No, probably not.
I finished my lemonade and pushed myself back on my feet. “Well,thispessimist has to go solve the mystery of the annoying vines. Thank you.”
“Lemonade’s here every day,” he replied, but I think we both knew my thanks was for more than that.
15
trygghet
Just as I returned to the roses, Juliette’s voice came across the shortwave radio clipped to my belt, summoning me to the house. Eula wanted her houseplants watered, and Juliette had already caught her red-handed trying to do it herself.
Well, it was better than getting pricked by more roses, at least.
So I radioed back that I’d be there in a few and filled up a rusted watering can in the kitchen and made my way up the stairs. Eula’s bedroom was at the far end of the house, so it was a bit of a hike with a sloshing watering can, where I knocked on the door before I let myself inside.
I’d never been in her bedroom before—it wasn’t in my purview, and Juliette had taken it upon herself to water the plants there during Eula’s absence—but when I stepped inside I was struck by how . . .removedit felt from the rest of Lilymoor. While the rest of the estate was pristine and purposefully decorated, Eula’s room was filled with clutter—so much that some of it looked like it was about to attempt to fall in on itself.
It was as if Henry had accidentally cut open his green thumb years ago and bled it across the ornate crown moldingand old stone fireplace and built-in bookshelves, dragging nature inside just for her. There were bottles of soil, bone-white skulls of dead animals, framed displays of beetles and butterflies and moths. In the large picture windows hung stained-glass pieces of art that threw colors across the room whenever the sun hit them just right.
And between all the plants and mementos and postcards were pictures, so many pictures, of family and friends and—most of all—of Henry. Even if I didn’t know what he looked like from the benefactors wall at the NYBG, I’d have guessed it was him. In his youth he was tall and lanky, with a shock of ginger hair, which later in life turned white and thin, and his tallness bent. There were so many photos, it was almost over-whelming. Henry in the Rose Court. Henry posing, one leg hiked up, on a wine barrel. Henry sitting by the foundation of the groundskeeper’s cottage. Henry smoking his pipe in a rocking chair on the veranda. Henry mid-laugh as a bright-eyed, blond-headed child showed him a frog, as another child, with reddish hair and stouter, cried in the background. There were wedding photos. Anniversaries. Parties—
It was a living reliquary, and the longer I looked at everything, the more bittersweet it all tasted.
There was a garden outside—the one I tended to—but this garden was just as lovely, too.
“Good afternoon,” I said happily, stepping into the room. “Jules said your plants needed some tending?”
Eula was sitting on a plush queen-sized bed, though she’d gotten dressed and curled her hair, shuffling through a stack of papers on a lap tray in front of her. “Oh yes, yes, come in. Bless her, Jules was such a dear to look after them while I was gonebut I’m afraid with all of her talents, gardening isn’t one of them.”
“Gardening takes thyme. I’m sure she could grow into the role.”
She huffed, “I doubt it—oh.” Her eyes widened, and then they glittered with delight. She cackled a laugh. “A pun! Cleverandtalented? My Oliver better watch out,” she commended, and I bit back a grin, trying not to feeltooproud. “There’s another amended contract for you, to include your new work with the Willow Grove.”
“You really don’t have to keep amending my contract—”
She waved her hand dismissively. “I didn’t, dear. It was all my lawyer. He was adamant. Likes to be thorough with his paperwork, and bill me for the time,” she added under her breath.
Setting down the watering can, I went over to the contract on the desk. This time, there was a white aster beside it. The flower for patience. I picked it up and twirled it between my fingers as I read through the highlighted passages. It seemed straightforward enough, so I signed where I was supposed to, and that was that.
“Thinking of this for the bouquets now?” I asked, referring to the flower.
“You know, he suggested it,” Eula replied, thoughtful. “Henry loved asters, and cosmos, and star lilies. Anything with a sky-like name. He liked the irony of it, to name a flower rooted to the ground after something it would never touch in the sky. But,” she went on with a shrug, “white is so very . . .weddingish, you know?”
“I guess …”
“So the search continues,” she went on, and I tucked the aster behind my ear. “And now thatthatgarish business is done, why don’t you come look at myDracaena trifasciata. It looks a little droopy, doesn’t it?”
She pointed over to a potted plant by the window that looked quite fine, its spear-like leaves jutting up triumphantly in the face of Juliette’s attempted drowning. It was just a normal snake plant, almost impossible to kill. I went to go inspect it anyway and knock some dust off its leaves.
Still healthy as ever, just like all her other plants in the room.
Out the window, I noticed Juliette warding Damnit off with a watering hose in the front gravel driveway.
“The snake plant looks just fine. A little dry, but I wouldn’t worry. Did Juliette mail the invitations?” I added.
“Mm-hmm,” Eula replied as outside the events and relations director threw down her hose and made a break for the house.
Eula asked me to get her pain meds, and so I busied myself with that for the next few minutes, and got her a new glass of water, and helped readjust her pillows. “Ow, ow, ow, my old bones keep getting older,” she complained with a groan. “Sophie, my dear, never get old. You become a burden.”
