Enright Family Collection (72 page)

“Okay, I’ll bite.” Zoey gave up. “What exactly goes into a Shakespeare garden?”

“Plants—flowers, herbs, shrubs—that Shakespeare mentioned in his writings. I just told you that.”

“And I heard that part. I’m asking
what
plants. What plants, specifically?”

“Now, Zoey, you’re a smart girl. I’m sure you can figure it out.” Wally stood and stretched. “I think I’ll go in and check out the noontime news. Channel seven has one cute little blond number doing the weather these days. Then I’ll take a drive to the post office, maybe stop at my son’s and see what my daughter-in-law is making for supper. I’ll see you later, Zoey. Have fun this afternoon.”

Zoey frowned and watched him duck under the arch where the grape vine had yet to issue forth leaves or fruit.

“A Shakespeare garden,” she muttered, trying to recall lines from plays she had read and studied while in college. “‘Eye of newt, and toe of frog, wool of bat, and tongue of dog.’ Nope, no help there.”

She raked for a few more minutes, then stopped and recited, “‘Ay me! for aught that ever I could read, Could ever hear by tale or history, The course of true love never did run smooth.’ No, that doesn’t help either.”

A catbird landed on the arbor, and at the sound of her voice, turned his head this way and that as if hanging on to her every word.

“‘We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.’”

The catbird squawked and flew away.

“Everyone’s a critic,” Zoey muttered as she pushed
the wheelbarrow filled with leaves and twigs through the gate.

“‘If music be the food of love, play on;

Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,

The appetite may sicken, and so die.

That strain again! it had a dying fall:

O! it came o’er my ear like the sweet sound

That breathes upon a bank of violets. . . .’”

She stopped midway across the backyard and hooted, “Violets! Yes!
Violets!
That’s one!” Zoey turned toward Wally’s house in time to see his car back out of the driveway. She cupped her hands to call after the car, “Hey! I thought of one! Violets!
Twelfth Night!
Act One!”

She grinned as she bagged her yard debris, thinking that violets alone, while lovely and an old favorite of hers, would make a pretty boring garden. Maybe tonight she would curl up with an old volume of Shakespeare’s plays and see what she could find. A few hours here and there spent outside would do her good, she reasoned—after all, she couldn’t recall ever having seen a
fat
gardener—and whether she enjoyed it or not, at least she’d have some pretty bouquets for her pretty new house.

Zoey stripped off the garden gloves her mother had sent her for an Ides of March gift, and washed her hands in the powder room sink. She poured herself a cool drink, then took it out to the deck through the new French doors. The sun was pleasant and comforting, and she wished that she, like Gracie, could curl up in its warmth and snooze. Leaning over the deck railing, she looked out across her backyard. She loved the view from this very spot. Soon the grape arbor would green up and small green buds of fruit would appear. The roses were already thick with leaves, and it would not be long before they, too, would be covered with buds. She wondered what it would look like, what it would smell like, when everything was in bloom.

Funny, me ending up here, seventeen miles from the house I grew up in.

Funnier still, that Ben would be here too.

Yeah, she reminded herself. Ben had been
real
funny a couple of days ago. Just to think back on the encounter with him in his office caused her cheeks to burn all over again. Could she have made herself appear any more stupid than she had?

She squirmed, recalling how his green eyes had narrowed when he realized who she was. Why had he been so cool to her?

Well, then, so much for fate. So much for the man of my dreams. Guess his fairy godfather and my fairy godmother got their wires crossed. Guess it’s time to stop believing in fairy tales. Time to let the dream go.

A little voice inside her protested softly. It had been the only real dream she had ever really wanted to come true. And it had been a wonderful dream.

She sighed, and wished that she could have held on to that dream just a little while longer.

*  *  *

Somehow Ben thought it would have taken longer to get there. But there was little traffic at that early hour of the day, and so it had been a mere twenty minutes from Delaney’s condo to the gates of Delia Enright’s home.

