Authors: Gin Jones
Dale was distracted by something on the phone she'd pulled from the back pocket of her jeans and didn't seem to notice the woman in the turquoise hoodie until she coughed softly for attention.
Dale glanced away from her screen. "Helen Binney, meet Annie Quattrone. She works across the street at the retirement community and sneaks over here whenever she can during the growing season. She's lucky to be married to the boss, which gives her a lot of freedom."
Annie looked like she might have disagreed with that description, but she just took a deep breath and said, "Nice to meet you."
Helen would have offered to shake Annie's hand, but the woman's arms were loaded to overflowing with a pile of twelve-inch-long wooden stakes. The ends had been sharpened into lethal-looking points that even Helen's woodworking friend Ambrose Tate and all his tools couldn't have improved upon.
"Are you expecting vampires?" Helen asked.
Annie stared pointedly down at the twine dribbling out of the front pocket of her hoodie. "We need to mark the perimeter of each individual bed. It's been too wet to plow until yesterday afternoon, and then it was too late to do the marking, so we've got to do it today. And fast, before anyone claims more than her fair share of land."
"How can I help?" Helen said.
Annie looked at Dale for instructions.
Dale tucked her phone away and said briskly, "Just watch this time, it being your first year and all. Annie knows the system, and it won't take her long at all to get it done."
Annie nodded. "We've got plenty of volunteers already."
In other words, Helen thought, even without her limp and her cane, she'd somehow given both women the impression that she was useless, someone who couldn't do anything at all. She'd proven otherwise before, and she'd do it again. Just not by interfering with work she didn't understand—she supposed Annie and Dale were right to think she'd just hamper their efforts, mostly due to ignorance, not lack of physical strength and agility.
She could wait until harvest time to prove herself. She wouldn't even have to say anything on her own behalf. Her garden, overflowing with vegetables, would show everyone just how much one short, frail-looking, middle-aged woman could do.
* * *
Helen debated going back to the car where Jack was waiting for her with the heat on but decided she could learn something by watching the marking of the plots, even if she couldn't actively help. They started with the left side of the garden, the one that wasn't obstructed by the bulldozer. The Native American man who'd been chanting over a clump of mud led one team of Dale's volunteers, efficiently pounding stakes at each end of the garden's central path and then in the two remaining corners of that half of the garden. Another team ran twine between the stakes while the first team pounded more stakes along the line of the twine at thirty-foot intervals. More twine connected opposite stakes, and more stakes went in at the intersections of the widthwise and lengthwise twine.
Much as Helen hated to admit it, Dale and Annie had been right; she would have been more of a hindrance than a help trying to keep up with the rest while she was out of shape and wearing shoes more suited for an office than the damp, recently plowed ground.
Her glum thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a car alarm over in front of the house on the corner of the street. It belonged to a little black sports car, and it seemed to go on forever before its owner finally disarmed it and everyone stopped glaring at it, impatient to return to whatever the noise had interrupted.
When the noise finally stopped, Helen turned to see what the gardeners were up to. The Native American man had handed off the sledgehammer to someone else and headed over to his truck parked a little distance down the street in front of the ballpark. He unloaded some supplies and stacked them in a garden cart that looked like a child's old-fashioned metal wagon, except heavier and green, with a mesh bottom for drainage. As he approached Helen, she could see that his cargo consisted of trays of two-inch-square peat pots with two seedlings in each one.
"You are new this year, I believe," he said. "I am Paul Young."
"Helen Binney. And yes, I am new. Not just to this garden but to all gardens." She pointed at his cart. "You look like a pro."
He gave her a wide smile. "You could say that. I work at the Park and Rec Department, and when I'm not doing landscaping for my job, I'm here in the garden."
"Isn't it a bit early to plant anything?" she said. "I thought we were just coming here to claim our plots today. And participate in the blessings too, of course."
