“Wow. Stop right there. That’s the OCD talking. You don’t need to listen.”
“And if it isn’t?” James sat up. “What if this is me? What if I were to ask you, right now, how you feel about me?”
“That’s a little forthright. Even by my standards.” Her voice was hushed, her face pale. She braced her arms against the steering wheel and stared straight ahead.
Now would be a good time to back off, to leave her be, but he couldn’t. Being obsessive-compulsive meant never being able to quit. It meant sticking with the same lousy thought, the same emotion, the same project over and over. It meant being at the top of his class. Every. Single. Time. “That’s not an anwer.”
“Because some things defy description, James. They just—are. Like an eclectic planting with a handful of plants I grabbed on instinct and bunged in a pot. It shouldn’t work, but it does. Don’t make me examine what’s sparking between us.” She sounded angry. She was definitely pissed, and he was an idiot. “Because my hospital phobia is nothing compared to my fear of boy-meets-girl. The last time I went on a date was with my husband of ten years. And afterward—” Tilly paused for effect “—we had the kind of sex that you never forget.”
Wow. That was unnecessary. It would have been less painful if she’d kicked him in the teeth. He almost wished she had. James tapped the right side of his seat, six times. Six times so Tilly wouldn’t get cancer and die. And six more times so she wouldn’t hate him.
“Don’t box me in,” she added. “You won’t like the fallout.”
He had blown it, pushed too hard despite Rowena’s warning. Why had he asked the question when he’d known the answer would terrify him? Couldn’t he be happy, just once, in the murkiness of uncertainty? No, he couldn’t. Not when the stakes were this high. He was trying to change a lifetime of habits in one sitting. Failure—the word ground into his gut—should be expected. But not when it came to love, never when it came to love.
He should speak, reassure her that he wasn’t some petty louse who nursed grudges.
“What’s that yellow flower by the roadside?” His voice sounded reedy. A fake voice used to snare Tilly’s goodwill with fake interest in a plant. See? The OCD was right. He was a creep, a lowlife who had taken advantage of her.
“Ragwort. Deadly to horses, but pretty, isn’t it? Thrives on neglect. Definitely my kind of plant.” She smiled, but her smile was as false as his words had been. “What I said—”
“The fault is mine.” He didn’t mean to snap, but it was either spit out a short sentence or keep apologizing. And Tilly knew him too well, would classify his apology as checking, the telltale sign of an obsessive thought, which, of course, it was.
“I saw a sign a few miles back for Green Thumbs Nursery. Can we take a detour?” He reached for his wallet. “If we’ve been at a nursery all day, I’ve bought gifts for Rowena.” He forced out a smile. “Although you’ll have to plant them. And I’m pretty sure I’ve bought a spectacular rose to add to your mother’s collection. She can take it with her when she moves.”
But the magic of distraction sputtered and died. He was so tired of playing games, of hiding his OCD. He didn’t want to have secrets from Tilly. For the first time in his life, he wanted another person to know every distorted twist of his history. Maybe she did already.
“I push too hard,” he confessed. “I always push too hard.”
“I know,” she said, and returned to silence.
And James watched the broken white lines in the middle of the road disappear under the car, marking off the remnants of their day together.
Chapter 20
Despite the humidity, the crack that greeted Tilly as she stepped from the car was not thunder. It was leather on willow, the sound of cricket. With a fortifying glance at Woodend, she walked across the gravel. A bead of sweat slithered down her temple, and she sensed James tracking her.
She passed under the rose arch and took an imaginary step backward to quiet the hammering in her head. The beautiful man playing cricket with her son was Sebastian, the boy with the angelic smile who had loved and desired her when she’d felt more cyborg than human. His shirttail spilled from his suit pants, his loosened tie flapped against his chest and his arm cartwheeled through the air. The debt might be long paid off, but she had owed Sebastian so much. He was a good soul—kind, supportive, loyal. And there were no surprises with Sebastian, nothing left to discover. He was safe, familiar and predictable. The opposite of James.
Tilly swallowed and tasted bitterness. Or was that guilt? She wove her fingers together and held her arms rigid in front of her, trying to fend off the sensation of having been caught out. Hardly a legitimate reaction, but her body seemed to think otherwise. Heat rose in her cheeks and her pulse picked up speed. Was this the fight-or-flight response James had mentioned earlier?
Isaac whacked the ball with a banshee wail of delight and Monty tore after it, accompanied by hoots of no from Isaac and Sebastian. They hadn’t noticed her; she still had time to tiptoe away.
Uh-oh, Monty had spotted her. With a yip of delight, he skidded around and tore across the herbaceous border, flattening the sweet peas. Tilly’s leg shot out to restrain him, but the reflex came too late. He crashed into her like a runaway bulldozer, and she collapsed under the brunt of him.
“Hey, Monty,” she wheezed. “Miss me, did you?” His reply was a drool-drench that stank of rotting carcass. “Yuck. Stop!”
As she tried to wriggle free, she glimpsed James’s black sneakers, the hem of his black jeans and the long fingers that picked up a partially masticated tennis ball and lobbed it into the hedge. Monty yelped, rocketed into the air and hurtled after it.
