The Unfinished Garden (28 page)

Was Sebastian having a spiritual awakening or a breakdown? Or
maybe it was Tilly who, as Rowena would say, had lost the plot. Tilly felt as if
she’d rushed out of a movie for a popcorn refill and wandered back into the
wrong theatre. Only it wasn’t just a different movie, it was a different genre.
In Japanese. Without subtitles.

“I love you. Christ, I love you.” There was a definite touch of
madness in his voice. Rowena would deck him for sure. “And I have no intention
of leaving. I’m staying and I’m buying this house. Because I think that you love
me, too.”

“You arrogant bastard,” Rowena whispered.

“Do you love me?” He lurched forward and grabbed her
shoulders.

Rowena sagged, as if someone had suctioned out her bones.
“Don’t,” she cried. “I’m begging you, Sebastian. Don’t ask that.”

“Why not? I love you!” He laughed.

Yup, crazy as a loon.
Although
Rowena was acting strange, too.

“Please, leave me alone. I love Tilly. I love Isaac. I—I’ve
made my peace. Please, just leave me alone.” Then Rowena gave a feeble wail, as
if the last thread of her voice had ripped.

Tilly fumbled for the edge of the table, a thousand blips from
the past bombarding her, making sense for the first time: Rowena’s diatribe
after Tilly confided her loss of virginity; Rowena’s alcohol poisoning the night
after Tilly and Sebastian reunited the first time; Rowena so distracted that she
cooked three pheasant lasagnas.

Rowena hung limply. She would have collapsed onto the concrete
if not for Sebastian holding her up. She looked like one of the matching rag
dolls Tilly’s mother had made for their eighth birthdays. Tilly knew where hers
was, but what had happened to Rowena’s? Had she been as careless with Holly
Hobbie as she’d been with the Roxton christening gown? How could you trust a
person for thirty years and not know her at all?

“Sebastian asked you a question,” Tilly said. “Do you love
him?”

“Yes.” Rowena dug her elbows into her stomach and grabbed her
head. Her long, red hair flopped forward like a velvet cape. “God help me, yes.
I can’t remember a time when I didn’t. But neither of you were meant to know. No
one was ever meant to know. I was taking my secret to the grave, Tilly. You must
believe that, you must.”

“Shh, darling.” Sebastian wrapped himself around her. And
something struck Tilly. Why had she never noticed before? They were the same
height; they balanced each other out, and as they held on to each other, Tilly
tried to avert her eyes. But couldn’t.

“And Isaac?” Rowena broke away from Sebastian. “What will you
tell Isaac?”

“That’s not your concern.” Tilly sounded as calm as she
felt—hollowed out, scraped clean of emotion. “We’ve been best friends for over
thirty years and you never let one thing slip. Never even hinted. How could you
be that cold?”

“Because it was too awful to admit.” Rowena sobbed, and
Sebastian reached for her again. “I couldn’t risk losing you, Haddy. You and
Isaac are all that I have. I would cut out my own eyes before I would hurt
either of you. What choice did I have? Haven’t you ever buried a secret so
awful? Haven’t you, Tilly?”

Rowena couldn’t have inflicted more pain with a
switchblade.

Tilly covered her mouth, trying to stifle the keening that
escaped from deep inside, trying to force back the memory. She had thought that
if she locked the truth away, never let it out, she would be safe. James and his
truth. What did he know about a truth like hers? He would tell her to confront
it, drag it to the center of her thoughts and keep it there until her mind lost
interest and strayed. But how could anyone confront the horror of that last
sentence spoken to a husband? The only promise she had ever broken.

I won’t leave you, my love. I swear, I
won’t leave you.

But then she had fallen asleep and had awoken abruptly, her
pounding heart deafening her to the bleeping technology of the hospital.

The panic, the fear—she recalled both, how they tasted acidic,
how they stung at her like fire ants under her skin. And the terrible need to
call a taxi, to go home and watch Isaac sleep, to reassure herself that unlike
her husband, her child would wake the next day. She had followed her instincts,
too strong to ignore, had chosen motherhood over everything else. And now
motherhood was all that she had left. Because in that one hour, in those sixty
minutes that she was gone, David had died. Alone.