"For most things, yes, it is too early." Paul picked up one of the peat pots. "But not for peas. It is said that they should be planted on St. Patrick's Day for the luck of the Irish, but I am not Irish. And I have found that March is too early here. The seeds will either not germinate in the cold ground or the seedlings will die in a freak snowstorm. Better to start the plants indoors and then transplant them outside in April."
"I guess it's too late for me then."
He shook his head. "Not at all. I would be honored to share my plants with you. I always start a few extras for anyone who needs them."
Helen looked at the mud in the path to her garden and then down at her clothes. "I'm afraid I'm really not prepared for any actual work today."
"I will plant them for you," he said cheerfully. "They will be here waiting for you when you are ready to work."
"Thank you." She was grateful for the plants, of course, but even more so for the man's confidence that she was more capable than she looked and the assumption that the only thing holding her back was her wardrobe. "If there's anything I can do in return, just let me know."
"I shall remember that." Paul glanced past Helen in the direction of the farmhouse on the corner lot.
She turned to follow his gaze. An elderly man in nothing but a gray tank top and white briefs was coming down the back stairs of the farmhouse. When he reached the bottom, he made a beeline for the back corner of the garden.
Paul held out the handle to his wagon. "Would you hold this for me? I will be back in a few minutes."
He jogged down the central path of the garden, apparently intending to intercept the underdressed man. Before Paul had gone more than thirty feet, a middle-aged man—fully clad in a dark sweatshirt and sweatpants—came racing out of the farmhouse. The older man gave the younger one a good chase, bobbing and weaving around some overgrown bushes between their backyard and the garden. Paul hesitated, shifting from foot to foot indecisively until it was obvious his help wasn't needed. Then he turned around to reclaim his wagon. By the time he'd reached Helen's side again, the underdressed man was being hustled up the back stairs and into the farmhouse.
"What was that all about?" Helen asked.
"Richard Avery Senior has Alzheimer's, and Richard Junior—everyone calls him RJ—is determined to care for him at home." Paul took the wagon's handle. "It is a challenge for both of them."
"I'm sure it is." Helen had seen only the very tip of that particular iceberg at the Wharton Nursing Home. The staff there were extraordinary, and they made caring for dementia patients look easy, but she knew it was an illusion even there where the staff had the advantages of a secure environment, colleagues to share the burden, and a substantial period of time off between shifts. RJ, on the other hand, was apparently trying to do everything all by himself and around the clock in a building that wasn't designed for preventing the patient from leaving.
"Tell me about your garden plans," Paul said, "so I will know where to put the peas."
Plans? Helen didn't have anything particular in mind other than to buy plants and stick them in the ground until she ran out of space. She'd have to do some more reading to come up with a plan. "Perhaps I should skip the peas. I wouldn't want to keep you from working on your own plot."
"A gardener's work is never done," he said, leading the way down the incline from the sidewalk and into the garden, pulling his wagon behind him. "But, in the end, it does not matter what is left undone each day. You do what you can, and if it is not enough, well, there is always another day, another year, and the chance to start over with a freshly plowed bed. There is no guarantee for a do-over when it comes to making a new friend."
Helen hadn't really expected to make friends here at the garden. She'd been thinking of the activity more as it had been presented in the gardening books, as a solitary occupation that would improve her health and produce a bounty of vegetables. But she could use some more friends. Ever since she'd left Boston and her old way of life behind, she'd been having trouble establishing new friendships, especially with people in her own age group. She'd thought she was making progress in establishing a comfortable camaraderie with the president of the Friends of the Library, Terri Greene, but that had been before the incident with Victor Rezendes last fall, and their budding friendship was a little strained right now. From what Helen had seen so far this morning, the community garden might provide an excellent opportunity to meet some new people who, for a change, weren't murder suspects.
"All right," Helen said, following Paul down the muddy path, "but I've got to warn you I'm a total newbie in the garden. I've read a lot, but it hasn't quite settled into my brain yet. All I know for sure is that I'd like to grow more of my own food since there's at least anecdotal evidence that a healthy, vegetable-rich diet and moderate exercise might reduce the frequency and severity of my lupus flares."
