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He shook his head.

“Since she hurt her shoulder?” she asked.

“It was a couple months before that. Around March maybe. She’d be horrified if I she knew I knew this, but she is seventy-nine. She deserves a rest.”

“I can’t imagine her telling you her age,” she said with a laugh.

“That’s because she never has. When I was about seventeen, one of the summer boys and I had a pool going guessing how old she was and whether that English accent was real. I stole a look at her driver’s license. It said it right there. Born in 1881.”

“You’re lucky she didn’t catch you,” Theresa said.

“For weeks I was convinced she was going to find out and fire me.”

“And now you’re managing the entire operation,” she said.

He tilted his beer at her. “For my sins.”

“You love it,” she said.

He grinned. “I really, really do.”

When they finished dinner, Matt drove her back home. Somewhere on Los Robles Avenue they stopped for a light, and he reached across on the bench seat to take her hand. She smiled, and they drove the rest of the way like that, listening to a dance band on the Chevy’s radio.

When Matt pulled up to the curb a couple doors down from her house, she peered out the window to the darkened windows of the Hernandezes’ bungalow.

“It looks like my landlords have gone to bed,” she said.

“It’s late,” he said.

“I hope you don’t have to be at the nursery early tomorrow morning.”

He shook his head. “Normal hours tomorrow.”

She watched him out of the corner of her eye, wondering for a moment if she should be brave and what he would think about her if she was, and then she made her choice.

“Would you like to come in for a drink?”

Matt dipped his head, but not before she spotted his smile. “I would like that very much.”

He hopped out of the car and then rounded the front to her side, opening the door for her. She noticed that he was careful to close the door as quietly as he could, no doubt sensing that a single woman living alone was already enough of a novelty to attract her neighbors’ curiosity.

She took his hand and led him down the sidewalk to the little wooden gate that separated the garden from the street. She lifted the latch and let them in, closing it softly behind her. The crickets chirped as they walked down the stone path leading to her studio. Without a word, she unlocked the door.

She let Matt in first, closing the door behind them both. Then she set her keys in the dish on the small wooden table she’d bought at a junk shop when she first arrived in Pasadena and turned to Matt. For a moment, neither of them moved, and then he reached out for her. She stepped to him and into his kiss.

October 24, 1907

Rosewood House, Altadena

Dearest Margot,

I do not know how to tell you this other than to simply come out and say it. I have left the Gables.

Do not ask me why. The reasons are still too raw and difficult to think of now, especially when I do not know if this move is temporary or not. All I know is that living with Guy had become impossible.

As you can imagine, I have relocated to Rosewood House. I am better here for a time, where I can have space and air to breathe and think.

I have been hard at work in the garden, trying to do what I can without interfering too much with Macalister’s work. It is incredible how much has changed since I first turned my thoughts to the garden nearly a year ago. The place is unrecognizable, and although it will take some time for everything to establish, I am surprised at how quickly it is beginning to look as I had envisioned it.