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.
“In the Middle East?” He dipped toward her as if to catch her words.
“Peace from others.” She held his gaze and felt the remnants of her bonhomie sizzle up in the heat. “I need the world to bugger off and leave me alone with my thoughts.” And my guilt.
Sinew jutted from his neck. “That’s a dangerous place to be, alone with your thoughts.”
Tilly gulped back why, because she didn’t want to know. Her thoughts were like tender perennials in a greenhouse, and she didn’t need some stranger to crack the glass.
He blinked rapidly, and his mottled eyes filled with an expression she recognized. She hit a fawn once, driving along Creeping Cedars at dusk. Sprawled on the verge, the poor animal lay mangled and broken, its quivering eyes speaking to Tilly of the desire to bolt, hampered by the knowledge that there was no escape. The same fear she saw now in James.
Vulnerability, the one thing she could never resist.
A burst of sunlight caught on James’s small, black ear stud. A black pearl?
“Please,” James said. “Please show me your garden.”
She would have agreed even without the second please. “On two conditions.” She slugged her gin. “You understand that I’m not agreeing to take you on. And I fix you a drink while I freshen up mine.”
But James didn’t answer. He was wandering along Tilly’s woodland trail, his index finger tapping against his thigh.
Copyright © 2012 by Barbara Claypole White
The
In-Between
Hour
Barbara Claypole White
Reader’s Guide
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QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
A label of mental illness still carries a stigma in our society. Will has spent his life running from this shadow, and it has made him intensely private. Does your family have any experience of mental illness, and if so, have you struggled to find the balance between the public and the private? Do you think we have made any progress against the stigma?
How do you feel about Will’s relationship with his mother? Do you think he should have accepted and made allowances for her behavior in the way that his father did, or do you think Will was right to call Jacob an enabler?
Will pretends Freddie is traveling in a moment of exhaustion and grief, but he makes a conscious decision to keep the story—and Freddie—alive. What do you think of Will’s actions?
Do you believe grief manifests differently in everyone and that we all find unique ways of coping? Is Will merely trying to survive the unimaginable by leaning on the one thing he can control—storytelling?
Hannah believes that there is living, breathing history on Saponi Mountain. Will echoes that thought when he sees pictures of Hitler’s anti-aircraft flak tower. Do you believe that places or buildings can retain an imprint of the past almost like a stored memory?
What do you think of Hannah’s comment that family life is never about the picket fence and the dinner rolls but about surviving crises? What do you think of Will’s comment that no one knows what happens once a family shuts the door and pulls the curtains?
What do you make of Hannah and Will’s connection through Rosie? Do you believe in fate, or do you see their relationship as growing out of a chain of events orchestrated by Poppy and Jacob? What do you make of Will’s comment that they fell in love because of, not despite, their respective family dramas?
The North Carolina forest is an important element of the story. How does the setting impact each character? Can you imagine the story working in a different setting?
The line between truth and lies blurs constantly in the novel. Do you agree that lying—or spinning a story—is sometimes necessary to protect loved ones? Why do you think Will and Cass worked so hard to keep Freddie’s paternity secret? Do you think it was realistic to assume they could do so? Do you think Hannah was right to hide her father’s suicide from her sons? What would you have done?
What do you think the future holds for Galen? Do you see him finding ways to cope with his depression?
In your opinion, what is the significance of the title, and how does it relate to each character’s story?
Listening Guide
“The Ghosts That We Knew” - Mumford & Sons
“Hymn to Her” - Chrissie Hynde
“Under Control” - The Strokes
“Flashing Red Light Means Go” - The Boxer Rebellion
“Save Me” - Muse
“Horseshoes and Handgrenades” - Green Day
“Lover of the Light” - Mumford & Sons
“Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses” - U2
“Ultraviolet (Light My Way)” - U2
“Maps” - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
“Half of Something Else” - The Airborne Toxic Event
“Two-Headed Boy” - Neutral Milk Hotel
“Explorers” - Muse
“Shadows and Light” - Simple Minds
“Never Too Late” - Three Days Grace
“Famous Last Words” - My Chemical Romance
“Safe” - The Airborne Toxic Event
“Dear Alyssa” - The Arcadian Project
“Sorry For It All” - Dead Sara
“In Between Days” - The Cure
“Timeless” - The Airborne Toxic Event
“I Will Wait” - Mumford & Sons
A Conversation with the Author
What was the inspiration for this story?
