Tilly watched a daddy longlegs hover over the table then whirl
away with small, jerky movements. “My father believed houses are emotional tape
recorders,” she said, “that they record the past and hit Replay when you trigger
a memory. Woodend is my tape recorder. You’ll never shake the ghosts.”
“Woodend was my refuge, too, and it could be one for my
children. They’re living in a rented flat, for Christ’s sake, trying to adapt to
life in England, the separation, their mother’s pregnancy, a man they hardly
know….” He shrugged off his jacket, slung it over the bench next to him and
rolled up his shirtsleeves. More linen. How did he have the patience for all
that ironing? His metal watch strap clacked against the edge of the table.
“Tilly, please. My children need this.”
Even if her heart exploded into a gazillion pieces, how could
she argue with that?
“Do you remember what we used to say?” Tilly drew a line
through the condensation sliding down her glass. “If Woodend was ours, we’d
build an aviary and fill it with budgies?”
“And a pair of lovebirds,” he added.
“I don’t think I can watch you do this.”
“But you won’t have to. You’ll be back in North Carolina.” His
voice grew hesitant. “Won’t you?”
“I have two plane tickets that say I leave England on August 7,
but I’ve been thinking about my mother growing old alone, about where I belong….
Truth is, part of me has never left Bramwell Chase, and that part has been
reeling me back in. And you just complicated everything.”
And he didn’t know the half of it.
“You mean you might—stay?” Was the hitch in his voice criticism
or shock?
“I swear I don’t know,” she said. And she didn’t. Woodend had
always been her anchor. And giving up and walking away? She had never been able
to do either.
They sat in silence, surrounded by the conversations of others
and the occasional fizz of the fluorescent mosquito lure zapping an insect. The
white fairy lights draped through the apple trees clicked on as dusk fled, and a
smattering of stars jostled through the blackness. Tilly ruffled her hair, which
was long overdue for a chop, and failed to think of anything to say.
“Christ, you look sexy when you do that.” Sebastian rubbed at
his mouth.
Tilly stretched across the table and kissed his cheek, her
pulse scampering in one direction, her mind in the other. To hurt Sebastian
again was unthinkable, and she would never allow anything to develop unless she
was confident of the outcome. But for a moment she had wanted him, and she
sensed the desire had been mutual.
“That spring, before you met David,” he said, “we came close,
didn’t we, to reuniting?”
Tilly was about to answer when she realized it wasn’t a
question. Sebastian was drifting on his own memory trip, and she turned away.
But as she fought to breathe through the sudden constriction in her chest, she
forgot about Woodend, about Sebastian, about everything. Two figures were coming
toward them, one waving, one scowling. And she realized that true sexual
attraction, the kind that slammed into you when you were cruising along,
oblivious, was a great deal more treacherous than facing a rogue wave in a dinky
boat. True sexual attraction blacked out the world and then splashed it with the
fiery colors of her favorite tropical plants.
She grabbed a flint of ice from her glass. And as the cold bit
into her fingers, she prayed that Sebastian wasn’t tuned into her wavelength,
sharing the thought that on the eve of another reconciliation, history was set
to repeat itself.
* * *
The blush that covered her freckled face and her neck
and the chest he dreamed of kissing punched away his jealousy. Her hair, which
had become shaggy and unruly since they’d met, was shoved behind her ears to
reveal huge, silver hoops that grazed her neck. God Almighty, she was beautiful,
sitting with her bare legs entwined around each other, some floaty shawl thing
draped through her arms and a floral dress slipping off her shoulders. No red
bra strap tonight. In fact—James swallowed—no bra.
“Yoo-hoo!” Rowena called as they walked across the grass.
People raised their hands in greeting to Rowena, and a guy who
looked about ninety wobbled up to standing and doffed his cap. Rowena
acknowledged him with a wag of her head. And Tilly stared at James.
She was annoyed, wasn’t she? He had tried to talk Rowena out of
this, but she was bullish in her focus. What had seemed funny at 2:00 a.m. when
they were both smashed, and mildly inappropriate half an hour ago, blew up in
his face—a practical joke turned cruel. And James had no tolerance for cruelty.
