He really didn’t have a single thought in that head of his. I was envious.
I offered to open the wine bottle, but she waved me away and did it herself.
“If I ever get old enough to need help opening wine, send me out into the sea,” she announced, and popped the cork off with a twist. “There! It’s a dry red from the cellar. Can’t say how old it is, the label’s worn off.”
I sniffed it. “I’ve never had expensive wine, so it doesn’t last long enough in my house to go bad.”
She laughed and poured two glasses. “I hate to admit the best wine I’ve ever had was the cheapest bottle with the best of friends.”
I grinned at that, remembering all the boxed wines Harrie and I went through our last year of college together, and all the BUY 2 Get 1 Free chardonnays I brought over to her apartment after whenever I visited. “I think you’re onto something there.”
She raised her glass in acknowledgment, and I clinked with her, and we drank. The wine was dry and cool and nice. “So,” she said, “here we are. At the end.”
“At the end,” I echoed.
“I hope you’ve enjoyed it, at least a little bit. You’ve been such an antidote for this old estate,” she said, looking pensively down at her wine. “Honestly, when I called some of my late husband’s colleagues, I was half afraid I’d be laughed away and told I should’ve given this place to someone who knew how to take care of it years ago.”
That surprised me. “I don’t think anyone would’ve laughed at you.”
“You’re very kind, but I’m glad it was you they sent. You woke this garden up. You brought it back to life when I’d been stuck tending to my own grief for so long, I didn’t realize the flowers were dying.” She took a sip of her wine, shaking her head. “You know, I could’ve retired quietly—a lot of my friends thought that was the best way to go about it—but to be honest, I like the pomp and circumstance,” she added in a not-so-secretive voice. “And I was rather tired of my nephews constantly being at odds. I was hoping this would bring them together. You can see how well that worked.”
I swallowed thickly. “He’s coming tomorrow, at least.”
“Oh yes, I know!” she confirmed brightly. “Oh, Sophie, dear, I’msoexcited. I hope he’ll see what you’ve done with the place, and he’ll miss it. I know he will. He always loved this place. I’m certain he still does. He just doesn’t think he deserves to love it after everything. I hope I can prove him wrong.”
“Maybe you will,” I replied, my heart aching at the thought of Rus.
Reggie whined, and she bent down and rubbed him behind the ears.
“Henry and I never had children, you see. We tried, but …” Her voice trailed off, and she drank more of her wine. “Ollie and Rus were our kids, as much as we could have kids. We loved them very much, and you want to know a secret?” She leaned in toward me, smelling strongly of sweet wine and Red perfume. “The inheritance always went to them. Since before Henry died. We knew when they were little tots running around that we’d leave Lilymoor to them.”
“So this retirement party and inheritance announcement . . .” I began to guess.
“It was to bring them back,” she said, eyes glittering mischievously. “And it just might work—oh!” she gasped, pointing at a glowing bug in the distance. “There’s one! Iknewwe’d see them. Henry always loved them. He used to say, ‘Eula, if the gardens weren’t already magic, they’d make it for us.’ We were lucky to find this place, I think.”
“Lilymoor was lucky to have you, too,” I replied, and she reached over and squeezed my arm.
“And you.” She smiled at that, and it was a smile of adoration. I didn’t think there was a world in which she didn’t love her husband. “I hope its next stewards will be just as lucky. It would be a good life, I think, to whoever wants it.”
Lazy mornings with a cup of coffee, the scream of birds, the soft bloom of flowers across spring, and summer, and fall. Growing old in a rocking chair, and dreaming up new vistas in the woods, and listening to the wind come up off the cliffs, searching for voices we once knew.
“It would be,” I agreed, letting myself imagine it for the first time.
I raised my glass and clinked it against hers once more, wishing that if there was magic somewhere in this world, it would be here in a small coastal Maine town, in the midst of this quickly fading summer with a man who made my heart bloom, where the nights were cool and the skies were bright and I just wanted with all of my heart to be home.
“To a good life,” I echoed, and maybe it could be, someday.
39
guanxì
The bicentennial came in a rush of—well, rain, actually.
Only in the morning, thank goodness, but that was enough of a setback for Juliette toabsolutelylose her shit for the rest of the day. Not even Damnit could distract her, and the goose tried valiantly, and instead got a Birkenstock thrown at her. At least Juliette didn’t have to worry about a quartet showing up late, because Wykofski arrived at work with a tux in tow, and when she asked what color it was, he replied, “The color of my soul.”
Which boded well for the rest of us.
I did my rounds after the rain, making sure the garden was watered and fed, and no unsuspecting animals had upended anything in the night, and I kept a lookout for the door, the real door, even though I knew it was pointless. Still, I finished marking up the rest of the brochure’s map, going through the Rose Court, over the Moon Bridge, and even to the Willow Grove, ducking into every unaccounted alcove, standing on every rock, looking for the door, the garden, the willow—anything.