A gentleman’s farm, people called it. No crops were grown and no animals raised to be sold for livestock or for food. The old farm had been purchased strictly as a family home. The acres purchased years ago must be worth a fortune now, Ben ventured. He pulled a little closer to the fence and leaned on the steering wheel hoping to get a better view.

The last tattered bit of morning fog floated over the fields. It looked eerie, somehow, and he almost expected to see fairies dancing on the slight ridge just to the left of his car. But then again, he’d always thought there was just a touch of magic here.

The pine trees that used to be little taller than he and Nick had once been now rose twenty-five feet into the air, totally blocking out any view of the house. Part of him wanted to back up and go right on past the old stone
pillars that the original owners had erected at the foot of the driveway, right on up to the house. Another part of him wanted to run like hell.

For so many years, this place had appeared almost nightly in his dreams. He wasn’t sure he was ready to face the reality of seeing it again for real. Perhaps another time. Tomorrow, maybe, or perhaps next week, after he’d gotten used to the idea of being there. But not right now. He put the car in gear and drove off down the road.

It was early when he arrived at the office. Pauline would still be in New York, and his new secretary was not to start until Monday, so he was pretty much on his own for a few days. Which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, he reasoned, since it gave him an excuse to wander around the building on his own. Seeking a cup of coffee, he stopped into one of the studios where a personable young man was on-air, selling electronics. The backstage area was more interesting and better organized than he had suspected, with tables displaying the products for the next several shows lined up across one wall. Everything seemed to be itemized and neatly arranged. He joined a flustered producer for a cup of coffee in the hosts’ lounge, then sat with several customer service representatives and walked through the telephone ordering process with them. By the time he actually made it back to his office, it was well after noon, and his mind was filled with multiple images of this giant his grandfather had so recently purchased.

Ben requested the personnel files of all active employees so that he could review them and become acquainted with their backgrounds before he actually met them. He wanted a handle on who they were, where they had come from. The staff, he found, was diverse. Several former radio disc jockeys, former television news reporters. A few teachers. People with sales backgrounds, marketing, advertising. And then there was Zoey. He pulled her resume out from the stack as if it was made of fine parchment. The list of her previous employers brought a
smile to his face. She’d certainly run the gamut. It appeared that she had been at the HMP longer than she had been with any other job. He read the comments from the producers, one of whom described her as the backbone of the salesforce. Popular and respected by everyone, it seemed, she was also their top-selling host. No wonder they all spoke so highly of her. Her sales figures and percentage of items sold per number of items pitched were the highest at the network.

Ben leaned back in his chair and smiled. Zoey had done well for herself. He was happy for her, happy that she had found something she apparently enjoyed doing. Delia must surely be proud of her. He tapped his fingers on the desk blotter, wishing he could go back in time to the moment when she had stepped through the doorway with a cup of coffee in her hand. He wanted a second chance to greet her the way she deserved to be greeted by an old friend, with joy and welcome. The way she had attempted to welcome him, with open arms and an open heart.

And what had he done? He’d
grumped
at her, that’s what he’d done, squashed that welcoming smile and chased the joy from her face.

And what a face it had been, he recalled.

Had her eyes been that blue when she was a little girl? Had she always had those deep dimples on either side of her mouth? And he hadn’t recalled that her mouth had had that pouty
kiss me
look back in those days. And her legs hadn’t been that long, come to think of it, and the rest of her body had been far from lush. . . .

Snap out of it,
he chastised himself. It’s obvious she still thinks of you as a big brother-type figure. After all, she was your best friend’s little sister. You taught her how to throw a baseball. You climbed trees with her. You and Nick even let her sleep in your tent a few times.

He sighed. He owed her an apology. A big one. And she would have it. As soon as he could figure out what to say.

