A Month at the Shore

by Antoinette Stockenberg

  'Those were for private consumption," Snack muttered. "I was never a dealer."

  "Neither is Miss Widdich! What is this thing you have against her? You remind me of certain good citizens of Salem."

  Laura hardly heard their bickering exchange. She was browsing through the handwritten ID stakes in the pots and becoming even more uneasy.

  Sylvia Savory. Silver Sylvia. Sylvia Sage. At least five of the herbs were tagged with the name, obviously bestowed on them by Miss Widdich herself.

  "We're a little heavy on Sylvias here," she mentioned to the others. She rattled off some of the labels.

  Corinne shrugged and said, "Sylvia is a good horticultural name. Doesn't it mean 'woods'?"

  "Most herbs don't grow in the woods. They need sun. Lots of it. It's not the most logical name to use. Here's what I was thinking—does anybody remember Sylvia Mendan? That gorgeous girl who worked here for a couple of months one summer and then suddenly quit and moved on? Remember? Dad was in a black mood for weeks after she left. Her name was Sylvia."

  Laura was remembering how disappointed Miss Widdich had been that she, and not Sylvia, had been the one to deliver a dozen fragrant white roses on that foggy summer solstice. It had seemed odd at the time; it seemed even odder now.

  Corinne said, "But that was a million years ago; Miss Widdich couldn't possibly remember someone who came and went through here so fast. I imagine she's thinking of someone more recent, if she's thinking of a specific person at all."

  "Of course she has someone in mind," Laura argued. "Horticulturalists name plants after specific people all the time."

  "I don't see what any of this has to do with us—but if you're so curious, then ask her."

  "I can't. I'm not her friend the way you are. You ask her. But do it in front of me. I want to see her reaction."

  "No! It's too personal. If she'd wanted to explain, she would have. You're the one who seems obsessed with Sylvia Mendan, not Miss—"

  "Will you two knock it off already?"

  Laura glanced at Snack, who immediately looked at his watch. "Look, am I supposed to bring down the damned prunus or not?" he snapped. "I've got a lot to do before the opening gun—unless you two plan to find someone else to be your fricking clown."

  Whoa. Was that why he was being so testy? Because he dreaded putting on the harmlessly silly clown suit?

  Somehow ... Laura didn't think so.

  "No, forget about the prunus," Corinne said, easily as edgy as he. "The plums and the cherries are done blooming anyway. But why don't you bring down a few shrubs? Say, two or three daphnes, and maybe one or two viburnums. We'll put them near the entry so that people will pick up on the fragrance."

  Snack turned to go, but Corinne added, "I suppose, bring a couple of the weigelas too. The buds will give us a shot of color, even though the blooms aren't open yet. As for any trees ... the weeping ones would have the most impact now. Two of those. We'll move the rest of the trees to their new spot tomorrow."

  With an impatient sigh, Snack marched off, only to be called back again by Corinne. "Do you really think you'll have the compost area scraped clear to use for a display area by then?"

  "I will if I don't have to stand around here all day."

  "Go, then; go. I know you're almost done," said Corinne.

  Snack practically jogged out of the greenhouse in his dash for the tractor. Corinne looked concerned. "Is that just enthusiasm, do you think?"

  "Hard to say. I wish I knew," Laura murmured.

  "Oh, there you both are," came a voice behind them. It was Miss Widdich herself, leaning on her cane and struggling with a gallon pot of Saint-John's-Wort, its cream-and-pink marbled leaves spilling luxuriously over the edges. "Would you be able to ring this up for me, even though you're not open yet? I don't have this variegated version, and I must say, it's stunning. This one is all you have?"

  Laura recognized that had-to-have gleam in Miss Widdich's eye; collectors were like that, whether it was a Hummel or a hypericum that they were after.

  "I'm afraid that's the last one," she said. "But it will fill out so fast; it should get you started, at least. You don't have to pay for it, Miss Widdich," she added. "Consider it a gift for helping us out."

  "Thank you. Then I'll be on my way. I want to get this in the ground, and a bit more done, while it's still cool. It's going to be a scorcher—for May, anyway."