He tried to leave, but Rowena clamped herself to his arm like a pit bull with
lockjaw.
“You have a face,” Tilly said. Was that approval or
disapproval?
“Indeed.” James smiled at her, which was pointless since Tilly
was busy picking at a stain on the table and no longer watching him.
“Isn’t he dishy without that appalling beard?” Rowena said.
“Whoever knew he was hiding that sexy cleft in his chin!”
Sebastian drained his glass in one long, noisy gulp.
“Why did you shave it off?” Tilly asked, but didn’t look
up.
“I met someone who reminded me to be myself,” James said. True,
but wasn’t his timing a childish attempt at one-upmanship, a pathetic desire to
distract her from Sebastian?
“We decided a nightcap was just the ticket,” Rowena said.
“We’re not interrupting, are we?”
“No,” Tilly and Sebastian replied in unison.
Rowena detached herself from James and he stood alone, exposed,
his nerves jangling. Should he go? Should he stay? Fear he was used to, lack of
confidence he was not. If only Tilly would give him a sign that she wasn’t
angry. She’d never judged him before, but had he overstepped her threshold of
tolerance? Why, why had he let Rowena talk him into coming here?
“Budge up, sweetie.” Rowena grabbed Sebastian’s jacket, draped
it around her shoulders and squeezed in next to him. He, James, should go; he
should definitely go. But if he stayed, he could sit next to Tilly. He might
even brush against her naked shoulders. Fuck, he was acting like a
fourteen-year-old wrung out with lust. But he had to touch her. Even if it meant
he would crash and burn.
You’re going to hell, James,
straight to hell.
Rowena’s bangles chimed as she sipped her Guinness. “Didn’t see
one blessed badger,” she said. “Heard some snuffling but that was about it.
Still, my beloved godson is pooped. Fell asleep in the car, poor poppet. James
carried him upstairs to bed in quite the Christopher Robin moment. Oh! Nearly
forgot. I have a little pressie for you, Sebastian.” She fumbled in her bag
while Sebastian balled his right hand into a fist. And who could blame him? What
kind of a jackass blundered into another man’s date?
Finally, Tilly raised her head. “Ro, is that your fifth form
satchel? It is! I can see the scuff mark where your mother scratched off the
‘Anarchy in the UK’ sticker.” She laughed and James lost track of his
thoughts.
He folded his body into the shrinking space beside her and
counted to six. Six was a smooth, round number, the perfect number, as perfect
as Tilly’s laugh.
“Eureka, found it!” Rowena shook out a crumpled flyer and
handed it to Sebastian. “Welcome to village life, where we abuse you something
rotten. The vicar needs a volunteer to organize the kiddies’ cricket match at
the village fete, and he practically wee’d in his cassock when I told him about
you.”
“Thanks.” Sebastian’s hand relaxed. “Archie and I could do this
together.”
“Exactly,” Rowena said, and began discussing the village fete
with him.
Tilly remained tense and silent.
She hates you, James. She hates
you
.
James angled his head toward her. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he
said, and had to fight the impulse to keep apologizing.
I’m
not a bad person. I’ve apologized twice and twice is enough.
“I tried
to talk her out of it.”
You have to keep apologizing, if
you don’t she’ll hate you forever.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m—”
Tilly pressed against him, her hand on his shoulder. “I thought
you were going to work on the whole apology thing,” she said. “One sorry is
fine.”
But it wasn’t fine. It was far from fine. An image had ambushed
him, an image of broken glass and blood. An image that echoed fact, that stole a
memory and perverted it. In his mind, he had picked up Sebastian’s beer glass,
smashed it against the table and ground the jagged edge into Sebastian’s face.
James let out a sharp breath, overwhelmed by the horror of a violent act he
could never commit even though the OCD told him otherwise, told him that he had
been a monster once before and would be so again.
Showed
him that he was a monster.
Tilly’s hand slipped down his back in a steady, firm stroke.
