Enright Family Collection (74 page)

A white-haired gentleman in a red and white plaid flannel shirt was attempting to drag a concrete birdbath down a grassy path, inch by tedious inch.

“Can I give you a hand there?” Ben asked as he opened the gate and stepped into the garden area.

Startled, the old man straightened up sharply. “What makes you think I need one?”

“Well, you look like you’re having a bit of trouble. . . .” Ben placed the bouquet of roses on the stone garden bench and pushed up the sleeves of his dark green sweatshirt. “Where were you going with this thing anyway?”

“What business would it be of yours?” The man’s eyes followed Ben to the bench and back, then narrowed suspiciously. “And who might you be?”

“I’m Ben Pierce.” Ben held his hand out to the man, who did not take it, but continued to watch Ben warily. “I’m an old friend of Zoey’s.”

“Funny, Zoey didn’t mention she was expecting company.”

“She wasn’t . . . isn’t . . . expecting me. I was in the area and thought I’d stop by. . . .” Feeling a little uneasy, like one who had been stopped by the highway patrol and as yet wasn’t sure why, Ben put his hands in his pockets, wondering who this old man
was.

“And just happened to have an armful of roses with you, did you?” The old man made a valiant attempt to
lift the birdbath, which was clearly too heavy. Ben grabbed the heavy end of it.

“To your right! To your right!” The old man directed. “Keep ’er straight! Now, just let ’er down.”

The birdbath properly placed to the old man’s satisfaction, he nodded thanks of sorts to Ben for his assistance.

“What’d you say your name was?”

“Ben. Ben Pierce.”

“Well, Ben Pierce, I don’t know that Zoey’s home, but I’ll be sure give her your regards when I see her.”

Ben laughed and asked, as the old man had previously asked of him, “And who might you be, sir?”

“Next door neighbor.” He nodded toward the left, indicating the house beyond the garden, as he opened the gate and invited Ben to step on through it.

Ben turned back and leaned over the bench to pick up the flowers.

“Ha!” The single word resounded, loudly and triumphantly, across the yard as a screen door slammed.

Ben peeked through the grape arbor in time to see Zoey fly across the deck and down the steps. Holding an open book in front of her, she stopped midway across the grass and held one hand out in front of her, pointed to the old man and said, “‘There’s fennel for you, and columbines: there’s rue for you: and here’s some for me: we may call it herb of grace o’ Sundays. O! you must wear your rue with a difference. There’s a daisy: I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died.’”

“Ha!” She crowed again, then counted on her fingers as she repeated, “Fennel, columbines, rue, daisies. And that’s not all! “She turned the page back. “‘There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance—’”

“‘Pray love, remember,’” Ben passed through the garden gate, then completed the passage. “‘And there is pansies, that’s for thoughts.’”

Zoey’s eyes widened with surprise, then slid into narrow slits of suspicion.

“What are you doing here?”

“I came to offer my apologies.” He held up the roses. “Of course, if I had known that your taste ran more toward rue and columbine and daisies, I would have made sure that the florist put some of them in, too.”

She crossed her arms defensively across her chest, holding the book in front of her like a shield. “A note in my mailbox at the station would have been sufficient.”

“No, it would not have been,” he said softly. “You deserved a better greeting than you received.”

“How did you find my house?”

“Personnel records.”

“If you could find my records, you could have found out that I’m scheduled to work tomorrow. You could have waited till I came in.”

“I felt this was too important to wait till tomorrow.”

Wally cleared his throat to remind them that he was still there.

“I take it you two have met?” Zoey turned to one, then the other of the two men.

“In a manner of speaking,” Ben said. “Though I didn’t catch your name.”

“Wallace T. Littlefield, sir.” Wally nodded, then turned to Zoey. “Ben was just telling me that he and you are old friends.”

“Ben is an old friend of the family. He used to be my brother’s best friend.”

“I see.” Wally looked from one to another, knowing there was more here than Zoey was letting on.

“Between Wally and my mother, I have been goaded into cleaning up the garden. Wally is trying to bait me into planting a Shakespeare garden.” Zoey turned to Ben and waited for him to ask.