  "Another record, I'll bet. And still no rain in sight," Corinne fretted. "Oh, why didn't I stock more drought-tolerant plants?" Shading her eyes, she scanned the blue, sunny sky in a fruitless search for clouds.

  Laura said, "You did fine, Rinnie. We have plenty of low-water plants. People are going to buy the biggest bloomers, anyway—no matter what the season's forecast."

  Corinne's confidence seemed to be drooping under the rising sun, and Laura could see why. This was it, their moment of truth: they were betting the ranch on having a great sell-through during Founders Week. Although serious gardeners had been shopping and planting since April, the more fair-weather types, and certainly the summer people, didn't get going until Memorial Day weekend.

  "I'll carry this to your car for you," Laura volunteered.

  Miss Widdich took her up on her offer. "Thank you, dear. I think I overdid, the other day in the garden."

  Or something. From old lady to Amazon to old lady again in a couple of weeks: the difference in Miss Widdich's condition was more than a strained muscle or two. Either she had been faking being strong, or she was faking being weak. It didn't take a physical therapist to figure out which was more doable.

  Miss Widdich sighed heavily. "And to think I once planted a row of eight-foot-high arborvitae for a side hedge. By myself. And now I can't even carry a pot. Never get old, Laura; never get old."

  "Oh, I don't know," Laura said as she loaded the plant in the trunk. "It's better than the alternative."

  She was being flip, but the remark went over like a lead balloon. Miss Widdich gave her a withering look and said sharply, "What is that supposed to mean?"

  "It's just an expression, Miss Widdich," Laura said, backing off quickly. "I didn't mean anything by it."

  Astonishing, how the woman was able to turn Laura into a teenager quaking in her shoes again.

  Laura gave her an intimidated smile and said, "I'll see you this afternoon at the workshop?"

  Please let her stay home with her dolls and her pins.

  "I'll be there—if I live that long," Miss Widdich said darkly, and she slammed the trunk of her big black Ford.

  Jitters, Laura decided. For whatever reason, there was a plague of them going around. She herself felt as though she were backstage on opening night. What if they didn't come? What if they came and didn't like what they saw?

  Take us or leave us, folks, she wanted to shout. Just make up your minds so that Corinne can get on with her life.

  And by the way, that goes for me, too, damn it.

  ****

  By ten-thirty, the lot was full, the help—Melissa—was overwhelmed, and Laura was in a state of shock. Everyone in Chepaquit seemed to be there, eating cookies, drinking coffee, collecting balloon animals—and buying everything in sight.

  Billy was staggering around like a dancing bear, emptying wagons, loading cars, and generally acting as traffic control officer. His gap-toothed welcome was as cheery as any Wal-Mart greeter's as he flagged cars into tighter and tighter parking spots.

  Snack, amazingly, seemed to fit right in with the lively carnival atmosphere. Orange and chartreuse suited him well, and so did big giant feet. He squeaked, he honked, he hammed it up. The kids loved him, even though his balloon creations looked more like aliens than dachshunds. During the lulls—there weren't many—he drove the old green Deere, still wearing his big giant feet, back and forth between the far reaches of the nursery and the loading area, bringing back more stuff to sell.

  He hadn't quite finished clearing the compost pile, but it hardly mattered: there wasn't time to set up a proper
display of trees, anyway. Besides, people seemed to enjoy roaming the different sections of the nursery, probably as much for the view of the sea and the cool breeze as anything else. What was not to like?

  As for Corinne, she was everywhere at once, giving advice, ringing up sales, hunting down just the right plant for just the right person. Freckle-faced and flushed with joy, she couldn't look more radiant if she were wearing a wedding dress and leaving a church. It was a thrill for Laura to see.

  Gabe was there and lending a hand, which might have had something to do with Corinne's joy. He had walked across the road shortly after they'd opened their doors for business, and almost immediately, Corinne had drafted him as her assistant. Gabe didn't know much about horticulture, but he was willing and able to find more boxes and trays, snug up the pots to eliminate the gaps on the tables, and do whatever it was that a guy Friday was supposed to do and still maintain a councilman's dignity.