He walked to the window overlooking what had once
been a cow pasture and looked out at the complex that had grown up in the middle of nowhere. There was plenty of room for expansion here, more warehouses, more sets, if needed, more parking. Over the past few days he had spent hours in conference with Delaney’s top staff members, more hours back at the condo going over reports and projections, trying to get a feel for the business. All indications led him to believe that his grandfather had been right. In time, with the right hand at the wheel, the company could become a major force in the retail industry, a cable giant that could dominate the field. All the right pieces were there. It would be a challenge to the one who tried to put it all together. He found himself almost regretting that he would, in all probability, be long gone by the time that challenge would be met.

Two long hours later, after sifting through the company’s investment portfolio, Ben stood up and stretched. His right leg protested painfully when he attempted to put weight on it, reminding him that he’d been sitting for far too long. It was almost one o’clock. Maybe he’d drive out to the small sandwich shop he’d passed on his way in this morning and grab a bite to eat. It was a beautiful day, and he could use the fresh air.

Ben eased the roadster around one curve, then another, his foot testing the accelerator cautiously, wondering if he’d ever have that sureness again, that confidence in his ability to control a speeding machine the way he’d once done. It was an issue for another day, he told himself as he pulled into the dirt and gravel parking lot of The Well (Sandwiches to Go) at the corner of Everett and Lanning’s Corner Roads, where the lunch hour had already peaked. He ordered the corned beef special to go, and grabbed a bottle of Arizona Green Tea out of a refrigerated case, paid for his purchases, and was back in the car in less than seven minutes. He started out of the parking lot, then pulled back into the space to put the convertible top down.

That’s more like it. He grinned to himself as he slipped
a CD into the car stereo—Springsteen’s
Thunder Road
—feeling all of a sudden like a man who had just about everything he needed at that particular moment—a sunny day, the top down, lunch in a brown paper bag, and music. He opened the bottle of tea and sipped at it as he drove off, looking for a suitable place to stop and eat his lunch.

He hadn’t consciously planned on it, but he wasn’t surprised when he found himself in front of Delia’s house for the second time that day.

Delaney is right. It’s time,
he told himself as he drove very slowly to the entrance to the drive and stopped the car, pausing to look around. There was no sign of life, no cars, no sound other than birds excitedly circling a feeder half filled with seed that hung from the lower limb of a small oak tree. He drove a little further up the drive, then parked the car, and sat for a long time with his eyes closed, remembering the sounds and the smells. Then, still fingering his key ring, he got out and walked, slowly, toward the big stone house that Delia had bought years ago, mentally noting the changes the house had undergone through the years since he had been away.

The shutters, once black, were now chocolate brown, to blend better, he supposed, with the tans and gray-browns of the native fieldstone. Around one side of the house, an enormous addition stretched—home, he guessed from the condensation on the glass windows that formed two walls, to an indoor pool. New gardens led to the barn, which sported a fairly new coat of red paint, and a new addition there too caught his eye. More room for Delia’s horses, he guessed. More pasture had been fenced in, and he leaned over the split rail to rub the muzzle of a curious bay that had come to investigate his presence. Overhead a hawk circled slowly, and from somewhere in the barn another horse nickered softly. Around one corner of the barn, a large black and white shepherd came flying, growling gruffly.

“Here, boy.” Ben held out a hand for the dog to sniff. “It’s okay.”

The dog leaned into the offered hand, his tail wagging tentatively. Having decided that Ben was okay, the dog nuzzled his leg. “Okay, so we want our head petted, do we?”

He spent five minutes petting the dog, scratching behind his ears and carrying on a one-sided conversation, soothed somehow by the dog’s presence. He took off his suit jacket and swung it over his shoulder, stopped and rolled up his shirtsleeves, then walked behind the barn to see if there were any remnants of the vegetable garden that was once the pride of old Tom Larsen, who had been the gardener there in Ben’s youth. The weatherbeaten fence still stood to keep out the deer, and by peering over it he could see that the soil had been worked and readied for this year’s plantings by someone, and he wondered if old Tom could still possibly be alive. He strolled down to the pond, the dog still by his side, and stopped to listen as the frogs splashed into the water at his approach. He sat on a large gray rock and watched several ducks dip their heads in and out of the water.