career definitions relevant?”

Tilly swiped sweat from her hairline. No perspiration rolled down his face, no damp splodges marred his slim-fitting T-shirt. She had no eye for fashion, but Tilly understood cut and fabric. That simple black T-shirt probably cost more than her weekly grocery shop. Certainly more than today’s red tank top, which was one dollar’s worth of the thrift store’s finest.

James cracked open his checkbook.

“People don’t say no to you very often. Do they?”

“I need this garden.” He clicked the top of his pen then repeated the gesture.

Interesting. Need and garden in the same sentence. Now he was talking her language.

“I need this garden.” He grew still like the eye of a storm.

“Yes, I rather gathered that. Shame it’s not for sale.”

Tilly caught the scent of gardenia, that finicky little bugger she had come to love for its determination to survive. She braced for an outburst, but James surprised her with a smile. A warm smile that softened his face of angles and shadows and touched her in a way his handshake had not. If he were some fellow shopper queuing next to her in a checkout line and he threw her that smile, she might be tempted to give him the once-over. Not that she eyed up men anymore.

“I’m sorry.” Tilly flicked a dribble of sweat from her pitiful cleavage. “This heat is making me cranky, and I don’t mean to be rude, but I can’t help you.”

“You prefer rain to this interminable heat?” James scrutinized the sky.

“God, yes. I’m a rain freak. How did you know?”

“English accent.”

The hawk drifted overhead, and Tilly watched it disappear into the forest. “People tend to guess Australian, since my accent’s such a hybrid. English lilt, American terminology, although I swear in English. I’m not sure my voice knows where it belongs.” And what did she hope to achieve by confessing that?

“The rest of you feels the same way?” James studied her.

The polite response would be a shrug. The impolite response would be to say, “None of your business.” Tilly chose neither. Longing stabbed her, longing for Bramwell Chase, the Northamptonshire village that anchored her life. Longing for Woodend, the four-hundred-year-old house that breathed her history. Haddington history, from before she was Mrs. Silverberg.

“Some days.” Bugger. Why did she have to cripple herself with honesty? Other people told juicy little fibs and fat whoppers of deceit all the time. But with one baby truth, she had shoved the conversation in a direction she had no desire to follow. “You’re clearly comfortable, though, sweltering in the nineties.” Her mouth was dry, her throat scratchy. She swept her tongue over her gums to find moisture. It didn’t help.

“I’m familiar, not comfortable, with this weather.” James returned the checkbook and pen to his backpack, but Tilly sensed he was regrouping, not conceding. “It reminds me of childhood summers, and childhoods have a powerful hold over us. I’m sure you agree.”

Tilly didn’t trust herself to answer. A thrush trilled from the mimosa tree, but she imagined the music of the blackbird’s lullaby at Woodend. She pictured the paddock rolling toward fields dotted with clumps of bracken and the ancient trees of The Chase, the medieval hunting woods, looming beyond. If she closed her eyes, she might even smell her mother’s lavender. Tilly wasn’t aware of starting to walk, but she and James were sauntering toward the forest. Anyone watching might have assumed they were friends out for a stroll, which proved a person should trust with her heart, not with her eyes.

“Where’s your childhood home?” Marvelous. She meant to terminate the conversation, not prolong it. But when was the last time she had a bona fide I’ll–tell-you-mine-if-you’ll-tell-me-yours chat with anyone? Just last week, Rowena, Tilly’s best friend since they were four years old, had written a snarky email that started, “Answer this or I’m giving you the boot.” And yet Tilly had discovered an amazing truth in the last few years: the further you drifted away from others, the easier it was to keep going.

Had James not heard her question? “Where—”

“Rural Illinois,” he said.

Aha! That was why he wasn’t sweating. “Farming stock?”

“I’ve tried hard not to be.”

Tilly fished the remaining shard of ice from her gin and tonic and crunched it between her teeth, dampening the crescendo of cicada buzz. “Look, I’m melting faster than the ice in my gin, and I have to start supper. I apologize for wasting your time. I should have made it clear to Sari that I had no intention of taking the business in a different direction.” Actually, she had stated it every which way and then some. Sari, a dean’s wife with a master’s degree in communications, had understood just fine.

“If I took you on as a client, I would be rushing helter-skelter into something new, something I can’t handle right now. I appreciate your interest in my work, but I can’t help you. We all need things, Mr. Nealy. We rarely get them.”

“I’m curious. What is it that you need?”

Tilly rubbed her left hand across her mouth, jabbing her thumb into her jawbone. “Peace,” she replied.