She hates you, she’s scared of you, she thinks you’re a kook.
No, no. James pressed down with his palms. He was done with doubt. It would not pull him under again. He would not revert to the person he had been before he had decided to sell the business, the apartment, the farm. Before he had decided to save himself.
Besides, Tilly? Scared of anyone? He didn’t think so. And yes, he was weird. He was weird! So what? He should be able to shout to the world that he was obsessive-compulsive, to do so without dreading other people’s reactions. Maybe opening up to Tilly was the first step, and no different from his dad attending an A.A. meeting just so he could announce, “I’m a drunk.”
That was a good theory and one James desperately wanted to believe. Acknowledging weakness gave you strength, but he’d slipped up, released personal information without having intended to, and that was out of character. Other people said things they shouldn’t; he didn’t.
But when he’d hinted at the truth that day at the farm, hadn’t a small part of him dared to trust, dared to believe that he had met someone, finally, who might understand? How would Tilly treat him now that she knew? Would she look at him and see the OCD, not James? Was it even possible to separate the two?
His psychologist always said, “It’s the OCD, not you,” but the lines weren’t distinct for James. OCD may have twisted up his mind, but it had crafted him, made him James, pushed him to succeed and bequeathed the only gift that mattered: the ability to perceive pain in others. He didn’t always act on that knowledge, didn’t always want to, but he was drawn to people in dark corners, could empathize with them. So now he was being altruistic. Truthfully, you enjoy living alongside people who are more fucked-up than you. That wasn’t true of most of his friends, but it had been his M.O. in love.
His thoughts circled him back to Tilly. She would take him on. She would. But once they started working together, once they had regular contact, he would have to be more careful. Because if she saw behind the label, if he revealed the biggest truth of all, she would never understand. The end. The end.
* * *
An airlock rattled through the radiator, and Tilly peered into the disemboweled duffel on the twin bed with the patchwork bedspread garish enough to stimulate a corker of a headache. She enjoyed the nostalgia of sleeping in her childhood bed but not the experience. The mattress sagged in the middle, and she had to relearn how to sleep in a huddle, not stretched across her queen-size bed. Tilly had always wanted a king, the biggest bed imaginable so she could cover it with down-filled pillows and cushions of every size and color. David had refused; he said he needed Tilly closer.
“What do you know about OCD?” Tilly asked her mother, who was settled in the old nursing chair with a cup of Lady Grey tea and the Daily Telegraph crossword.
“Isn’t that what Howard Hughes suffered from? A fear of germs, I think.” Mrs. Haddington stirred her tea, then tapped the spoon on the lip of the china cup. “Does this have something to do with that James chap? He sounded rather nice.” The spoon clattered onto the saucer. “And you can wipe that smirk off your face. I may be old, but I’m not dead. I can still recognize a sexy voice.”
Her mother concentrated on positioning the cup on the bedside table while Tilly stared open-mouthed. Her mother, who had avoided the s word for decades, who had refused to answer thirteen-year-old Tilly’s questions about the facts of life—answers she would later glean from Sebastian—had just described a man as sexy. Tilly tugged her cardigan around her. Now she thought about it, her mother had started saying damn, too. Once, she had spanked Tilly for using it. Was this an attempt to be more relevant, to buck values ingrained since childhood? Or was it some sort of personality crisis? The beginning of Alzheimer’s?
“I take it he’s interested in you, this James?”
“Why would you ask?”
“The way he spoke your name, as if he were handling a precious object. Besides, the teacher in me knows when someone’s hiding something. A case of unrequited love, is it?”
“No! He wants me to design a garden.” Love? Absolutely not. Her mother was right about one thing, though. James was definitely hiding something. Tilly gazed through the window to the lawn below. Isaac was playing soccer with the ball she had bought on their last trip. In less than five minutes, he had unearthed the stash of possessions she kept at Woodend, the part of their lives she always left behind. Isaac positioned the ball and kicked, but Monty intercepted. With a snap of his jaw, he chomped down.
