“Juliette?” I called, coming down the steps of the veranda to meet her.
She quickly snapped back to herself, and it looked like her pulling on a coat. One moment her shoulders were rounded, her face slack, and the next she was all angles and smiles. “Sunny! Hi. I thought you were gone for lunch.”
“I had to go post something in the mail,” I explained. “You all right?”
“What? Of course. Why wouldn’t I b—” The ring of her cell phone cut her short. Her smile strained. She excused herself for a moment to go answer it, and by the time she came back, there was no disguising the overwhelmed look on her face.
So, I did something that broke every rule I had set for myself:
I invited her to lunch.
Since I hadn’t gone to the grocer’s for a week or so, and I still wasn’t sure what hours the grocery store held, I had just enough bread for two sandwiches, and just enough vegetables and turkey meat for us. Juliette was a vegetarian, so she took the bell peppers and carrots, and I made do with a slice of cheese and the rest of the turkey.
Well, Reggie and I made do. He always seemed to come sniffing around during lunchtime.
“I should have known things were going too smoothly,” Juliette lamented, biting into her sandwich. We were sitting on the swing outside my cottage, where a rabble of roses had grown up around the frame. “Like, I used to work for a publisher, right? I had a boss whoalwaystold me, ‘Juliette, if you cry in the bathroom, at least make sure the stall door is locked,’ and ‘If things are going too smoothly, brace for impact.’” She looked forlornly down at her sandwich.
I fed Reggie another piece of turkey. “What happened?”
“I left the stall door unlocked too many times,” she replied, and then realized what I meant. “Oh! The string quartet had to pull out. Apparently their cello player went running in the woods at night, fell, and cut up his footandhis bow hand.”
“What was he doing running in the woods atnight?”
“He said he felt like it.”
I opened my mouth. Closed it again. And then shrugged. “Sure, that’s fair. So, no more string quartet?”
“No, and they didn’t even have, like, a backup cello player!” She angrily ate a cut of bell pepper. “And everyone else I’ve called said it’s too short notice or they’re, like, booked up until Christmas. I’msodisappointed.”
I would hate to be someone who disappointed Juliette. “Is there anyone local we can ask?”
“Honestly, I don’t know local people all that well. I’ve only been here about a year.” She fed Reggie a piece of carrot, and he ate it just as willingly as the turkey I kept sacrificing. “Anyway, thank you for listening. I’ll figure something out. Like, I always do. But areyouall right? Like, with the addition of the Willow Grove and everything . . . I bet you’re, like, mad stressed.”
The Willow Grove was something easy to manage. It was the discovery of a secret garden that kept disappearing with a man inside who couldn’t escape that had me worried. I shrugged. “It’s just been a weird week or two.”
“It has been,” she admitted. “And the Oliver of it all doesn’t help.”
I thought about his abs and the way his ass looked in sweat-pants. “No—no, he certainly doesn’t.”
She leaned in toward me, her eyes bright. “But, like, he’ssucha cutie, isn’t he?”
I remembered the moment in his car, him leaning toward me, sunlight bouncing through the windshield, turning his blond hair gold and his eyes caramel, his gaze settling on my mouth in an unanswered question. “He’s very pretty.”
“I’m just shocked he’sstaying. From everything I heard, he hasn’t before. At least not for more than a few days. You know, he’s the head of the family’s architecture firm so, like, he’ssuperbusy.”
Oliver?The man who seemed more likely to play hooky as much as he could was the head of an architecture firm? “He only told me that he helped restore old houses.”
Juliette rolled her eyes. “Helped?He’s like,the guy. Eula Beck and her late sister started the firm. She’s, like, super famous in her field, apparently.” She cocked her head in thought. “I haven’t heard much of anything about her other nephew, though. I think he’s a lawyer or something? Do you think he’ll show up, too?” she asked in a tone more suited forDo you think the other shoe will drop?
I gave Reggie the rest of my sandwich, and he happily snarfed it down. “No, I don’t.”
At least, Ihopednot.
“I don’t think so, either,” Juliette agreed. “It’s just so sad, you know. About the greenhouse. It was already sad with Mr. Beck, but . . .”
I’d heard bits and pieces about the Lilymoor greenhouse from online Reddit threads and the gossip mill at NYBG, but nothing solid. I knew that Henry Beck kept all his sprouts and seeds there, and most of his blue-sky plans for Lilymoor in the shed attached. But then, tragically, he passed away from a stroke while out in the Central Garden one autumn day, and the next summer the greenhouse caught fire. I wished I could learn more, but it didn’t seem like a topic anyone liked to bring up—ever.
There was a word for that. I knew it intimately; since I’ddanced around the topic of Harriett’s death for so many months afterward, the dance now felt like second nature.
