“Don’t sew, don’t dust, don’t bake.” Tilly gave a ragged laugh. “I’m a lousy cook and I lose socks in the wash.” Was she trying to prove that she was worthy of him, or that she wasn’t? “I’m the anti–fifties housewife.”
“As every woman should be.” James dug a folded white tissue from his pocket—one of those super-large super-strength kind—and swaddled Bownba like a mummy. “Luckily, Isaac, I have everything we need to mend Bownba. Would you fetch my backpack from the hall?”
“Sure!” Isaac bounced off.
“I see the two of you have the situation under control,” Mrs. Haddington said. “I think I’ll go and settle myself in the kitchen. It’s almost time for The Archers. Monty, come with me, you bad dog.” Monty snuffled her leg. “And no, it’s no good trying to make nice. That was a despicable thing to do. No pizzles for you, in fact I….” Her voice trailed off as she hopped over the step into the drawing room.
Silence, thick as Carolina humidity, settled on the patio, broken only when the sounds of a radio soap opera drifted through the kitchen window. Tilly smiled nervously, tempted to say: Now, where were we? But it was James who spoke first.
“Pizzles?” He placed Bownba on the patio table.
“You don’t want to know….” She tried to add something witty, but her humor failed her. And without it she felt exposed. Talking to James had always been easy, but Tilly’s stomach prickled and burned as if she had poison ivy on the inside.
“Is there anything you don’t carry in that backpack of yours?” she blurted out. Terrific. Nothing like an inane comment, Tilly. Why couldn’t he have kissed her? One little kiss. No biggie. Or maybe it was a huge, effin’ biggie. The first guy she’d attempted to kiss in three years, and he’d rejected her.
“Since I don’t do spontaneity, I need to be prepared for every eventuality.” James unfurled the tissue, then used it to cover his fingers as he splayed Bownba’s limbs. “But you know me well enough to have figured that out.”
Yeah, right. She’d figured him out so well that she’d tried to kiss him, which seemed to be the last thing he wanted. “Isn’t flying home tomorrow spontaneous?”
“Hardly.” He smiled and lifted his head, and once again she saw the child in the man, a passionate child, quick to find enthusiasm or anger. “If I stay I’ll end up brawling with Sebastian. And contrary to what you might believe, I like the guy. Well, I respect him.”
She hugged her stomach. “Being here without you is going to feel so strange. You’ve become part of the scenery.” Ugh. That’s not what she meant. Not even close.
James stared at a clump of dead aubrietia trapped between two paving slabs.
No. This was not ending in a failed kiss. “We need to talk, James, about what you said.”
“Not now.” James gave a nod toward the house.
Isaac staggered out, James’s bag clutched to his chest. “Jeez-um. That’s heavy.” He dumped the bag next to Bownba.
“For good reason,” James said. “Isaac, would you care to assist with surgery?”
Isaac’s eyes grew wide with delight. It was so easy to help a child bounce back. Simply hold out warm arms and wait for the scraped knee to be forgotten, the tears to become a smile. Love and kindness, the cure-all for kids.
And yet Tilly, who was surrounded by boatloads of love, was still sinking in quicksand. Thoughts scrambled through her mind, jostling for prominence. This quicksand, this sadness that sucked her down every day, was it the final remnant of grief? Or was it the tug of stolen dreams—the children never conceived, the old age she should have lived with David? Dreams she had lost but couldn’t abandon. And how daft was that?
She sank to a cold, wrought-iron chair and watched James’s long, thin fingers thread a needle on his first attempt. He would be a gracious lover, a skilled lover, a gentle lover. And no making love in the dark. He would want his lover exposed—she shivered—he would want to see.
Maybe her mother was right. Maybe she was holding back from life. If so, what was she so scared of? That she couldn’t love again, or that she could?
* * *
Tilly bundled a sopping Bownba into a pillowcase, knotted it, then placed it in the drum of the dryer. The tree house was finished and supper cleared up. James had run out of reasons to stay, and Tilly had run out of excuses to create more. He leaned against the fridge in the scullery, arms crossed, as if waiting for her to speak.
“How about a coffee?” She was grasping at air—James didn’t drink coffee in the evening, but panic bred desperation.
“No, I need to go pack. My taxi’s coming at six.”
“I wish you’d let me drive you to the airport.”
“I know, but I’d prefer not.”
“Then give me a minute, and I’ll walk you back to the Hall.”
“No, Tilly.” James straightened up and extended his hand.
He had got to be joking. After all they’d shared, or not shared, he wanted to shake hands? She slammed the dryer door. “Dammit. You’re not walking out on me, not without an explanation.”
“I gave you one.” He slid his hands into his pockets.
“Rubbish. You threw some garbled speech at me. It meant nothing.”
“It meant a great deal to me.”
She felt color bursting on her checks, and it wouldn’t be attractive. A blush this strong would manifest itself in scarlet blobs that resembled an alien strain of measles. Great, the final memory he’d carry home would be of Tilly the Martian.