  It helped that Gabe knew everyone in town; he was able to talk up the nursery and encourage each citizen, by name, to go out and drag back his or her friends. People teased him about running for mayor a year early and handed over their babies for him to kiss. And meanwhile, his big, gentle mutt Baskerville ran around and barked at the birds and slobbered over the kids who took the time to pet him.

  Even Miss Widdich had somehow managed to make herself not only pleasant, but useful. She planted herself, cane and all, next to the table that featured her herbs and took it upon herself to advise browsers on the fine art of herbal medicine and cookery. Never mind that all most of them wanted was a simple pot of basil or chives; Miss Widdich was a fount of facts, and she wasn't afraid to spout them. After hearing her, Laura was sorry that she hadn't invited her to conduct a seminar on herbs.

  Maybe next year.

  Through it all, Laura kept a weather eye out for Kendall Barclay III. She spotted his assistant among the customers, and a teller from the bank was there too. But the president of Chepaquit Savings was a no-show so far. It was disappointing at first, crushing by lunch. She wanted Ken to witness their amazing turnaround! He would be pleased that his bank's money had been so wisely invested.

  Besides that, she wanted him to be there because ... she wanted him to be there. Period. He had said he would come, and he was a man of his word; she believed in him instinctively now. So she searched for him among her customers, and watched for his car, and tried to be as enthusiastic about the glorious day as her sister was, although she wasn't quite able to match her level.

  Laura's late lunch was a half-melted PowerBar that she had been carrying in her pocket, and a handful of her sister's oatmeal cookies, which sounded healthier than they were. The dried-flowers workshop was coming up. If Ken arrived during it, Laura would miss him.

  She put her disappointment aside as she set up the materials for her event, because she knew that a woman did not have the right to be crushed simply because the holder of her loan didn't show up.

  She was joined by her sister, who came rushing into the greenhouse bearing a tray of brownies. Corinne was out of breath and on the run.

  "Believe it or not," she said as she laid out napkins and paper cups next to the coffee urn on a rickety card table, "someone has just applied for a job here. Lucy something. Nice girl. She's worked at nurseries before. Sounds pretty knowledgeable. Not like Melissa. I think Lucy has appeared as a blessing. I told her to get to work and we'd worry about the paperwork later."

  "Oh, Rin," Laura argued. "Was that really a good idea? What about liability, what about—?"

  Corinne waved away her sister's fears. "It's not as if she's going to fall overboard and drown or something. For heaven's sake—this is a nursery. What could possibly happen?"

  "She could pull her back; she could fall under the tractor—which is the number one reason of death in this type of workplace, incidentally," Laura pointed out.

  "She didn't look like the type to sue." Corinne picked up a brownie and offered it to her sister. "Here. Chocolate. It'll soothe your nerves. You have pre-presentation jitters, that's all. Stop being so negative; you just have to trust."

  The last thing that Laura could easily do.

  But she took the brownie and hugged her sister. "You're so damn much better than I'll ever be," she said, her voice suddenly husky and emotional.

  Startled into laughter, Corinne said, "What was that all about?"

  "You. You're so full of hope. But you're a Shore. Where do you get it from?"

  "Come to church with me next time and see," Corinne quipped. "What, would it kill you to break away from here for an hour?"

  "It's not church. You were always like that. You were the shyest and yet somehow managed to be the most optimistic."

  "Maybe the two things go hand in hand," Corinne said lightly. "It's easy to be hopeful when you don't know what's out there—"

  Her face broke into a sudden happy grin. Laura turned and saw Gabe Wellerton entering the greenhouse with a man who she thought looked vaguely familiar.

  Gabe met Corinne's grin with one of his own and matched her ebullience. "Ladies, I want you to meet someone who can throw a hell of a lot of business your way: Joe Penchance. He's certainly thrown it my way; as you know, I'm doing all the fences for his Bayview Estates development."

  "Ah, that must be where I've seen you," said Laura to their visitor as they all shook hands.