* * *

Tilly shot back up, gulping for air, then retched into
the tub of geraniums.

“Haddy!” Rowena rushed at her. “Christ, are you okay?”

“Not especially. I just threw up the last of the Bombay
Sapphire.” Tilly used an elbow to shrug off Rowena, then wiped the back of her
hand across her mouth.

“Please, Tilly. Please forgive me.” Rowena glanced at
Sebastian.

“Let’s get her sitting down.” He walked over and wrapped an arm
under Tilly’s.

“Stop fussing, the pair of you,” Tilly said, but let Sebastian
guide her onto a chair. “I’ve been drinking on an empty stomach. It’s my own
fault.”

She put her head between her legs and listened to her rasping
breath. When did breathing become so hard?

“Look, you two are consenting adults.” Tilly dragged up her
head—why did it feel so cumbersome? She longed for darkness, for dreamless
sleep, for oblivion. No one to listen to, not even herself. “You don’t need my
blessing.”

“No, but we’d like it.” Sebastian held out his hand to Rowena.
Had he ever looked at Tilly that way? She screwed up her eyes and tried to
remember how it felt to be loved by Sebastian, but there was nothing except a
prick of pain above her right eye.

“I want to be happy for you.” Tilly hung her head. “And I will
be, once I get over the freak-factor. Just give me some time. And you guys must
have a lot to talk about. Why don’t you go, take the lasagna.”

“Goodness. What’s going on out here? I was on the phone when I
heard a scream.” Tilly swiveled toward her mother’s voice, but too quickly.
Multicolored lights swam before her eyes. She clutched at her head, trying to
keep the world steady.

“Hmm. Something smells good.” Mrs. Haddington hopped through
the French doors and beamed at Sebastian, unruffled by the desire in his eyes as
Rowena wiped dirt from his chin. Tilly frowned at her mother. She had known, her
mother had known all along. “Hello, Rowena dear. Have you been cooking that
delicious pheasant lasagna again? That was Sari, by the way. On the phone.”

What phone? Tilly hadn’t heard the phone. She hadn’t heard
anything beyond her body expelling the truth, along with the dregs of her
duty-free gin.

“Darling? Are you all right?”

Tilly laughed. “Too much reality and too much gin. Sebastian
and—” She watched as Rowena’s arm found Sebastian’s waist, and he mirrored her
movement. Sebastian and Rowena: two halves of a whole. “Sebastian and Rowena are
leaving,” Tilly said. “And I’m going to lie down. I feel a migraine coming
on.”

“Poor you. I’ll make this quick, then. Sari says not to worry,”
her mother continued. “She’s taken down the porch swing, put the garden art and
outside furniture in the garage—” Mrs. Haddington checked off items on her
fingers as if running through a shopping list “—dragged all your pots under the
deck. And boarded up the basement window. If the phone lines go down, she’ll
contact you when she can. And she’s sorry she didn’t call earlier, but they
didn’t discover the storm had shifted until they turned on the morning news and
then the excrement, I believe, hit the fan.” Mrs. Haddington wrinkled her upper
lip.

“What are you blathering on about?” Tilly mumbled, holding her
head.

“Hurricane Evelyn,” her mother replied. “The eye is projected
to pass over the Triangle.”

“Hurricane Evelyn? But it pounded the coast of Florida and then
petered out across the Atlantic. They were talking about it yesterday on Radio
4.”

“Evidently things changed during the night. It picked up
strength over the ocean and veered northwest. Made landfall at Wilmington as a
category three. But Sari said it’s been downgraded to a category two.” Her
mother gave her best-foot-forward smile, when her lips disappeared into a thin
line and the dimples on either side of her mouth became so pronounced she looked
ridiculously girlish. “Not too bad, then.”

No, not to someone who remembered rationing, but then her
mother hadn’t cowered in the basement listening to apocalyptic cracks and booms
as Hurricane Fran had toppled sixty-foot oaks like giant bowling skittles. And
that was before Tilly had the greenhouse. Bugger. How did you protect a
structure made entirely of plastic sheeting?

Inside the house, Monty barked. That ruddy dog. Would he never
shut up?

