“Thank you for sharing this with me,” I whispered, and when I turned to face her, I knew what it meant to finally fall in love.
I went to Creekside and found Noah seated at the pond.
“Hello, Noah,” I said.
“Hello, Wilson.” He continued staring out over the water. “Thanks for dropping by.”
I set the bag of bread on the ground. “You doing okay?”
“Could be better. Could be worse, though, too.”
I sat beside him on the bench. The swan in the pond had no fear of me and stayed in the shallows near us.
“Did you tell her,” he asked, “about having the wedding at the house?”
I nodded. This had been the idea that I mentioned to Noah the day before.
“I think she was surprised she hadn’t thought of it first.”
“She’s got a lot on her mind.”
“Yes, she does. She and Anna left right after breakfast.”
“Rarin’ to go?”
“You could say that. Jane practically dragged Anna out the door. I haven’t heard from her since.”
“Allie was the same way with Kate’s wedding.”
He was speaking of Jane’s younger sister. Like the wedding this weekend, Kate’s had been held at Noah’s house. Jane had been the matron of honor.
“I suppose she’s already been looking at wedding gowns.”
I glanced at him, surprised.
“That was the best part for Allie, I think,” he went on. “She and Kate spent two days in Raleigh searching for the perfect dress. Kate tried on over a hundred of them, and when Allie got home, she described every one of them to me. Lace here, sleeves there, silk and taffeta, cinched waistlines . . . she must have rambled on for hours, but she was so beautiful when she was excited that I barely heard what she was saying.”
I brought my hands to my lap. “I don’t think she and Anna will have the time for something like that.”
“No, I don’t suppose they will.” He turned to me. “But she’ll be beautiful no matter what she wears, you know.”
I nodded.
These days, the children share in the upkeep of Noah’s house.
We own it jointly; Noah and Allie had made those arrangements before they moved to Creekside. Because the house had meant so much to them, and to the children, they simply couldn’t part with it. Nor could they have given it to only one of their children, since it is the site of countless shared memories for all of them.
As I said, I visited the house frequently, and as I walked the property after leaving Creekside, I made mental notes of all that had to be done. A caretaker kept the grass mowed and the fence in good condition, but a lot of work would be needed to get the property ready for visitors, and there was no way I could do it alone. The white house was coated with the gray dust of a thousand rainstorms, but it was nothing that a good power washing couldn’t spruce up. Despite the caretaker’s efforts, however, the grounds were in bad shape. Weeds were sprouting along the fence posts, hedges needed to be trimmed, and only dried stalks remained of the early-blooming lilies. Hibiscus, hydrangea, and geraniums added splashes of color but needed reshaping as well.
While all that could be taken care of relatively quickly, the rose garden worried me. It had grown wild in the years the house had been empty; each concentric heart was roughly the same height, and every bush seemed to grow into the last. Countless stems poked out at odd angles, and the leaves obscured much of the color. I had no idea whether the floodlights still worked. From where I stood, it seemed there was no way it could be salvaged except by pruning everything back and waiting another year for the blooms to return.
I hoped my landscaper would be able to work a miracle. If anyone could handle the project, he could. A quiet man with a passion for perfection, Nathan Little had worked on some of the most famous gardens in North Carolina—the Biltmore Estate, the Tryon Place, the Duke Botanical Gardens—and he knew more about plants than anyone I’d ever met.
My passion for our own garden at home—small, but nonetheless stunning—had led us to become friends over the years, and Nathan often made a point of coming by in the hours after work. We had long conversations about acid in the soil and the role of shade for azaleas, differences in fertilizers, and even the watering requirements of pansies. It was something completely removed from the work I did at the office, which is perhaps the reason it gave me such joy.
As I surveyed the property, I visualized how I wanted it to look. In the midst of my earlier calls, I’d also contacted Nathan, and though it was Sunday, he’d agreed to swing by. He had three crews, most of whom spoke only Spanish, and the amount of work a single crew could accomplish in a day was staggering. Still, this was a large project, and I prayed they would be able to finish in time.
It was as I was making my mental notes that I saw Harvey Wellington, the pastor, in the distance. He was on his front porch, leaning against the post with his arms crossed. He didn’t move when I spotted him. We seemed to be watching each other, and a moment later, I saw him grin. I thought it was an invitation to go see him, but when I glanced away and then back again, he’d vanished inside his home. Even though we’d spoken, even though I’d shaken his hand, I suddenly realized that I’d never set foot beyond his front door.
Nathan dropped by after lunch, and we spent an hour together. He nodded continuously as I spoke but kept his questions to a minimum. When I was finished, he shaded his eyes with his hand.
Only the rose garden will be troublesome, he finally said. It will be much work to make it look the way it should.
But it’s possible?
He studied the rose garden for a long moment before nodding. Wednesday and Thursday, he finally said. The entire crew will come, he added. Thirty people.
Only two days? I asked. Even with the garden? He knew his business as I know my own, but this statement amazed me nonetheless.
He smiled and put a hand on my shoulder. “Do not worry, my friend,” he said. “It will be magnificent.”
By midafternoon, heat was rising from the ground in shimmering waves. The humidity had thickened the air, making the horizon seem out of focus. Feeling the perspiration beading on my brow, I removed a handkerchief from my pocket. After wiping my face, I sat on the porch to wait for Jane and Anna.
Though the home was boarded up, this hadn’t been done for safety reasons. Rather, the boards were placed over the windows to prevent random vandalism and to keep people from exploring the rooms within. Noah had designed them himself before leaving for Creekside—while his sons had actually done most of the work—and they were attached to the house with hinges and internal hooks so they could be opened easily from the inside. The caretaker did that twice a year to air out the house. The electricity had been turned off, but there was a generator in the rear that the caretaker sometimes turned on to check that the outlets and switches were still in working order. The water had never been turned off because of the sprinkler system, and the caretaker had told me that he sometimes ran the faucets in the kitchen and baths to clean the pipes of any dust that had accumulated.