“Oh! You mean a garden that has only plants that are mentioned in Shakespeare’s writings?” Ben asked.

“How did you know that?” Zoey frowned.
’Why
would you know that?”

“I lived in England for years.” He laughed. “They’re not uncommon there.”

Wally chuckled with satisfaction.

“Well, I might get around to doing it here.” She closed the book and crossed her arms over her chest. “Then again, I might not.”

“Well, you’re off to a good start, there. You already have some of the plants you yourself just mentioned a few minutes ago,” Wally took his pipe out of his pocket and fiddled with a pack of matches, as if debating whether or not to light up. “You’ve got roses growing over the fence, violets growing wild, and if I’m not mistaken, there are several old clumps of daisies that still come up. Now, that’s the beauty of perennials, you know, they come back with or without your help. And come summer, why, that whole area back near the woods will be thick with rue. And then, you could—”

“Wally, I think I hear your phone ringing.” Zoey said dryly.

“Hmmm?” He paused, about to strike a match. “Oh. Yes, I think you’re right. Better try to catch it. Might be Alena Parsons. Widow lady. Caught her staring at me in church last Sunday. . . .” He continued his monologue as he walked briskly toward his house.

Her arms still crossed, Zoey turned her attention back to Ben, trying to decide whether it was anger or possibly something else that was causing her heart to bang against her chest the way it was suddenly doing.

Ben held the roses out to her. “You might want to put these in some water.”

She tensed, pausing while debating whether or not to accept his flowers after the shoddy greeting he had given her earlier. He must have read her thoughts, because he touched her arm and said, “I’m sorry, Zoey. You deserved a much warmer welcome from me than you received. I was just so damned shocked to see you. I’m sorry.”

“But I don’t understand why. I had assumed that Delaney had told you . . . .”

“That you were working there? No. No, he did not.
But the surprise was nowhere near as unpleasant as I might have led you to think. It was unexpected, that’s all. The truth is that I was delighted to see you, Zoey. I’m sorry I didn’t say so then, but I’m telling you now.”

She searched his face as if looking for something.

“You can tell me to leave if you want. It’s okay, Zoey. I would understand if you did.”

“Do I get to keep the roses anyway?”

“Yes,” he told her solemnly.

She softened, in spite of herself. “They’re beautiful, Ben. Thank you.”

“I’m glad you like them.”

“I do. But you didn’t have to . . .”

“We got off on the wrong foot the other day, and it’s bothered me ever since.” There was more that he had wanted to say, but standing there in the quiet yard, with her looking up at him with those big blue eyes, it was the best he could do at the time. “And besides, I wanted to see your new house. Are you going to give me a tour?”

“It’s still being worked on.” She eyed him cautiously. “The carpenters are not quite finished yet.”

“I don’t mind the work-in-progress tour.”

“Okay.” She gestured for him to follow her. As they neared the deck, they heard a voice call from an open window next door, “Just leave the shades up, hear?”

Zoey laughed. “Wally’s a little protective of me.”

“I noticed,” Ben followed her up the back steps, noticing too that she had a smear of dirt right across her backside. He had to fight the urge to brush it away.

“It’s okay.” She paused near the back door. “I sort of like it. I never did have a father to fuss over me, you know, to do all those things that fathers are supposed to do for their daughters. Tell them when to change the oil in their car and to interrogate their suitors. Not that I had any when I was growing up. Suitors, that is.” She pointed to the side of the house and noted, “I just had the siding replaced. I think it will weather really nicely, to a sort of soft gray.”

“I find that really hard to believe.”

“No, it’s true.” She insisted. “Cedar changes color as it ages.”

“I meant, I can’t believe that every boy in Chester County wasn’t beating a path to your door.”

“Not hardly. I was the only girl in my graduating class who went the entire four years of high school without a date.” She opened the back door and beckoned him to follow into the small back entry that led into the kitchen.

“You have to be kidding.”

“If you had seen me back then, you wouldn’t have to ask. Gawky, braces till I was sixteen, all leg, too much hair . . .” She grabbed a handful of the black silk that hung across her shoulders in a deep wave and shuddered. “Anyway, to get back to Wally, he sort of adopted me. He’s been a good friend. Now, you wanted to see the house.”