James, however, was drained of color. Pale and unnaturally still, he seemed taller than ever. The expression on his face had tightened, as if he had locked down his features, preventing them from betraying emotion. Although one muscle rebelled, twitching in his neck.
“Get your shoes on.” His voice was flat. “I’m saying goodbye to your mother and Isaac, and then I’m leaving.”
And after he stalked out, his anger remained.
* * *
James strode through the paddock and across the wooden slatted bridge over the stream where she and Rowena used to collect jam jars of tadpoles. He ducked under the brambles dotted with hard, green blackberries, threw open the gate to the field, and left Woodend without a backward glance.
Evidently, he was taking the scenic route to the Hall—via The Chase.
The stream gurgled beneath her as Tilly clomped over the bridge, desperate to keep James in her sights. Man, he could walk fast. She paused to heave the gate shut, since James had wedged it into the hedgerow, then huffed out a breath and gave chase. But every step was like trudging through a snowdrift. Tilly’s feet slid around her mother’s Wellington boots making a strange thwup sound. Not one of her better decisions, and she’d have huge blisters the next day to prove it. But when she’d grabbed the nearest footwear, her only thought had been to guard the exits so that James couldn’t sneak out. And he hadn’t. He had stormed out of the back door and challenged her, with a thunderous expression, to follow.
“Could you slow down, please?” Before I trip and break my neck. “Better still, stop.” Tilly jumped over a clump of bracken and drew level with James.
“I’m curious.” He ground down on a thistle with his right foot. “Do you honestly believe that I’m here because of gardening lessons?”
The air was laden with moisture; Tilly could smell rain coming.
“No,” she said. “I think you’ll find that was my idea.”
“I suggested using humor
to help deal with the truth. Not hide from it.”
Hide? What did he mean? “What am I hiding from?”
“The real reason I came here. The fact that I’m impulsive when it comes to love.”
Déjà vu. She’d had this conversation before, or a similar one, in this very spot. She stared at the mutilated thistle by his foot. “If you’re not spontaneous, how can you be impulsive?”
“Another sadistic twist of OCD. I want something? I can’t see beyond that need. Once again my mind is stuck, seeking instant gratification. Of course, there is another explanation.” He smiled, but it hit Tilly like a slap. “That when it comes to love, all bets are off.”
Yup, same conversation.
The Shetland pony at the far end of the field swished its tail. Tilly and her sisters had dreamed of keeping a pony in this field. They’d even corralled their father into approaching Lord Roxton. But their mother had put her foot down at one mongrel, four budgies and two incestuous guinea pigs.
Beyond the pony, two elders daubed with white florets framed the gate to Woodend. This view had been a tonic for so much of her life, and yet how many times had she stood here and talked about love: courtly love with Rowena, teenage love with Sebastian, the passion of a lifetime with David? The pony snorted, and Tilly imagined herself toppling into a black hole as it collapsed from the inside out. She could almost feel herself fall, the world around her spinning out of focus.
“So this was never about the garden?” she said.
“You can’t avoid every truth.” He extended his hand. “Goodbye, Tilly. And thank you.”
What was it with him and handshakes today? “No.” She refused his hand. “You can’t dump talk of love on me and bugger off to parts unknown. We need to talk about this.”
“Talk about what? Talk about how you captured my heart the moment you walked toward me, gin in hand? Talk about the second when the image of your face burned itself into my mind and became the one image I’ve never wanted to erase?” His voice was sluggish, dragged down with sadness that seemed to have blasted away his anger. They had both followed their emotions, and look where it had led them. Tilly sighed, echoing the despondency she sensed in James. Why was she forcing his hand, when she didn’t know where she wanted the conversation to go?
“That first day,” he said, “the day we met, you stood up to me. I can steamroller people, Tilly, but with you, I never stood a chance. You sneaked in and peeled away every defense and I let you. I held up my hands in surrender and let you see me lose control. I’ve never done that before with anyone. I felt safe with you, because you saw the real me. And it didn’t scare you.”
He tucked a strand of hair behind her ears. “Three years ago I was in love with a woman I hoped might be the one. And yet I never let her in. I never wanted to. And when she left, I vowed I was done with love. But I met you and I knew, I just knew….” He closed his eyes. “I smell your hair—pears and vanilla—in the middle of the night when I can’t sleep from wanting you.”
He wanted her, but he wouldn’t kiss her?
“Your voice never leaves me, and your eyes? I see your eyes every time I close my own.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose, a gesture Tilly recognized. A headache was sneaking up on him. She reached for a spot above her right eye, the epicenter of every one of her migraines. Migraines, something else they shared that involved only pain.
“Do you know what happens when I fall in love?” James said. “The OCD latches on and tortures me with my passion. You talk about solitude as if it’s the Holy Grail. But it’s not a choice for me—it’s survival. Every day I wake to the dread that something terrible will happen to you. And then?” He opened his eyes and gave a bitter laugh. “The OCD moves on to my jealousy, distorting my feelings into self-loathing. I’m on fire, consumed by images of you with Sebastian, you with David—” His hands tore through his hair. “I see David—” his voice turned hard “—before he fell in the bar, his face full of shock and disgust. I see his ghost watching us, repeating over and over, Anyone but him. I see Sebastian, his face full of your history, saying, I know more about her than you ever will. If I asked you to walk away from Sebastian, never see him again—would you?”
