Perhaps a branch moved, perhaps it was something else that caught his eye. Whatever it was, Matt seemed to spy her, and as soon as he did, Jenny took off. She ran because of the mistakes she had made, because she’d been so foolish as a girl and so dead wrong as a woman, because she hadn’t known one dream from another, because she had finally fallen in love. She ran until she was forced to stop, then doubled over to catch her breath before jogging the rest of the way home, through the common that now seemed far too dark, through the shadows the plane trees cast into twisted shapes on the walkways, all the time thinking: I’ve thrown it all away. Now I have nothing at all.
ON SUNDAY, when Stella had gone off to walk her friend Juliet to the train, and Cynthia Elliot had pedaled off on her bicycle to write her final English paper on her chosen poet, Sylvia Plath, due the following morning, Liza Hull closed the tea house and locked the doors. The handyman didn’t work on Sundays and neither did Jenny, and that was just as well. Liza Hull was embarrassed by what she was about to do, although not so embarrassed as to put the thought away. She drew the curtains and then she sat down at the counter and took a photograph of herself with one of those Polaroid cameras she’d picked up at the pharmacy.
She breathed lightly while the film developed right before her eyes, magicking her into existence. Was that really Liza Hull? The woman with the red hair, the shining eyes, the smile that transformed her face? Where was her white coat, her kerchief, her stained clothes, her sacrifice, her sorrow? None of it had developed on this square of film. There was only a woman smiling on the first day of May. It was Liza, it truly was. Liza, who had fallen in love.
Liza Hull’s grandmother had operated the tea house until her ninety-second year; she had known Elisabeth Sparrow when she was a little girl and Elisabeth Sparrow’s hair had already turned white. Granny Hull had once told Liza that, long ago, baking bread was referred to as a “mystery.” Mystery it was, much the same as turning straw into gold. Flour and water and yeast became sustenance. One thing became another, transmuted, as Liza Hull now understood she herself had become. It was alchemy, nothing less: pieces to a whole, straw into gold, flour becoming bread, she who was ordinary made beautiful, overnight.
Liza went upstairs to her bedroom and opened the closet. There was a full-length mirror hung on the back of the door, one she’d always avoided in the past, artfully draping scarves and shawls over the glass. Now she removed all of the fabric. She took off her clothes and stared at herself. She saw the mystery of one thing becoming another right there in the glass.
Liza reached for a green dress that had always made her think of spring, and slipped it on. She had always been resigned to her own bad luck, but that was about to change. She knew it Friday night, when Will had walked her and the girls home from dinner at the Averys’ house. The girls had run on ahead, giggling, racing toward the common. Liza had told Will he should turn and go home; an escort wasn’t necessary, not in Unity. But Will had insisted; the walk would do him good, and besides, he joked, this way he could leave his brother with the cleaning up. As they strolled, Will didn’t bother to try and charm Liza. He was too tired for that, and he was comfortable with Liza Hull. He’d known her forever, after all, since kindergarten, not that he’d ever paid her the least bit of attention. She was simply there, good old Liza; why, he’d never even noticed that her hair was red until tonight.
“I made a right mess of everything,” he said.
They were walking toward the old oak, the one that would have to wait to be cut down, since Matt had already begun spring cleanup for most of his customers. They stopped and looked at the huge branches; the ones wired to the trunk so they wouldn’t crack off in a storm looked especially sad.
“They call these trees of mercy,” Liza said.
“Really?” Will looked over at Liza, ready to make a joke, but, no, she was serious.
“Maybe if you ask the tree to forgive you, you won’t feel so bad.”
“Forgive me?”
Liza had smiled and nodded. She’d come here often; she knew what it was like to feel that you’d done everything wrong.
Will approached the tree. He was sure he wouldn’t do such a foolish thing, it just wasn’t in his nature, but then he looked over his shoulder at Liza. He got down on bended knee. “Forgive me,” he said. “Forgive me for being a fool, for placing myself above all others, forgive me for all of my lies.”
He realized that Liza had come to kneel beside him. They were on the concrete sidewalk, on the corner of Lockhart and East Main, but it was as dark here as any woods. There was only a sliver of moon in the sky. They could hear the girls up ahead of them, making whooping noises as they ran across the green. It was a starry night, and although Will never noticed such things, he noticed now.