“Garden design,” her mother mused. “You are rather good at that.”
“Please, Mum. Stay out of this.” Tilly pulled a long-sleeved T-shirt from the duffel, stuffed it into the mahogany chest of drawers and closed the drawer with her bottom.
“A little more care, darling. That’s a valuable piece of furniture.” Her mother peered over her reading glasses, their lapis frames intensifying the blue of her eyes. “If you ask me—” actually, I didn’t “—you need to stop cowering on the edge of life, afraid to jump in. Whatever your beliefs, you are not responsible for David’s death.”
Tilly swallowed, forcing back bile. “As good as. I invoked his living will, Mum.”
“You respected your husband’s final wishes, for which I commend you.”
“But I believe in the sanctity of life. You know that. Well, unless it’s slugs or Japanese beetles.” Tilly exhaled. “And before you say anything else, yes, I agree it was his decision to make. I accepted that when he drew up the living will. But I still have to figure out how to deal with the consequences of my actions.” If only it were that simple. “And when other people push—” Tilly looked her mother in the eye “—it doesn’t help.”
“Darling, I know grief follows its own pace, but you can’t shut out people who love you.”
“Not even if they force me to boogie on the dance floor when all I want is to shuffle along with a Zimmer frame?”
“You’re too young for a Zimmer frame.”
Tilly hooked down the sleeves of her cardigan and curled up her fists inside. She was exhausted from talking, from thinking, from being. “I should have listened to my instincts, Mum. I should have said no. I always gave in to David. Anything for a quiet life, you know?” Stop, Tilly, that’s close enough.
“Rubbish.” Her mother rustled the newspaper on her lap. “You made compromises—that’s marriage. Besides, few women could have handled David. You certainly could.”
Tilly’s eyes prickled from dryness. She wished she could cry, but what would that achieve? Self-pity was not part of her agenda. Bad enough that on sleepless nights she could still hear David’s breath gurgling through the disconnected tube protruding from his throat like a weapon.
Mrs. Haddington removed her glasses and clicked the arms into place. “Guilt surrounds death, darling. The secret is to accept that and not end up in the tizz that I did.” How many euphemisms could her mother use for her breakdown? “Your father wanted to die at home, but I was so silly. Convinced myself that only professionals could nurse a cancer patient through his final days, and that if he came home, I would make it worse.” She shook her head. “The poor man was dying. How much worse could it have been? But I gnawed on that guilt. Don’t do the same.”
Her mother was well-meaning but clueless. Some actions were too heinous to be forgotten or forgiven. Tilly grabbed a balled-up denim shirt from the floor, shook it out with a thwack and tossed it toward the laundry basket. How had she managed to pack so many dirty clo
thes?
“What about a good clear-out, starting with David’s studio? It’s a car boot sale waiting to happen.” Her mother’s blue eyes sharpened. “Why not donate the books to the university and turn the space into a shop that sells gardening doodads?”
“I can’t just open a shop, Mum. There’re zoning laws about that kind of thing. Besides, the studio breathes David’s DNA. It’s the reason we bought the house—”
“Poppycock. You fell in love with the land and David caved because he spoiled you worse than your father did. Bless him, I do miss your father.” Mrs. Haddington appraised her engagement ring, a huge sapphire surrounded by a burst of diamonds. “He believed you had found yourself in North Carolina.”
“Really?” Tilly smiled at her mother; her mother smiled back.
Footsteps thundered up the stairs, accompanied by a salvo of “Mom! Mom!”
Isaac poked his head around the door. “Monty barfed up soccer ball all over the kitchen floor. Can we go to The Corner Stores and buy a new one after you’ve cleaned up the mess?”
“Actually, no. I have a better idea.” Tilly opened the drawer of her old dressing table and rummaged around until she found the medallion with the inscription: 1st place, 200 meters breaststroke.
