Art’s brow shot up. “I didn’t realize it was so recent.”
Graeme wheeled his barrow along the side path to where a few tools and other things had been left out from before. He put it down, fussed with his trowels and claws while taking things out, and generally looked like he was praying for the conversation to rewind to before Art had started to pry.
“It feels like it was yesterday,” he said at last.
Art had put the shovels he carried down and walked from one end of the path to the other, near where the archway leading to the lawn with the ruins stood, but he changed his mind about leaving Graeme in peace when he saw the clear strain in his new friend’s expression.
“Did you love her?” he asked boldly instead.
Graeme looked stricken. “I mean, yes, I did,” he said without much certainty.
It wasn’t at all fair of Art to dig so deep so quickly, but he put his rucksack down and walked back to where Graeme seemedmore than a little lost while sorting through the tools and plants beside one of the garden beds.
“Have you had someone to talk to about it?” Art asked.
Graeme glanced up from his busywork to stare at Art, like no one had ever asked the question like that before. “Not really,” he answered with stunned honesty. “The way things happened, the things that led to the divorce, everything afterward…. No.”
Art crossed his arms and leaned against the sturdy trellis that looked like it was designed for runner beans to grow up. “Did she cheat on you?”
Graeme’s eyes went wide with offense. “She did not. Mavis is a lovely person. She would never do that.”
“Ah. You cheated on her, then,” Art said, digging, digging, digging.
“I did not,” Graeme snapped, anger creasing his face. It melted too quickly into guilt. “At least, not really. It wouldn’t have been right.”
Boom. Even though Graeme turned back to his work, grabbing a shovel and slamming it into one of the beds, he had more or less revealed at least half of the story. For someone like Art, who had gone to university to learn the art of extrapolating a full story from the barest hints of evidence, what Graeme refused to say was as good as telling him everything.
“I think you’re a good person, Graeme Dallen,” he said, stepping up behind Graeme as he dug his shovel into the freshly turned earth a second time. He grabbed Graeme’s shoulders and squeezed to massage them. “I don’t think you have a bad bone in your entire body.”
Graeme tensed and straightened, but didn’t try to shrug Art off. So Art doubled his efforts to knead the guilt out of the man’s shoulders.
“Whatever happened, I think it was just one of those things,” he went on. “You don’t have to tell me, but if you ever want to talk about it, I’m here for you.”
“It was—” Graeme glanced over his shoulder, then turned completely, escaping Art’s hands. “A lot of things happened all at once that sort of blew my entire life to pieces,” he said with a sigh. “I’m still trying to rebuild.”
“You’re a brave man for continuing on in the face of adversity,” Art said, thumping his arm.
“I’m not,” Graeme insisted. “If I was brave, I would have?—”
Art waited, leaning forward slightly, brow lifting.
Graeme looked like a hummingbird hovering in front of a flower, about to dart in and drink the nectar. But only for a moment.
He rocked back on his heels and shook his head. “If I was brave, I would have faced reality sooner and never married Mavis to begin with.”
Another piece of the puzzle fell into place. Graeme was definitely gay. He’d been closeted, for whatever reason, and thought marrying a woman would make him straight. It was a tale as old as time, and like all those other men before him, marriage had probably only made things worse. Art still didn’t know the details of what had brought about the divorce, but he was confident that Graeme would confide in him in time.
He needed to. Graeme the gardener was holding onto what he saw as his failure so tightly that he was about to burst, despite how docile and sweet he seemed on the outside. Art just hoped he was there to collect the pieces and put Graeme back together when it happened.
Or maybe he was just making up drama where there was none because he was bored.
“I’ll be just over on the other side of the brick wall if you need me,” he said patting Graeme’s back one more time before walking away.
He deliberately didn’t look back to see if Graeme glanced up from his work to look after him. He was certain he did, but turning around and meeting Graeme’s eyes when he was stuck in a moment of vulnerability would be taking things too far. Art might have been as blunt as a dildo and twice as sexual, but he knew when to step on the gas and when to pound the brake.
He gathered up his rucksack and continued on into the other garden. There would be oodles of time for him to get under Graeme’s skin enough for the man to confide in him. Maybe that confidence would come when they were horizontal and sweaty together after Art had shown him the time of his life, or maybe it would happen when they were sitting out in the grass on a warm afternoon, sipping lemonade and eating biscuits. Either way, it would happen. It was only a matter of time.
Until then, the ruins deserved his full attention. He walked the perimeter of where he thought the ruins were, spending the next hour laying out markers and taking pictures from every angle. There was no telling what lay under the earth he trod on. In all likelihood, if the story about the fire was true, it would just be a charred foundation that had been razed and planted over nearly two hundred years ago.