She gave him the downstairs tour, starting with the dining room.

“This is nice.” He ran his hand appreciatively over the top of the smooth pine tavern table that stood in the middle of the room. “Beautiful. Antique?”

“Yes,” she nodded. “And local. The dealer I bought it from told me that it was made right here in Lancaster County.”

“I passed several antique shops on my way out here.”

“This area is known for the number of quality antique pieces that still can be found. You just have to be careful, because there are a lot of reproductions on the market. You have to know what you want, and what you’re looking at, or you could get duped. The good news is that the repros are top quality, so if it doesn’t matter to you if something is really old or not, you can really get some great pieces at very reasonable prices.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” He paused to look out the window. “Beautiful view here.”

“One of my favorites. I can’t wait till those lilacs bloom. It will smell wonderful.” She turned her back and
led him into the living room, saying, “I’ve just had the fireplace tile restored. Some of them had come loose.”

He bent to inspect the tiles, tracing the handsome Art Deco design with his index finger. She bent down to point out the differences, one tile from another. The faint trace of her perfume—a soft and dreamy rose scent—drifted around him, and her eyes took on a faint glow as she told him how she had managed to trace the maker of the tiles.

“He had started his career as a tile maker, took on a lot of local jobs to pay the rent, but what he really wanted to do was to make pottery, which he did, in his later years. I found two of his pieces, and hope to find more. Want to see?”

He had barely heard a word she said.

Could this really be the same Zoey Enright who had chased him and her brother through the fields to the cattail-lined pond to see who could catch the biggest frog?

“Ben?”

“What?”

“I said, would you like to see the vases?”

“Oh, sure.” He nodded enthusiastically.

She stood up and reached to the shelves that flanked the fireplace, lifting a cobalt blue vase and handing it to him.

“He worked in a sort of free-form style, apparently, in the later stages of his career. His earlier pieces were made from molds, but the colors were always the same brilliant tones.”

Ben turned the pottery piece around and around in his hands.

“The blue is almost the same color as your eyes.” He’d been thinking it, but hadn’t planned on saying it aloud. It almost seemed that the words had found their own minds and had made the decision to be spoken independently of him.

To her complete and everlasting embarrassment, Zoey blushed.

Flustered, she took the vase from his hands and returned it to the shelf. Crossing in front of him to the other side of the fireplace, she took down the second vase and held it out to him. “This is by the same potter.”

“What was his name?”

“Who? The potter?”

He nodded.

“Elmer Langtree. Isn’t that a great name for a country artist?”

“It is.” He turned the vase to the window and turned it in his hands. “Interesting shade of green,” he commented, adding, “but I prefer the blue.”

He gave it back to her and watched as she stood on her tiptoes to replace it on the narrow shelf. Her movements were self-conscious somehow, as if she was aware that his eyes were following her.

“And through here”—she gestured for him to follow her through an archway leading to a hall—“I have a guest room, a bath and my little office.”

He nodded his approval of the welcoming guest room, with its twin bird’s-eye maple spool beds and two dressers, one with an attached mirror, and the small-scaled wing chair in one corner. A wreath of dried flowers hung on one wall, and over the beds marched a line of framed prints of roses. The lace curtains were tied back with what appeared to be small nosegays. The room was cozy and charming, and he told her so.

“Thank you. I planned it for overnight visits from my mother or sister, but right now, while the second floor is still being worked on, I’m using it as a bedroom. I do like it. It does feel cozy, as you say.” She smiled and pointed across the hallway. “And this is the sitting room/office.”

He stepped inside the room with its dark green walls and palest gold carpet. A small sofa with a bright floral print and a mound of decorative pillows stood along one wall, a curved desk fit nicely into an alcove on another. A third wall had two windows, side by side, with deep sills lined with pots of African violets, while the fourth had shelves that reached almost to the ceiling.

“I see you’re still a reader,” he said softy. “I remember how in the summer you used to lie in the hammock and read the latest Nancy Drew.”