James had done that? Despite his fear of dirt, he’d picked up a revolting object that she wouldn’t touch? Goodness, he really was the bravest person she knew.
“Thank you,” Tilly said, but James didn’t respond. He was scrubbing his palm against his thigh and watching Sebastian saunter toward them. Tilly tugged down the hem of her sundress, hoping she hadn’t flashed anyone in her fall.
“Mom!” Isaac ran forward and burrowed into her. “How was the gardening place?”
Baby sparrows tweeted from their nest in the guttering, demanding food, and reality crushed her. She hadn’t rehearsed an answer, hadn’t spun a plan. What kind of mother didn’t protect her child with a plan? Her mind was empty, closed for business. A shut-up shop without a single thought, not one—
“Your mother has practically bankrupted me,” James said, inspecting his palm and then scrubbing it some more.
Sod everything; she would have to hug him. But Isaac beat her to it.
James stopped wiping his hand. “Sebastian.”
Sebastian paused to shove his shirttails into his pants. “James.”
“Never go plant shopping with this woman.”
“I don’t intend to,” Sebastian replied.
In three years Tilly hadn’t looked at a man. Not one. And here she was sprawled on her mother’s lawn watching two men square off, secretly thrilled at being the cause. Or rather, the possible cause. Worse, she was trying not to picture herself having sex, although her partner’s identity was fuzzy. Was this some midlife deviancy, the result of three years of celibacy, or was she so worried about losing her sexuality along with her breasts that she had transformed into a pubescent schoolboy mainlining testosterone? Sex wanted, partner unknown.
Sebastian gave a sigh. Faint but not disguised, it was
the kind of sigh David used to terminate a conversation. Then he held out his hand. James hesitated and Tilly tensed. Sebastian would be insulted if James didn’t shake hands, when really, it was incredible that James was still standing there, that he hadn’t run inside to find the nearest bottle of hand sanitizer.
“I don’t think you want to touch my hand.” James stared at his palm, his lips curled back in revulsion. Oh crap. Had he ever looked sexier?
“Can we work on the tree house now?” Isaac clung to James. “Pretty please, before it rains? Grammy says it’s going to storm, for sure.”
Sebastian hauled Tilly to her feet and kissed her on the mouth—a firm, dry kiss that felt like a brand of ownership and bequeathed a stale aftertaste of tea.
“What are you doing here?” Tilly asked him.
“London’s a sauna today.” Sebastian moved his hand down to the small of Tilly’s back and kept it there. He smelled of overheated train carriage and diesel fumes. “I decided to skive off work and come talk to your mother. I was hoping I could surprise the children with the news this weekend.”
So, unlike Tilly, Sebastian had a plan. Unlike Tilly, he’d been organizing, lining up his assets, turning her daydream into his reality. And what had she been doing? Surviving.
“Tilly! Is that you?” Her mother bellowed from an upstairs window. “Sari’s on the phone! Something about a broken mister head in the greenhouse?”
“Brilliant! Be right there!” Tilly backed toward the house while Sebastian and James glared at her. Well, Sebastian didn’t glare, but she was pretty sure he was as ticked off as James, who was practically steaming with repressed anger. And making no attempt to hide it. “Just be a sec. Make yourselves at home. I’ll rustle up a pot of tea, shall I?” She tottered over a tub of geraniums. “Silly me. Tea? Much too late for tea. Drinks anyone?”
Then she ran inside before either man could answer.
* * *
Sebastian held up both hands as he squeezed past her in the kitchen. Anything to avoid touching me. What had happened to the old Sebastian Tilly had glimpsed the weekend before, the man with the seductive glint in his gray eyes? If not for Rowena and James, last Saturday night would, undoubtedly, have ended in a bedroom at Manor Farm, not in a flurry of cheek-pecks in the pub carpark after Tilly had refused a lift from Sebastian or Rowena and, despite James’s disapproval, had walked home alone to clear her head. But tonight Sebastian was skittish, the intimacy from that evening lost.
“Shall we try another night out?” Sebastian hacked up a cucumber on the kitchen table. If he made the pieces any smaller, they’d be drinking gazpacho, not Pimm’s. “How about next Friday?”
“Sure. I’d like that.”
Sebastian chopped furiously. “Any idea when he’s leaving?”
“I assume you mean James. And no, I haven’t a clue.” Tilly put her hands on her hips. Enough of this schoolboy jealousy crap. If Sebastian had feelings for her he should come out and say so, as James had done. Or not as James had done. Bugger. She was utterly lost in this man-woman malarkey. Was it time to tug her widow weeds back on and be done with it?
The knife clattered to the table and Tilly jumped.
“Christ, I’m being a complete prat,” Sebastian mumbled.
Silently, she agreed. But beauty and contrition were quite the combination. How could a girl resist? She walked over and eased him into her arms.
Tilly wasn’t sure how long they stood together—Sebastian slumped against her, hands dangling by his sides, head bowed like a penitent sinner. Pulling away was unthinkable; holding him felt too much like a homecoming. But when the hair at the nape of her neck bristled, she lowered her arms and turned toward the doorway. It was empty, but his echo remained. Isaac had seen them, she was sure of it.