  Her response to him was predictably schizophrenic. He was a developer, after all, which automatically made him one of the enemy in her book. But on the other hand, someone like him could make the difference as to whether Shore Gardens would be able to stay afloat or not.

  Better to be nice, for now. "I hope you've had a chance to look around the nursery, Mr. Penchance. We have quite a bit of stock, but it's somewhat spread out."

  "I've been roaming all over the place," he said with a congenial smile. "It's a big place. Prime acreage."

  He was probably pacing it off and figuring out how many houses he could squeeze in.

  "If we don't have what you need," Laura said, smiling, "Corinne certainly can order it for you."

  Penchance nodded and said, "Trees. Small, decorative trees."

  "Not large shade trees?"

  He sighed and said, "Generally the homebuyers go for the pretty ones, not the big ones. Maybe they don't have the patience to wait for a tree to mature. It's too bad. I'm with you on planting shade trees if there's room: people ought to plant for the generations ahead of them."

  "But the customer is always right," Laura said laconically. "Isn't that what we keep saying, Corinne?"

  Poor Corinne. She was like a fieldmouse searching for grains of corn to keep from starving while a hawk sat on a branch overhead, watching and waiting. She nodded nervously but didn't say a word to their hovering visitor.

  What an incredible change in her in the space of sixty seconds.

  Laura and Penchance exchanged pleasantries about the terrific turnout, and then the developer smiled at them both and said, "Well, I'd better find my little girl and my wife before the clown runs out of balloons—and you run out of geraniums."

  "Well! That doesn't sound so terrible," Laura quipped.

  They left, and she said in a musing aside to her sister, "Not so terrible at all."

  ****

  All of the sign-ups, including Miss Widdich, were present by ten minutes before the appointed hour, so Laura used the extra time for the students to introduce themselves.

  Totally unnecessary. Everyone seemed to know everyone, and despite the fact that they were all new faces to Laura, most of them knew her. Or at least, of her. She felt surprisingly notorious. After all, she was the niece of a murderer. In a small village like Chepaquit, that counted for something.

  Well, let them satisfy their curiosity about her. She was filled with wry resignation. They'd plunked down good money for the right to know whether or not she ran true to seed like her murderous forebears, and she was going to give them a full hour to decide for themselves.

>   All things considered, Laura was glad she'd taken the time to duck into the house and change from work khakis to a challis jumper that she'd found on one of her dashes into T.J. Maxx. She felt pretty in lavender. And she felt confident that she knew more about flowers and how to dry them than anyone else in her audience. She felt everything ... but happy.

  Where was he? He said he'd be there.

  She put the thought of Ken aside as gently as she would a dried pansy, and then she turned her attention to the class.

  Chapter 16

  A minor plumbing crisis at the bank made him late, so Ken had to decide whether or not to crash Laura's seminar on dried flowers.

  Twenty women.

  Shriveled plants.

  Nope.

  He compromised by parking himself, with a cup of coffee, on a broken-down bench just outside the greenhouse where Laura was giving her talk. Sipping the surprisingly good brew, he sat back and listened to the sound of her voice rather than to her actual words. By now he was so besotted that she could have been explaining the easiest way to rob a bank. He wouldn't have been any the wiser.

  She was irresistible. Each time he saw her, she struck him as more beautiful. He remembered reading that once a person had been successfully hypnotized, the person hypnotized more and more easily. That was him, all right. Completely under her spell. He wanted her more than any woman he'd ever known.

  Too soon, too soon, knucklehead. You've hardly spent any time with her.

  However: at least it was spent in bed.

  Yeah, but it was spent straightening out a pathetic misunderstanding.

  Whatever. At least it was spent in bed.

  She let herself be carried away by you. Literally. That doesn't mean she'd let you do it again.

  Like hell.

  Why? Why her?

  Now that was the million-dollar question. The easy answer was that Laura Shore was an attractive, sexy woman—but he'd been with plenty of attractive and sexy women before. What was it about this one that had him sharing a broken-down bench with a dozen potted ferns just to be able to hear the sound of her voice?