“What did she say about the greenhouse? Has she—” Tilly gave a
halfhearted laugh and forced the pads of her fingers into her temples. Clearly,
she was the one having the breakdown after all. An episode of delirium, no
doubt, generated by stress and blue gin. Had to be, because the tall, scowling
man striding around the side of the house with matching luggage was, at this
precise moment, disembarking from a plane in North Carolina.

“Either this is a really bad migraine, or I’m ready for the
cuckoo shack.” Her voice sounded scratched, like a worn-out record. “You here
for the floor show?” she asked the James doppelganger. “’Cos I’ve got to tell
you, we’re putting on one helluva performance tonight.”

He dropped his duffel, swung his suit carrier off his shoulder
and unhooked his backpack. “They kept us in the departure lounge for hours
delaying the flight in thirty-minute increments until they could confirm the
path of the hurricane it was hell Tilly.” Normally James spoke slowly, but he
sounded breathless, as if he were dashing to force out his words before speech
failed him. “It was hell. Then they canceled the flight and told us to come back
tomorrow but I can’t, Tilly, I can’t get on a plane.” He glanced at her mother.
“I’m a nervous traveler,” he said, and began twisting his hair.

Adverse weather and travel delays were triggers for his OCD;
Tilly knew that. It was all about control, he had explained once. But surely
life was a big ol’ crapshoot no matter who you were.

James fastened his gaze on Tilly and blinked through a constant
rhythm of anxiety; Rowena and Sebastian stared at her, waiting for absolution;
swallows searched for insects with a soft collective whistle that seemed to say,
We need, we need. Everyone needed, and everyone would have to wait. She’d
reached the end, hit her wall of concrete.

Tilly tented her fingers and stared inside. The shape she’d
created was a tepee, a place to hide from the demands of others, a place from
which to watch the amber sunshine leak through the clouds.

A thought lambasted her, and she let out an exclamation. Her
mind had gone straight to the greenhouse, but what about the
two-hundred-year-old oak that dangled over David’s studio, the tree that was
dying? If it fell, what would happen to the shelves behind David’s desk, his
high altar stacked with journals and books filled with his words, his theories,
his passion? Why hadn’t she called the tree surgeon before the hurricane season
started? Because of some ridiculous ideal about the sanctity of the tree’s life.
And now she would pay.

* * *

Her face confirmed what he knew. He shouldn’t have come
back. Why, why had he come back? Because, like a homing fucking pigeon, he could
think only of returning to Tilly. Either way, he was screwed. Couldn’t leave,
couldn’t stay.

Had to do this alone; couldn’t do it
without Tilly.

Don’t hate me, please, don’t hate
me.

His head jerked like a short-circuiting robot, and his arms
shook. He had to stop trembling. But he couldn’t; he couldn’t control the
anxiety.

Rowena smiled at him, and he tried to smile back. She was—arm
in arm with Sebastian? She’d told him? Good for her, good for her. But that
meant…Sebastian wasn’t in love with Tilly? How could that be? Sebastian had
loved Tilly his whole life. Rowena had said that was why his marriage failed,
why his wife had the affair. Sebastian wasn’t in love with Tilly? God Almighty,
poor Tilly. He should go to her, try and help, try and be…what? The consolation
prize? How could he help anyone? He couldn’t even help himself. He was shaking;
he couldn’t stop shaking.

Get a grip, James, get a grip.
Virginia was staring at him, must think he was an escaped lunatic.
As good as, Virginia, as good as.
He had to twist his
hair, had to twist his hair because tomorrow he had to get on a plane. He had to
force himself to get back to Heathrow tomorrow and get. On. A. Plane. And if he
didn’t twist his hair, the plane would crash and he would die. He would die,
without telling Tilly how much he loved her. How he had messed up. How he should
never have walked away. How he could never walk away from Tilly.

“That’s it. Shoo.” Tilly flicked her hand. But she didn’t mean
him, right?

Of course she does. You’re a troll; she
hates you.

“I’m serious, here.” Tilly raised her voice. “Leave. I need to
call Sari while she still has phone service. All of you, scram, before I get
nasty.”

