I grabbed my shovel and headed for the Hedges to see if I could find those damn vines.
Morning was bright, and the birds were screaming, and I had a job to do. I decided to put the door out of my mind until I found it again—because I woke up this morning realizing that I hadn’t imagined it. The garden, and the man inside of it, had been too real. I’d just . . . lost it. Temporarily. So I went about finding somethingreal, something I could actually wrap my hands around and yank out by the roots. I had a bachelor’s in science, gosh darn it.
So, with said grueling four-year degree and ten years of hard-won experience, I got down on my hands and knees in the dirt to look under the hedges—
And came face-to-face with the beady, soulless eyes of a Canada goose.
She stared at me with those pitiless, flat eyes.
I stared back.
I read somewhere that you could assert dominance over a tiger by refusing to be the one to blink first, but geese were not tigers.
And I think the information had been wrong, anyway.
Damnit snapped at me. I jumped to my feet, grabbed my shovel, and took off running down the maze. The goose wiggled through the hedge, spread her wings, and followed like a raptor hunting for sport.
Now I was a degree-toting horticulturist with a fellowship in environmental sciences running for her life from an angry three-foot dinosaur.
Two things became very apparent to me then. One was that Ireallywasn’t getting paid enough for this. And the second was that only one thing could stop Damnit:
Stairs.
So I made a break for the manor, out through the maze to the Central Garden and toward the veranda. Lilymoor had yet to open for the day and the daycare had yet to arrive, thankgod, so at least there weren’t any witnesses as I bolted up the stairs two at a time.
Damnit had made her distaste for me known immediately my first day on the job, when I was rescued by Juliette. At first I had wondered whythatwas the goose’s name, but I quickly learned that it fit her well. Ever since then, Damnit has had a vendetta against me the likes of which even Wykofski marveled at. Apparently she’d never displayed such immediate vitriol to a new person.
Lucky me.
But at least Damnit’s kryptonite was a decent set of stairs.
I came to a stop at the top of the veranda, winded, as the goose stopped at the bottom. She ragehissed from below, thwarted.
“Ha!” I cried. “Not so tough now, are you?Ihave the high ground!”
After a minute, the goose got bored with trying to figure out the steps and padded away to go get her breakfast. Wykofski was probably putting out her food. If there was one thing that sated Damnit’s hunger for chaos, it was premium goose feed.
“Oh, Sophie, dear, you’re just the person I wanted to see.”
With a start, I whirled around to find Eula sitting in one of the rocking chairs on the veranda with a cup of tea. She smiled at me and motioned to the chair beside her. My heart was still racing from the goose, and sitting down seemed like a good idea, so I took her up on her offer.
She said, “The goose seems to have taken an interest in you.”
“Something like that,” I replied, pulling off my sun hat as I sat down.
“You can’t mind her—she’s a bit different. You know, my nephew Cyrus saved her when she was a little thing. She got separated from her family and he hid her in the shed and fed her table scraps, thinking we wouldn’t notice.” There was a mischievous glimmer in her eyes. “I left out extra table scraps, obviously.”
“Well, I wish she’d stop thinkingIwas table scraps,” I lamented with a huff, and she cackled a laugh.
“Before you it was poor Jules, dear! The goose doesn’t pick favorites; she just has a short-term memory.”
That, at least, made me feel a little better.
Patiently, Eula rocked back and forth and sipped on her tea, looking out onto the peaceful garden. It was eerily still, the bugs too loud and the wind moaning over the cliffs. I could see how people thought they could hear voices on that wind.Sometimes, when a particularly strong gust roared up from the cliffs and rattled the boxwoods, it almost sounded like someone calling out for a friend.
Almost.
“Dear, I’ve had something on my mind,” she said after a moment. I glanced over to her as she set her teacup down on the saucer on the side table. “I’ve been thinking about the garden you asked me about yesterday.”