"Gardening is good medicine." Paul knelt in the path beside the far corner of Helen's plot and laid out six pea plants on top of the freshly plowed dirt. "This is the northeast corner of your plot. If we plant the peas here along the path, they will not be shadowed by the taller plants you grow beside them."
"Whatever you say." Helen had read about the different amounts of sunshine that various plants required and how tall different things grew, but there had been too much information to remember it all. She'd have to make some sort of chart when she got home. She was good with charts.
Paul had all six plants in the ground in less than a minute. He stood, removing the damp dirt from his hands by brushing them against his jeans. "Uh-oh."
This time, he was facing the road, not the farmhouse, so he couldn't have been reacting to another attempted escape from the Avery farmhouse. Helen turned to see the problem.
A lime-green smart car had just double-parked next to the Harley. A short, middle-aged man with curly black hair emerged.
"Here comes trouble," Paul said.
"He doesn't look bad." In fact, he looked quite good. Even from a hundred feet away, she could see the dark shadow of facial stubble that emphasized his strong jawline and gave the impression that he was confident and didn't particularly care what people thought of him. Nothing about his appearance, from his navy sports shirt and khaki pants to his cheerful expression and light step, suggested he was on his way to any sort of confrontation. "What kind of trouble could he cause?"
"Cory O'Keefe is on the board of selectmen for Wharton. They are considering some legal issues related to ownership of the garden land. I thought they had been resolved, but his presence here today suggests otherwise. Dale will not want to hear what he has to say." Paul grabbed the handle of his cart. "If you will excuse me, I need to plant my seedlings and get to my office to clear up a few things. I hope to see you again, though, Helen Binney."
Cory O'Keefe was heading for the front, left corner of the lot. Dale was there supervising Annie who was a lot stronger than her pixie-like appearance suggested, as evidenced by the ease with which she pounded the sledgehammer on the last of the stakes for the first half of the garden.
Neither woman seemed to have noticed the new arrival. They'd been abandoned by most of the other volunteers who'd raced off to claim their respective plots as soon as they were marked with twine. Only a handful remained, presumably those with plots in the other half of the garden, either underneath the bulldozer or behind it.
Helen's row of pea plants that had seemed like such a big accomplishment just a minute before now looked insignificant as gardeners rolled out sheets of black plastic in some plots and in others, planted thirty-foot-long rows of seedlings and covered them with floating row covers.
Curious about what it was that Dale wasn't going to want to hear, Helen headed for the far front corner of the garden. O'Keefe should have reached the two women long before Helen did, but he kept getting intercepted by gardeners who took a break from their work to run over and talk to him. He never brushed anyone off but stopped each time to shake hands and share a few words.
He did the same thing when he caught up with Helen a few feet away from Dale. "I don't believe we've met," he said. "I'm Corcoran O'Keefe. Everyone calls me Cory."
She accepted his proffered hand, noticing as she shook it that the palm was more calloused than she'd have expected of a politician. "Helen Binney."
Helen could see in his expression the exact moment when Cory put the name together with what he must have heard or read about her. She just didn't know whether it was her history as the governor's wife or her more recent notoriety here in Wharton.
He didn't miss a beat, though, and just said, "Pleased to meet you. I didn't know you were a gardener."
"I'm not sure I am, but I like trying new things."
"I wish more people had that attitude. Perhaps we could explore new territory together sometime." Cory glanced at Dale, and while his smile didn't fade, his eyes did seem to narrow a bit. He was expecting trouble.
Annie finished pounding the last stake into the ground and looked up, catching sight of Cory. She said something to Dale and scurried past Helen in the direction of the crosswalk to the retirement community, dragging the sledgehammer behind her.
Dale turned to glare at Cory and then stomped over to confront him, her army boots sounding like a dozen people marching, not just one. "Well?" she said. "What are you doing here?"