“Even me?” Isaac appeared and bobbed under Tilly’s arm. He
squealed, “James!” and tried to break free, but Tilly secured him in place. She
wasn’t even going to let Isaac near him? He needed a hug so bad, and Isaac gave
the best.
Please, Tilly.

“No, Angel Bug. You’re the only one who belongs. Sorry, Mum.
Other than you.”

“But—” James said, his fist still buried in his hair.

Sebastian picked up James’s duffel. “Come on, mate. I think she
means it.”

Chapter 28

Empty windows framed the night and gable ends pointed
into the sky like the rigging on the
Marie Celeste
.
The stone hull of the Dower House was a roofless shell of history, nothing more.
Tilly tugged on Monty’s lead and headed away from the ruin. There was no pain in
her head now that she had doped herself with Imitrex, just the residue of a weak
migraine and the fog of mental white noise. She could almost believe she was
numb. Almost.

Halfway around the world a hurricane was tearing up her life,
the one she had finally decided to keep, but in the fields surrounding Bramwell
Chase, the air was still with a slight nip that promised dew. The moon glowed
the color of goldenrod and the starless sky was turquoise, an opaque tone that
reminded Tilly of sunlight absorbed into her neighbor’s artificial pond.
Alongside her, The Chase reached forward and backward like a never-ending
tear.

At Creeping Cedars there was no bright twilight such as this,
but nothing could compare to the wonder of a clear Piedmont night, when the sky
became a magician’s cape embroidered with stars of white gold thread, stretched
across the stratosphere. How she loved to sit on the porch swing and search for
shooting stars in her private planetarium above the treetops. If one treasured
object survived the storm, something on which to hang her hope, let it be the
porch swing.

Tilly turned left at the estate road, leaving the lights of the
village and the sporadic drone of traffic behind. Her Doc Martens squelching on
the tarmac, she made for the gamekeeper’s cottage and the shooting lodge. Once
she had passed both, she would be out in the open, exposed on the estate road to
Manor Farm. On a clear day, you could see across two counties from up there.

The sky lost its luster, but Tilly strode on, finding calm in
the descending darkness. Nighttime had a way of stripping life to its
essentials, of lending perspective as it swept away distractions, including the
apology she owed her mother.

Good one, Tilly.

To start an argument with Mrs. Haddington was to finish an
argument with Mrs. Haddington, which meant she would wait up for Tilly, even if
Tilly stayed out until dawn. Dumping on her mother had been stupid and
self-defeating, but the throwaway comment—
I suppose I
should find an estate agent. After all, they won’t want two homes, will
they?
—had shoved Tilly over the edge. Along with the
let’s-make-the-best-of-it smile that had landed in Tilly’s stomach like a right
hook.
They.
Already Sebastian and Rowena had become
they.
Suspecting
they
were a couple when Tilly hadn’t talked to Sebastian in ten
years had barely left a bruise. But witnessing his declaration of love for her
best friend after weeks of sifting through her own feelings for him, with said
best friend,
felt like an emotional gutting.
Okay, so despite her best intentions, not numb. But come on. How many years had
she and Rowena loved the same boy, the same man? And in all that time Rowena
hadn’t found one opportunity to sneak in a quick “I have a crush on your ex”?
Not even after Tilly married and skipped the country?

Why did she feel cheated? Rejection, hurt, even anger, Tilly
could understand, but she sure as hell didn’t want to own this childish feeling
that insisted she had lost when she should have won. After all, she and Rowena
were hardly ten years old, competing against each other for blue ribbons in
horse shows.

Of course, she could start finger-pointing to explain away
these eddies of emotions. Maybe Sebastian had encouraged hope; maybe Rowena had
tricked him into a secret tryst. Her relationship with Rowena had been the
cornerstone of Tilly’s life, had guided her through death not once, but twice.
And it had flourished on secrets. Had it also been built on lies? Where did you
run to when the past was pitted with more sinkholes than the future?

Duped, that was how she felt. Clearly, she was the only person
not to realize Rowena and Sebastian had the hots for each other. She could have
scraped the lust off the patio with a trowel, not that it seemed to bother
anyone else. Isaac didn’t blink when he saw them draped around each other; James
showed no surprise whatsoever. Had he known? Had Rowena trusted him and not
Tilly?