She understood. He’d said nothing, and yet she understood. Wasn’t that all
anyone ever needed—someone to understand? And why, since he was ten, had he
worked so hard to deny anyone that chance? But not anymore, not anymore. For the
first time, a person he loved understood. Even if she was David’s widow, even if
her childhood sweetheart was the better man, the better father, James would not
be noble. He would not step aside; he would not deny these feelings.
“It’s not real,” she whispered.
“No,” he said, not caring who heard, “but this is.”
Chapter 18
If only sexual attraction were as easy to remove as a
parasitic plant. Tilly stared at the sticky Willy she had wrenched, roots and
all, from a wild forget-me-not. Its hairs pricked her arm searching for
purchase, but she brushed it to the ground. And stomped on it.
How had she arrived at this place—psychological and physical?
What exactly
was
she doing sitting on a wooden stile
at the edge of a wheat field? To find James attractive was beyond inconvenient.
It threatened something that suddenly felt as necessary as breathing. Watching
him force aside fear every day reminded her of the elasticity of the human
spirit, of how she had survived after David’s funeral, when she had been
stretched so tight that she could have snapped at any moment. But she hadn’t,
and neither had Isaac, thanks to the garden.
It had started with the salvia coccinea, a scarlet annual that
tossed its seed around like a soused soccer fan celebrating an FA Cup win. After
the service, Tilly had embarked on a cleaning frenzy that included her plants.
But there were too many salvias to give away, so she and Isaac started selling
them at the farmers’ market, a place they came to love for its bright babble.
The following year, cheered on by Isaac, she created Piedmont Perennials and
began channeling despondency into the life force of gardening. And wasn’t that
what she’d been doing up at Bramwell Hall every day, thanks to James and his
persistence?
Think of the devil and there he was, stalking toward her as if
he had a soul to claim. The flat of his hand smacked a violent rhythm against
his thigh, and the flecks of shade in his eyes had spread, turning his irises
black. Oh crap.
“I waited for thirty minutes, spent fifteen minutes walking
from Bramwell Hall to Woodend, twenty minutes having coffee with your mother and
another—” James consulted his bright plastic watch “—twenty-five minutes making
my way up here. You’ve been AWOL for ninety minutes. Would you care to
explain?”
“I hate Tuesdays?” Tilly swung her legs like a recalcitrant
child.
“Funny. Except that I’m not laughing.”
“I noticed. No one ever kept you waiting before?”
He tapped his watch twice. “Not for ninety minutes.”
Blimey, he was grumpy today. She sighed, a long sigh that
leaked out and took the urge to fight with it. “I started walking and just kept
going.” She jumped to the ground, stumbling as she landed on a sunbaked rut.
“How did you find me?”
“I did the same.” He gave her a measured look and Tilly turned
away. Without the beard there was less to distract her from those huge eyes. “Is
it my imagination,” he said, “or does the dog reek of rotten eggs?”
“He went swimming in the cesspit formally known as the duck
pond.” Normally, she put Monty on the lead when they entered this field to
prevent him from dashing for the stinky sludge behind the rushes. But this
morning she was two strides from the pond before she realized where she was.
“And this was how long ago?” James said.
Tilly glanced down at the dog asleep in the clover. His pink
tongue lolled between his teeth and his legs twitched as he chased through a
dream; dried pond slime was matted into his fur. “A while.”
“And you’ve been here ever since?”
Why did he make it sound like a bad thing? “Pretty much.”
James stepped under the shade of the beech tree at the edge of
The Chase, its branches laden with beechnuts the color of toffee apples. One
limb dipped so low that she and Isaac had turned it into a swing at Christmas.
What a different visit that had been. How could so much change in six months?
Exhaustion overwhelmed her, a sudden need to stall out from life.
“I can’t do this anymore,” Tilly said. “Hide with you in the
walled garden. I need to run, but I don’t know where to go. I want to yell, but
I don’t know what to say. Tell me how to fight fear, tell me more about this
cognitive-behavioral therapy.”
“Tilly, there’s no point.”
She glared at him. He didn’t accept defeat; why should she?
“There’s no point—” James softened his voice “—because your
fear is real.”
She squinted into the sunlight. What had she been thinking,
sitting out here without a hat? She sighed and joined James to stand in the
shade. “Fear is still fear. Tell me anyway.”