As with The Unfinished Garden, the original story seed came from a dark what-if moment in my own life. An older family member was experiencing short-term memory loss that generated anger, confusion and a string of emotionally exhausting phone calls. In the middle of one of those phone calls, I had a terrible thought—could life get any worse? I decided, yes, it could. And my mind created Will’s dilemma. Memory, grief, mental illness, rural Orange County…ideas started swirling and I did what I always do—I followed my gut, my curiosity and my research. I’d been toying with a ghost story, and that idea had already unearthed threads about psychic healing, rock climbing, Native American spirituality and animal guides. All those roads led to Will and Jacob. Poppy popped out pretty much formed, and Galen evolved while several people close to me were battling depression. (Echoes of my life run through everything I write.) My real problem was Hannah. Finding empathy for a holistic vet was quite a challenge, since we don’t even own a goldfish. I started out with false assumptions about Hannah and found her too calm and too spiritual. I agree with Galen—she’s a hard person to read. But when my son relapsed into crippling obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), Hannah suddenly lit up for me. I realized she was just another terrified parent. I also learned that being the mother of a child struggling with mental illness is very different to being the mother of a young man in the same situation. That was something I wanted to explore further and I did, through Hannah’s journey.
What did you enjoy most about researching and writing The In-Between Hour?
My research took me to places I couldn’t imagine, but my favorite part was hanging out with John “Blackfeather” Jeffries, former Chief of the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation. The first time we met, I turned up with a string of questions. Within minutes I abandoned the interview and just listened. John told me so many wonderful stories about his childhood, his family history and the history of the tribe that I lost track of time and almost missed school pickup. The second time I was smart enough to take a recorder! We spent hours looking through his scrapbooks from the excavation of the ghost field and the reconstruction of the living village. John’s shed is the best-kept secret in Hillsborough. It’s a museum of living history.
What do you hope your readers will take away from this novel?
The In-Between Hour is about two broken families coming together to heal. I hope readers will find it an uplifting story of redemption and community, and a story that reveals light in the darkness of grief and mental illness.
The story is an emotional read that explores dark issues. Was it a challenge to write some of the scenes?
I went through a string of personal crises while writing the manuscript, and the characters became my escape and my therapy. I found it surprisingly easy to walk out of my problems and into theirs, but the trick was finding emotional distance, especially from Hannah. I didn’t want to project my family’s struggle with OCD onto her family’s struggle with depression. The scene that was the most emotional for me was the one in which Will breaks down. It’s hard to put yourself into the thoughts of a grieving parent and stay detached. On the flip side, the suicide scene was surprisingly easy to write, because Galen is at peace with his decision.
Do you have a favorite scene?
Please don’t think I’m a sick person, but the post-suicide scene is my favorite. I love the interaction between Will and Hannah, and I love the way the action unfolds. I wasn’t sure I could write action, but a friend helped me choreograph it, and I was thrilled with the result. We really did act out most of the scene! (Yes, alcohol was involved.)
How did you create the character of Angeline? Is there a reason that Will never attempts to diagnose her?
The character of Angeline was inspired by the idea of families keeping secrets, whether those secrets involve alcoholism or mental illness. I started by researching various diagnoses and reading a number of memoirs, but Angeline quickly became her own character—wildly creative with severe mood swings. In the end I decided
she should have no label since she was never diagnosed. I also found the impact of her behavior on family life more intriguing than the source of her demons. The reality, too, is that many people with mental illness are misdiagnosed. (That happened in our family.)
Can you explain your fascination with mental illness?
My aunt, who lived with us for a while when I was growing up, was diagnosed in later life with paranoid schizophrenia. Even as a child, I struggled to understand why she led such a seemingly empty life—always treated as if she were frail and always kept apart from others. My grandmother worked tirelessly to shield her from what she perceived as the shame of mental illness. When my son was diagnosed with OCD at a young age, I wanted the opposite for him. I’m drawn to memoirs and stories that find hope in the darkness of mental illness, because I need that hope for my son. I also struggle with the stereotypes of mental illness in popular culture—especially those of OCD. So often the focus is on failure or weird behaviors and not on the incredible courage it takes to live a life framed by mental illness, to admit to that diagnosis publicly and to fight back. (For the record, my son is academically gifted, and an award-winning poet, lyricist and musician. I am incredibly proud of him.)
Both your debut novel, The Unfinished Garden, and The In-Between Hour touch on grief. Why do you write about loss?
My father died when I was in my late thirties, and my subsequent grief was a very isolating experience. No one close to me had lost a loved one, and I didn’t know how to make sense of my thoughts, especially the layers of guilt. I tried to be strong for my mother, and I tried to pretend I was coping, but I’m a creature of emotion. The moment I collapsed and dumped on my husband, I began to find my way forward. I believe strength comes from admitting you’re struggling and seeking help. You have to face the monsters within.
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