“How fabulous.Tell her I said hi.”
“I will.”Chelsea looked outside at the dry, dying garden and her mood plummeted.“I also spoke to Darren.”
“What did he have to say for himself?”
“Johann paid him fifty thousand dollars to let the garden die.”
Her mother sucked in a breath.“How dare he!”
Her outrage soothed Chelsea.A small part of her had worried her mother had known and was using the destruction of the garden as an excuse to sell.
“Johann has been planning to buy the property since even before Aunt Maggie died.”Chelsea had gone through the proposal her mother had sent her and noticed the creation date was before Aunt Maggie’s death.
“That’s no excuse for what he did.”
Chelsea nodded.“I understand it’s your choice, but I’d really prefer you don’t sell to him.”
“Absolutely,” Sabine said.“He and his company can go to hell.The greed of the man…”
She heard Ezra speaking in the background and her mother explained what had happened.
“No, this isn’t business,” Sabine said.“Lilydale is Chelsea’s home.”
Chelsea’s heart ached.Ezra wouldn’t understand their sentimentality.He’d never gone without, never been abandoned by all their family except Aunt Maggie, had never been uncertain where he would live next.
Without Aunt Maggie they would have struggled far more than they had.
“No, I won’t sell to that man since he’s been so underhanded,” Sabine continued, talking to Ezra.A pause and then, “We can discuss it later.”The bite in her mother’s tone made Chelsea smile.Sabine turned her attention back to Chelsea.“What are your plans now?”
A good question.“I’ve gone through a couple of rooms,” she replied.“Taken some stuff to the op shop.There wasn’t anything you wanted to keep, was there?”Probably something she should have asked earlier, but they’d taken a few things when they’d been here for the funeral.
“No, I’ve got everything I want.”
“Then I’ll keep going through the rooms.”
“What about the garden?”
She pursed her lips, uncertain about her mother’s reaction.“Actually, Ethan’s doing some work on it.”
“Ethan?Not the Ethan who worked in the garden during high school.”She sounded shocked.“Didn’t he join the army?”
“Yeah.He’s on leave and came to visit Aunt Maggie.He didn’t know she’d died.”
“Oh, the poor man.I had no idea he kept in contact with her.”
“They wrote regularly.”It was sweet.
Sabine chuckled.“Aunt Maggie and her letters.She always insisted it was far more personable than email.”
And she was right.Chelsea might have saved her emails in a folder if they’d emailed, but she never would have gone back and reread them.Not like she had with her letters.
“Didn’t you have a crush on Ethan?”
Chelsea cringed, wishing her mother had forgotten.“Yes.”It had been more than a crush, but by the time her mother had returned from Europe, he had already broken up with her, so Chelsea had played it down.
She’d dreamed of marrying him—maybe not immediately, but someday after completing university and getting a decent job.
As a teenager she’d believed something about her deterred the male gender since her father wanted nothing to do with her and Ezra had just tolerated her.