James stretched out a foot and rubbed at the only patch of
Monty’s flank not encrusted with muck. “If you’re fighting a compulsion, you
change the structure of it, reverse it, or better still, delay it. If you can
postpone a ritual for ten minutes, the impulse passes. At least that’s the
theory. If it’s a nasty image—embrace it, don’t deny it. Doctor it, try and make
it ridiculous, or focus on it until your mind becomes bored and wanders. As for
fighting obsessions, you have three choices. Counter with logic—
what are the chances.
Cultivate detachment—
I’m going to let that thought float away.
Or boss it
back—
fuck-off-you-fucker.
And if you’re
desperate, all of the above. That’s cognitive-behavioral therapy, the
précis.”
His smile hinted at years of failure. She wanted to hug him,
but didn’t dare. If she put her arms around him, how would she know where to
stop?
“Harder than it sounds?” Tilly batted away a horsefly.
“Like pausing mid-drown to teach yourself to swim.” He combed
his fingers through his hair. “What were you frightened of, as a child?”
“Snakes and exams. I still get exam nightmares.”
“How did the fear manifest itself—before an exam?”
She squeezed out the memory. “My adrenaline pumped, my pulse
raced, and just as I thought I would throw up my Marmite toast breakfast, I hit
this plateau of calm. I remember the feeling as wide-awake sleepwalking. Very
surreal.”
“In other words, you confronted the fear, which means the panic
crested and subsided. I’m not an expert on psychology. But you’re out here,
alone, for a reason.” He grabbed her wrist and held on so tightly that the tips
of her fingers tingled with constricted blood. “Look at your fingers—chewed
raw.” He let go. “Yesterday I deadheaded every knautia plant, and you didn’t
notice. The day before your T-shirt was inside out. Have you considered allowing
yourself to crumble and fall?”
A dandelion clock blew between them and twirled up into the
sky.
Tilly flexed her fingers. “So you’re telling me to throw up my
hands and say, ‘Take me now, fear’? That’s not an option.”
“Why not? I don’t understand.”
A group of ramblers processed toward The Chase, and two
children on ponies clopped along the estate road that led to Manor Farm.
Tilly’s eyes followed the children, rising and falling to the
trot. “Because I’m a mother.”
“This isn’t about Isaac, Tilly. This is about you.”
“I don’t handle parenting advice well. You might want to back
off.”
A kestrel hovered above them. How wonderful, to be able to
drift on air currents, to float over everything and hear nothing below.
“I read this book once about kids and grief—” incredible, did
he not understand the core of social interaction, the
follow-the-lead-of-your-audience approach? “—the essence of which was
this—secure your own oxygen mask before attempting to help your kid put on his.
That’s a philosophy to live by, don’t you agree? How can you help others if you
can’t help yourself?”
“Sounds like you’re telling me to be selfish.”
“Then you’re choosing to misinterpret me.”
She glared at him, but he merely cocked an eyebrow.
“Maybe,” James said, “you should ask, ‘What’s the worst that
can happen?’”
“I die, which is kinda sucky.”
“I know it’s not death that terrifies you.”
“Then you don’t need to ask the question, do you?” Why did he
have to bring this up again? She’d warned him off once; once should be
enough.
“Kids survive. My son is evidence of that.” Monty gave a sneeze
and jerked awake. “The best thing you can do is prepare for the worst-case
scenario. For example, what provisions have you made for legal
guardianship?”
“That if anything happens to me, Isaac lives with my mother.”
In Woodend. So much for mapping out the future.
“Now that she’s downsizing, I suppose I’ll ask Rowena.”
“What about David’s family?”
“My in-laws adore Isaac, but they live in a retirement
community in Florida. And his sister skipped the maternal gene.” Tilly squatted
down and began easing sticky Willy seeds from Monty’s fur. “Besides, she lives
in Manhattan, and skyscrapers terrify Isaac. He thinks they’re going to fall on
him.”
“Smart kid. I have the same fear.” James rubbed his chin and
looked momentarily surprised, as if he’d forgotten how it felt to be
clean-shaven. “What about a living will?”