A muntjac barked, an eerie call that frightened Tilly even
though she’d grown used to the cry of coyotes. She shivered, grateful for the
snuffling noises as Monty shoved his muzzle into a rabbit hole, oblivious to the
hedgehog lumbering across the road. Lucky hedgehog. Two minutes earlier and
Monty would’ve pounced. See, even spines couldn’t protect you from the
inevitability of death. When your number was up, you could only pray to go
quickly, unlike David. No, she didn’t want to think about this, not now. Her
best friend had punched her to the floor; her childhood sweetheart had kicked
her; a hurricane had stomped on her; she was going to leap up and ask for
more?

Evidently, she was.

As a child, Tilly loved the comfort of repetition, loved using
the same Spirograph cog to create an identical pattern over and over, always
going inward, always getting smaller. And yet she was still shrinking, still
circling back to the living will, to the five days David hung on, to her broken
promise. How could anyone punch through so many layers of guilt? Or was this
darker than guilt? Had this become obsession?

Panic tasered her with memories she didn’t want to own. She was
going under…no air…only pain. And James’s voice, deep and soothing:
Concentrate on your breath, Tilly. Breathe in through your
nose. Fill your abdomen, then your chest—

Not helping!
She clawed at her
scalp, trying to tear out the image of David’s body violated by the breathing
tube. What had James said about fighting intrusive thoughts?
Think, Tilly, think.
Aha! Cultivate detachment, that
was one trick. Been there, done that—sort of—for three years. Monumental
failure. Okay, what else? Logic! Right, now she was getting somewhere. Why was
she convinced that David had changed his mind about the living will? Simple,
because he’d hung on. But why? Simple again, because he couldn’t leave her. But
what if she flipped that thought. What if he had hung on because
she
was the one who couldn’t leave? Suppose, oh God,
suppose her presence had tethered David to the nothingness he had dreaded?

Tilly cried out and Monty whirled around, taut with guard dog
instincts. Panic swelled, and her eyes burned with tears. And again, she thought
of James. If he could confront his fear, so could she. She must stay in that
hospital room, she must comb through the memory, because buried in it,
somewhere, there had to be forgiveness.

Use the gifts James gave you, Tilly. Use
logic.
She breathed slowly. First, she would focus on David’s
personality, on his love of grand gestures. No one ever accused David of
thinking small. And just suppose that had led him to the ultimate sacrifice—a
desire to save her from the moment of his death. That was as honorable as giving
up the last life vest, and so utterly David.

Good, now she was getting somewhere. Her fear thermometer was
dropping. But there was a problem with this scenario. David would never choose
to die alone. He hated being alone, needed people in attendance always. Hell, he
couldn’t even stay at the house by himself. Although, that was due to his fear
of nature. When he was holed up in the studio with hypotheses, he drowned out
the forest with R.E.M. or
Law & Order
reruns.
Tilly smacked her head. Of course! That was it. The panic disappeared as
abruptly as a twister pulling back into the clouds and left behind a nugget of
fact: When David needed focus he isolated himself. He would laugh and say her
presence distracted him, and then he would seek out seclusion.

For five days she had been so determined to guide him through
the final seconds of his life, so determined to be with him as he took his last
breath, that she had never considered how death, like grief, was a journey you
took alone. And if that were true, then maybe the person she needed forgiveness
from was not David, but herself.

* * *

Tilly spread her arms and spun until she was dizzy.
“Whoa.” She stopped and opened her eyes. Dawn was coming, she could feel it.
Finally, a daybreak she welcomed.

The ancient humps of ridge and furrow in the fields below rose
up to greet her. Tilly loved it here, under the beech trees that lined the end
of the estate road. Her lost spot, she used to call it—the place she had come to
escape her sisters, a live-in best friend, hordes of pets, and later, the
demands of Sebastian’s devotion.

A red fox dashed across one of the fields below, so different
from the gray fox that sauntered through her front yard with the attitude, “I’m
takin’ ma own sweet time.” She sure was looking forward to seeing that Southern
fox again.