“Here.” Tilly handed it to Isaac. “The badge of your new status as Monty helper.”
“Sweet. What do I have to do?”
Tilly draped an arm over his shoulder. “First, you learn how to mop up dog sick.”
Isaac screamed and ducked away. Laughing, Tilly chased him along the landing and down the stairs. She paused on the sixth step, the one that creaked. The drawing room door was open, and she glimpsed a cardboard box next to the carved wooden chest, a chest formerly covered in photographs of family milestones. Was her mother, another memory hoarder, packing up their past? And if so, why?
The question tasted bitter. Woodend was a time capsule of Haddington family life. Nothing had changed here in decades, not even the paint colors. And if Tilly had her way, nothing ever would.
Chapter 10
Bramwell Hall, isolated in a pocket of peace behind the churchyard, breathed a different tune from any place Tilly had ever been. The cavernous rooms were filled with the silent chill of history, but it was still a home, albeit a crumbling one with pieces that regularly dropped off.
The clock on the old stable block chimed 3:00 p.m., sheep bleated across the park and a home movie played in Tilly’s mind. She was chasing Rowena around the north wing in a game of tag; she was organizing pony rides by the south wing for the Queen’s silver jubilee; she was snuggling up to Sebastian on the lawn as fireworks boomed and sparkled in honor of Prince Andrew’s wedding. Tilly’s eyes panned up to the Hall’s mullioned second-floor windows and lingered on Rowena’s bedroom. Bugger, there it was again—that animated image from the Kama Sutra starring Rowena and Sebastian.
Avoiding Sebastian all week had been easy. She had chalked up only one ex-boyfriend sighting and that had been of the taillights of the Jaguar as she’d hustled Monty along the estate road for his pre-bedtime jaunt. Staying below Rowena’s radar had presented the real challenge. Like the wild onion that peppered Tilly’s gardens every May, Rowena could pop up anytime, anywhere. Only a person on a kamikaze mission crossed Rowena without an exit strategy, and Tilly needed to shake off her jet lag before she could line up her thoughts. But really, it had been surprisingly easy to hide behind a few rushed conversations. Easy, but heartbreaking.
In thirty-three years, Tilly and Rowena had feuded only once, when they were fifteen and Tilly accidentally scratched Rowena’s “Nights in White Satin” single. The great-falling-out had been hardest on Rowena. Without the Haddingtons, she had no family life. But she was as stubborn as swamp sunflower and equally impossible to tame. It was Tilly who negotiated the peace and promised that nothing would nick their friendship again. As the sun pushed through a cloud to illuminate the Hall’s sandstone facade with a warm, golden hue, Tilly remembered Rowena coaxing the first postfuneral smile from Isaac and silently renewed the promise, a promise that would not be broken.
She glanced down at Rowena, stretched out on the tartan blanket with her two black Labradors, Tiddly and Winks. Another X-rated Rowena-Sebastian image flashed, and Tilly shivered. What had she read on the OCD website about picking up your thoughts and putting them elsewhere? A brain trick, it was called. An appealing idea, that you could shove aside unwanted thoughts as if you were moving furniture. And yet shifting your mind was bloody difficult. How did James find the emotional strength? Not that she wanted to think about him, and not that she had decided to take him on, but he had captured her interest with his mention of OCD. After all, even she had an inner Doubting Thomas that whispered at her to double-check the front door was locked. But second-guessing yourself, she had discovered through her late-night excursions on the web, was nothing compared to the relentless obsessions, ritualized compulsions and furtive behavior of OCD. If James lived in perpetual anxiety, battling fears no one else could see, how did he find peace? Or was that the reason he wanted a garden? Maybe he was searching for some corner of the universe to control. If so, he was looking in the wrong place. Gardening was never about control.
“For gawd’s sake, sit down,” Rowena said, without opening her eyes. “You’re making me all twitchy, not to mention blocking out my sun.”