A thought picked at the back of her mind. Suppose this quicksand she’d imagined earlier was of her own making. Did that mean she had the power to tug herself free?
“No,” Tilly said. “Because it’s not your decision to make. It’s mine.” And for the first time in days, she felt calm. No, it was more than that. She was flooded with relief—relief that she hadn’t kissed James; relief that she hadn’t started down another life path that wasn’t hers.
“I never wanted to lose Sebastian’s friendship, and now I have a second chance. I don’t know where it will lead, but I want to find out, as much as I want you to stay. Does that make me fickle? Possibly. But I’m not a gambler, James. I want to bumble along, take time, not risks. You were right. I don’t know what I want, but I need the freedom to find out.”
And I’m so not ready to talk about all-consuming love and passion. Been there, done that. And it ended in death.
“I gave up my name, my home, my career for David. I lived my life through him, through his achievements and his ambitions. I stopped wearing red. Red’s my favorite color, but he liked me in brown. And guess what?” She tugged on her red long-sleeved T-shirt with the sparkly swirl over her chest. “No brown these days.”
She patted her noncancerous breast and felt strong in health and purpose. “This lump has tied me into knots of regret, of second-guessing myself, of thinking my life forward and backward and inside out. Self-flagellation’s great for the soul, isn’t it?” This should be an evening to celebrate, not the time for another farewell. “But it’s also smashed my world to pieces, and Sebastian is one of those pieces. If I’m going to put everything back together, I need to figure out where he fits in.”
A surge of anger came from nowhere, like an invisible fist punching her in the gut. She wanted to scream at David and pummel his chest. She wanted to hate him for abandoning her, hate him for leaving her to face the threat of cancer alone. More than that, she wanted to hate him for dying, so that, once again, she was standing in the spot where he had proposed, facing the knowledge that she could circle through love and loss a second time. And who had the willpower for that? Three years ago, James had cut love from his life. Three years ago, the same thing had happened to her, but not by choice. Today she had choices, and she was going to take them.
She blew out her breath. “Your determination, your single-mindedness, remind me so much of David. And that terrifies me. I worry not that I can’t love you, but that I can. You’re a man I could fall hopelessly, helplessly in love with. And lose myself in the process. That’s a trade-off I won’t make. I can’t follow someone else’s blueprint for my life again. I just can’t.”
She thought of Sebastian—dependable, reliable, predictable. Like Monty, he would always veer to one side. And she knew, in that instant, that James would leave and she would let him go. Hadn’t it been inevitable from the beginning, when he’d wanted to hire her? She should have agreed, should have signed a contract, done the work, then walked away. But then again, she’d never been neat, not even in relationships.
“I want the easy way out,” she said, “because some things are too painful to be repeated. And you must agree, otherwise why leave?”
“No, I disagree. I believe that pain of the heart, like pain of
the mind, should be met head-on—demystified.” James tossed back his hair. “And I would stay and battle every monster in my head and beyond if I thought it would bring you to me willingly, certain only that you loved me.” He paused. “What I don’t believe in is allowing myself hope where there is none. I may be many things, but I’m not a fool.” James’s eyes followed a horse and rider along the horizon, galloping over the ridge. “I don’t understand why you’re so hard on yourself. Where you see weakness, I see strength. I see an incredible woman who could never cower before a man, even one as demanding as me.”
He took two steps toward the wooden stile that led into The Chase and then paused without turning. “But I can’t love you, Tilly. It’s destroying me.”
The druid oaks threw a blanket of quivering shadow over him and he vanished, swallowed by the blackness of The Chase.
* * *
James thumped his fist into his palm. Of all the stupid, self-destructive— What the hell was he doing? Why was he leaving the arena? She’d admitted she could love him. He should stay and fight for that honor. He could easily beat the crap out of Sebastian. The guy was a Wall Street suit and a slight one at that. He didn’t even have a regular workout routine—playing a game from England’s imperial glory days didn’t count. James could snap every bone in Sebastian’s puny English body and not break a sweat.
And what did he, James, mean—that he couldn’t love Tilly? He couldn’t stop loving her. Hadn’t he tried? Hadn’t he used every piece of logic in his arsenal, and it had changed zip, nada, nil, nought, zero, nothing?
He had loved her the day they met, he would love her tomorrow when he got on the plane, and he would love her every week, every month, every year after that. He wanted to touch her; he wanted to take her, claim her as his. Mine.
She was meant to be with him, not with Sebastian.
Jealousy and rage, contaminated feelings he couldn’t contain, seeped out of him. He folded his arms over his head and longed to disappear. How could he be such a fuckup? None of this would have happened if he’d kissed her. All she had wanted from him was a kiss. He should have kissed her and made it count, made it matter. Forty-five years of age and he couldn’t kiss the woman he loved. Any progress he’d made fighting fear this summer was lost.
The Unfinished Garden Page 27