* * *
Was that the moment the evening went horribly wrong? Or was it when her mother toasted Sebastian and Woodend to the accompaniment of a thunderclap, and Tilly’s mind screamed no? Or was it when James asked, “Is he buying you, along with the house?” and she slapped him. She’d never slapped anyone before, which proved she should stop flip-flopping and decide that she was not in lust with James Nealy. Or was it her child’s announcement that he was too tired for reading, so could she please shut the light and let him go to sleep, thank you very much?
Isaac’s rejection eclipsed everything. When she and Isaac were lost in the pages of a book, Tilly was content. And as she lay alone on her childhood mattress, the worn sheet under her so wrinkled it felt like a pincushion, she craved that reminder of life at its richest.
She considered creeping into Isaac’s room and sneaking out with their current read, Arthur: The Seeing Stone, a historical novel with language so lyrical it made Tilly want to weep. She loved the substance of words. Words stayed with you, no matter what happened. But where was the joy in discovering the story without Isaac?
An owl hooted outside and a car chugged up the High Street. Pretending sleep would come was pointless. Tilly kicked the duvet aside and crawled to the window. There was no glimmer of moonlight over the garden, no neon glow, nothing but blackness and a silence that felt solid. Cool, damp air squirmed under the open sash. She gathered her sloppy T-shirt around her body and shivered. In three weeks she and Isaac would be at Creeping Cedars, surrounded by the symphony of nature that croaked, screeched and buzzed every night until Thanksgiving. And her mother, Rowena and Sebastian would be eavesdropping on silence.
Tilly’s forehead flopped against the windowpane, her mind a mess of rotting thoughts: Should she forget about Piedmont Perennials and fight for Woodend, even though she couldn’t afford it? Was this where her heart lay, in Bramwell Chase? Was she ready for love the third time around? If so, with whom? Could she afford to make another mistake, or was she all out of redemption cards? If only she could hear David say, “This is what you should do, babe.” But he had been quiet for so long, and it was time she listened for her own voice.
She closed her eyes and concentrated, the shock of the cold glass on her skin refreshing. Only one question mattered: What did she want at this point in her life? And the answer was obvious: to live, so that she could whoop and holler at her son’s college graduation and cry an embarrassing amount at his wedding.
The landing floorboards groaned and feet paddled up the steps to her room. The door creaked open and light from the dim bulb at the top of the stairwell stole across her bed.
“Mommy?” Isaac’s face, muffled with Bownba, appeared around the door. “I can’t sleep.”
“Me neither, Angel Bug.” She patted the mattress. “Want to try a story?”
“No, thank you.” He leaped into her bed and circled like a dog trying to nest. “I have a question.”
“Then I’ll try to have an answer.”
She snuggled in beside him and wrestled the duvet over them.
Isaac curled his legs up into her chest, as if trying to steal back inside her womb; Tilly wrapped her legs under his as if aiding him in the journey. They had been lying this way since Isaac was a toddler. If only she could lie here forever—forget that the future would deprive her of these moments. But then Isaac spoke, and she knew a fissure had opened between them already.
“Are you going to marry Sebastian?” Isaac said in a stiff, oddly grown-up voice. “Because if you do and he buys Woodend—” He tugged on Bownba’s ear. “Woodend’s your place of memories, but it isn’t mine. I want to go home, Mommy.” He rubbed his eye with his fist. “I want t
o go home.”
Tilly chewed a flake of dead skin from her lip. “I’m not marrying anyone, my love. The truth is, I still feel married to your father.”
“Mom?” Isaac wriggled against her. “Do you miss anything about home?”
“Tons.” And it was true. “I miss our garden so much it hurts.”
“I miss the fireflies.” Isaac sniffed.
“Me, too!” Could she let go of Woodend? Could she force herself to say yet another goodbye? She looked at her child, his face puckered with uncertainty as he stared up at her. Yes, for Isaac’s sake, she could. “We are going home, my love. I promise.”
“Will Sebastian be mad if we leave?”
“Sebastian? He doesn’t do mad. It’s not in his genes.”
“Is he your boyfriend?” Isaac pouted. She’d never seen him pout before.
“No. He used to be, a long time ago. But that was before I met Daddy.”
“I saw you hugging.” Isaac’s bottom lip quavered. “And it made me feel funny inside. Don’t you love Daddy anymore?”
“Always and forever.” There it was again, the word James had tossed at her: always. She stroked Isaac’s back using the firm, downward strokes that had soothed him as a baby. Was she capable of loving someone the way she’d loved David? No, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t love someone else in a different way. When people asked if she had a favorite flower bed, she always replied that each one was unique. And wasn’t that the same with relationships?
“I will always love your father. But I also believe that the human heart is like a pie.”
“Can it be pumpkin?” Isaac shimmied closer. “With Cool Whip on top?”
“It can be anything you want. Mine’s blackberry and apple. With English double cream.”
Isaac yawned. “What do we do with our pies?”
The Unfinished Garden Page 23