Her body hummed with energy as if she were warming up for a
race. No more spinning with flight but not direction. Tomorrow was today, and
there was so much to do—pack to go home, plan the future of her business, paint
her bedroom red if she so wished. No, sod the paint, she would put down
rugs!

“I love you, David,” she yelled. “And I’m sorry, but the
library has to go. The MGB, too. And I’m buying rugs for the bedroom.” The air
snatched up her words and carried them toward Manor Farm, where lights blazed on
the ground floor. The naked sash window in the kitchen was flung open, and a
tall figure was braced against the frame. So, he hadn’t slept, either. Had he
been keeping vigil for her?

Tilly held her breath. James couldn’t see her from there,
couldn’t hear her, but could he sense her, sense that connection they had shared
from the moment they had met, the feeling that had terrified her? Had that been
love? Had she gambled and made the wrong choice, chosen Sebastian when she
should have chosen James?

Tilly gazed into the moon until her eyes throbbed from the
brilliance of its halo. No, she hadn’t been scouting for love. She had been
groping toward reconciliation with the pain of love past—holding on instead of
letting go. When David was alive she could walk into any room, see him and know
she belonged. Without him, she had felt invisible, which was a pathetic state of
mind.

James had guided her to this moment of revelation, to the
knowledge that she mattered. But the pull of his demands was too strong. He was
a magnet that attracted and repelled her, and she needed an emotional lull, not
a lovefest akin to scaling Mount Everest in a blizzard. She didn’t want to feel
a big empty space when James wasn’t around, to become invisible again. She
screwed up her eyes and hoped that he could hear her thoughts:

If I could pick a point in the future and
jettison myself into it, I’d want you there. But the future’s a scary place,
and I’m going to rest in the present for a while.

She kissed her palm, held it toward James, then headed back to
her life.

* * *

Sebastian and Rowena had disappeared up to the Hall,
leaving him alone at Manor Farm. Rowena had clucked around him, insisting he
join them, but she’d waited over twenty years for tonight. Only a prime asshole
would gate-crash that kind of a party. In the end, she’d settled for making up
the Farm’s guest bed for him, despite his announcement that he had no intention
of sleeping. Not even a horse tranquilizer could knock him out. He’d already
taken twice the usual dose of Clonazepam, and it had merely nibbled the edge off
his anxiety.

After pacing the upstairs hallway, James had retreated to the
stark, functional comfort of a farmhouse kitchen with its sensorial memories of
his mother’s baking. She’d given him his first cooking lesson when he was five.
They made French toast that had tasted sweeter than anything imaginable. And
afterward—James touched his cheek—she gave him the biggest kiss, and declared it
to be the best French toast in the world. A lifetime of awards and achievements,
and yet no compliment had ever trumped that one.

James tugged open the huge sash window and filled his lungs
with early-morning air. Once again, he was at a crossroads of his own making.
Once again, he had alienated anyone who dared to care for him. He had
orchestrated another spectacular cock-up—a word stolen from Rowena that sounded
ugly enough to fit his mood.

Returning to Chapel Hill would be too painful. Maybe he never
would. He could always sell the house and live in Durham or Raleigh until the
Duke trials were over. In the meantime, he would run back to Illinois and the
company of dear friends, until he could muster the strength to visit Daniel.

Tomorrow, he would fly to O’Hare, despite the reel of horror in
his mind: images of the plane falling from the sky; images of the plane smashing
into the ground; images of an explosion; images of crackling flames consuming
everything, including him.

James sighed and stared into the dawn. Tilly was out there,
close but further away than ever. Even on the ride to the airport, he’d nursed a
ridiculous dream that she would follow him, had conned himself into believing
that ultimately, she would pick him over Sebastian. But this had never been
about Sebastian. She had rejected James for herself, not for another man, and
that was a blow that exploded his heart and slung the pieces to the outer rim of
the galaxy. Game over. Game fucking over.

In his fantasies, he’d been dueling for her affection. But now
he had no one to fight, other than himself, of course. If only he could have
stepped back and given her space. Or if he’d walked away when she’d first said,
“I can’t help you.” And yet, that had never been possible. Not when he, silly
romantic James, had believed that she was his destiny. Crazy thing was, despite
all that had happened, he believed it still.