“Sorry. Just thinking.”
“About?”
“Being lucky enough to have a healthy mind.”
“Fabulous.” Rowena yawned. “You can look after me when I get Alzheimer’s. Now sit and tell me how you’re really doing.”
“Oh, you know.”
“No, I don’t know, since you’ve been dodging me all week.”
Bugger, she’d noticed. Underestimating Rowena was a trap Tilly fell into repeatedly. The only consolation was that others made the mistake more frequently. Take the teenage vandal Rowena had caught spray-painting a stone balustrade. Rather than prosecute, Rowena had co-opted him into six months of free labor on the estate. Three years later, he still called her ma’am.
Tilly flopped to the blanket, lulled by the crack of Isaac swatting a cricket ball. Sebastian and the children were playing cricket down by the horse pond, and the snores coming from the deck chairs under the two-hundred-year-old cedar tree signaled that her mother and the vicar would not be eavesdropping. Tilly and Rowena were alone.
“Found a man yet?” Rowena said.
“Have you?”
Rowena smiled, an open smile that hinted at years of intimacy yet told Tilly nothing. “How about setting up an alternative family unit?” Rowena stretched. “You, me and Isaac at the Hall. Ever consider coming home and making me deliriously happy?”
“In my dreams. Not sure Isaac would approve, though.” Tilly laid back and the short skirt of her dress puddled around her. She tugged on her waistband. What a meal! Three courses and four choices of desserts, none of which Tilly had been able to resist since they had all included chocolate. Grass pricked through the scratchy blanket and Tilly shifted, but, between the hard ground and her bloated stomach, failed to find comfort.
A loud snort, definitely male, came from under the cedar tree.
“Think the vicar’s got the hots for your mother?” Rowena asked. She was tracing shapes in the clouds as they had done a lifetime ago. “They looked pretty cozy, heads locked together over dessert.”
“He was asking if she had indigestion pills in her handbag.”
“Me, too, but it’s not going to happen. She told me once that she could never love anyone but my father.” Tilly rolled onto her side and propped herself up with her elbow. She slid the other arm between her thighs, clasped her calves, and curled up. “Maybe after a certain point you don’t need romantic love. I mean, my mother’s happy. She has a full life with Marigold and her cronies. Why does she need a man?”
“Amen, sister. Give me a vibrator any day, far less messy. Besides, spunky old spinsters rock. I just wish my mother were more like yours. If anything happened to Daddy she would disintegrate.”
Tilly wanted to disagree, but despite her beauty, Lady Roxton blended into her husband’s shadow. Which, Tilly had always supposed, was why Lord Roxton married her. He liked an audience, not competition. He doted on his daughter but in a distracted way that placed Rowena below his gun dogs in the hierarchy of his affection. He treated her as a valuable painting—prized and largely ignored. When she messed up? It showed spirit. He admired that in dogs and in his daughter. Unfortunately, his wife did not. She glided through life, showing passion only for Lord Roxton and his heritage. The spectacular splashes Rowena created to earn her parents’ attention may have garnered laughter from her father, but they earned scorn from her mother.
“Your mother’s spunky,” Tilly said. “Sort of.”
“Fibber. Mother looks like a jewel but she’s an inadequate human being. Remember how we used to pretend that Woodend was my real home, that Mother and Daddy were wicked godparents who’d kidnapped me at birth?”
“We shouldn’t have done that.”
“No. We shouldn’t have. But your house was filled with pets, baking smells, you practicing the trombone, your sisters arguing…. My house was filled with the bawdiness of adults who were so besotted with each other they didn’t even notice when I hit puberty. Did you know, your mother gave me my first sanitary napkin?” Rowena grabbed the last bottle of champagne and refilled her glass. Sebastian had donated two bottles to the day and Rowena had drunk most of them. Tilly would have been gaga by now, but Rowena was stone-cold sober. “Ever wonder what kind of a parent I would’ve made?”
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