“Whoa, time out.” She stood and put her hands on her hips. Now
he’d gone too far.
“This is what it means, Tilly, to fight fear. You can’t
withhold the punches.”
“You don’t know how to quit, do you?”
“Unless I’m having an out-of-body experience, you asked for my
advice. I’m giving it the only way I know how—as an obsessive-compulsive, not as
Mister Rogers.” He flashed a smile, but his eyes darkened again. Tilly stood and
inched toward the edge of the shade. Sebastian was right. She didn’t know enough
about this man. “My tribe isn’t exactly filled with people who look on the
bright side of life, Tilly.”
What the hell was she doing, baring her soul to someone she’d
known for what, a little over a month? “How long have we known each other?”
“Six weeks, but I don’t see the relevance. You and Isaac became
part of my life the moment we met.”
Was he really that naive?
“Come on, boy,” James said. Monty shot up, wagging his tail.
“Time to go home.”
“That’s it? You’re taking the dog and buggering off, leaving me
in a field?”
“You chose the setting.” James walked away but stopped and
turned. “I suggest you scream and cry. Works for me. And while you do that,
Isaac and I are going to design a tree house for the magnificent oak in the
paddock.”
“You know how to build a tree house?”
James tossed back his hair and grinned. He was wearing two
silver hoops and two small diamond earrings today. The stud in his left ear
sparkled in the sun, dazzling Tilly. “You’d be amazed what a farm boy can do
with a pile of boards and planks.”
Monty and James started down the hill, heading for Woodend.
“Put on your oxygen mask,” he called over his shoulder. “And don’t scare the
wildlife.”
Even as she watched him walk away, Tilly screamed a silent Come
back! How could you miss a person you could still see?
She stared at a flattened skeleton of a hare, half-hidden in
the long grass at the edge of the path. This whole exploit was pointless. Being
out here with Monty she could pretend they were resting midwalk. Without a dog
she felt silly, and too damn hot. Heat in England was awkward—holiday weather
that belonged in another country. Although it didn’t appear to bother the birds
in The Chase, who were as noisy as the birds at Creeping Cedars. She should buy
a tape of birdsong when they returned to the States, learn to identify more of
the natives back home.
Tilly jerked up, disturbed by the thought that had dropped,
unbidden, into her mind. Unbelievable, while she was distracted by something as
banal as the weather, her mind had coshed her with a hard little fact: The
sounds of home came not from finches and blackbirds, but from the cries of hawks
and the chitters of hummingbirds. What else did she miss? The fireflies,
definitely! Her gardens? Omigod, yes!
Did that mean that her heart could belong to two places,
despite her determination to force it into an either-or choice?
As she clambered back onto the stile, her mind flitted to James
stepping on every other dandelion at Maple View Farm and to the view she loved
just as much as the one laid out before her. This scene hadn’t changed in thirty
years and would still be here in another thirty years, whether she was part of
it or not. Whether she lived or died. James was right—Isaac’s guardianship
should be her priority. Isaac should be with someone who had shared her past and
could carry those memories into his future. Rowena was the obvious choice.
And suppose…just suppose she were dying. What about a living
will?
Damn you, James, for planting the seed.
If she
knew that Isaac would be the center of someone else’s universe, should she plan
for the swiftest death possible? Would that be less painful for him? Eight years
ago, when she had refused to discuss the issue with David, her world had been
spinning in a different direction. Eight years ago, she could afford ideals. But
hadn’t grief revealed that one-size-fits-all was a lousy doctrine?
James had talked about falling apart so you could put yourself
back together. Could that simple philosophy save Isaac if she died? When he was
a rambunctious three-year-old, she encouraged him to bend his knees if he fell:
don’t hit the ground rigid, or you’ll shatter like
Humpty Dumpty.
Rigid,
that was a good adjective to describe Tilly.
But how else could you cling on, stop yourself from tipping into blackness? Or,
sometimes, did you have to let go?
She closed her eyes against the vista, against the birdsong,
and remembered the hidden hours after David’s death, when she had allowed
herself to mourn. Allowed herself to
crumble and
fall.