A mother and her two kids wandered into the Lily Walk, though whereas the daycare had run amok, they took their time, pointing at the placards and the bees. Oliver watched them for a moment before saying, “I miss the garden—back before Henry died. We used to always find him somewhere out here. It was like a hunt. He’d be gone all day and then wander in for dinner with dirt all over him, and the next day we’d find something new. A boxwood shrub cut into the shape of a cat. A newly dug pond. A flower bed. A tree swing. The garden was always changing with him. Now I miss something that doesn’t really exist anymore.”
I watched the young girl pick up a flower on the pathway and stick it in her sister’s hair. “There’s a word for that—hiraeth.”
“That’s a pretty word.Hiraeth,” he repeated slowly, letting it languish on his tongue. Then he smiled, though it was bitter-sweet. “I like it. You know a lot of strange words.”
“My best friend used to collect them,” I supplied, picking at my nails. “So I guess I do now, too.”
He grimaced. “Ah, a falling out? I’ve been there.”
“Something like that,” I admitted, though I didn’t explain, and he didn’t ask.
How different Oliver was from Rus. Instead of confronting the topic, he just let it be entirely. I wasn’t sure which I liked better, though leaving it felt safer. It was the way I’d operated for so long, wiggling out of discomfort before I could sit and inspect it.
He turned to me, a strange look on his face. “I’ve a question.”
“I’ve an answer,” I replied.
“When do you want to get dinner?”
“When my calendar’s free,” I replied, because the truth was my eveningswerepretty tied up with my golden-hour visits. Even if Rus furrowed his brow and grumbled about me wasting my time.
Oliver bit back a grin, shaking his head. “You’re trouble, you know that?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Mm-hmm.” He held up a piece of paper. “Well, Miss Head Gardener, guess I should get to why I came out here looking for you in the first place.”
“Oh? Not just to chase off some toddlers?”
“Regrettably I’ve been promoted to personal shopper.” He showed me the list on the memo paper. It was written in Eula’s long, elegant script. “And I was wondering if you knew what kind of tea she likes. She just wrote down London Fog, and I’m not a big tea person.”
“I’m not, either, but I think it’s loose-leaf. The kind in a cylinder this big,” I said, making the shape with my hands. “Ithink it’s in the back corner of the grocery store, where the imports are.” He nodded, frowning, looking more lost than he had a moment ago. This is what I’ve come to know asweaponized incompetence, though I regretted to admit that it looked somewhat cute on him. For the moment. I hoped it wouldn’t venture into annoying. “If you want me to come along, you can just ask.”
His eyebrows jerked up. “Whoa now.”
“Or do you want me to suggest it?” I added, folding my arms across my chest.
He shook his head. “See? I told you.Trouble.”
I plucked the grocery list from his hand. “We can take my Jeep. I haven’t driven it in a while.”
The only grocery store in town was a small mom-and-pop shop in the heart of Odette, across from a hardware store and a secondhand shop that often moonlit as the tourist center. At the corner was the only coffee shop in town, an Italian restaurant, and Pinch, the lobster roll shack. There was also the Bar-nacle, a motel that smelled of old cheese—I’d know because when I checked in, I got the distinct smell of Gouda in my room and no cheese plate in sight—beside the neon-lit dive bar, called the Wharf, that probably served cold beer even in a snowstorm. Past the small hub of the town were houses inter-spersed between wide swaths of evergreens and a road that curled up to the main coastal highway.
So basically, it was almost impossible to get lost.
All the shops in town kept random hours, so it didn’t surprise me that once we parked on the street and arrived at thegrocery store, the only cashier informed us that it would be closing in five minutes.
I tore the grocery list in half and handed one piece to Oliver. “You take those, I’ll take these. Meet back at the register in five?”
He plucked the paper out of my hand. “You’ve done this before.”
“See you in five,” I said. “Ready, set, go!”
Eula’s grocery list was a lot of the basics I’d seen her eat in the last week—butter bread, peanut butter, apples, a bar of Hershey’s chocolate, and her Earl Grey tea. I checked everything off the list and returned to the register before Oliver and set it all down on the counter. He wheeled a grocery cart up a moment later, filled with paper towels and pasta and a few different TV dinners and some popcorn, and I announced, “I won.”
“I got distracted,” he replied with a pout as the cashier began to punch the barcode numbers into the register. The grocery was so old, it didn’t even have a scanner. Oliver then grabbed a cardboard container and held it up. “They have freshstrawberries. I couldn’t say no.”
“We have strawberries back at the house,” I said. “In the kitchen garden.”
