Bleeding Heart by Liza Gyllenhaal Read Free Book Online

deflected any of my questions about how she had come by such—at least for this day and age—specialized knowledge.
    “That’s going to have to wait,” I heard her tell one client a week or two after our first site visit to Mackenzie’s. “No, not because we’re too busy. You gotta plant spring flowering bulbs in the fall. Yeah, that’s just the way it is.”
    “You could have handled that with a little more finesse,” I told her when she’d finished the call.
    “What do you mean?”
    “Sugarcoat things a little,” I said, taking off my reading glasses. “Rather than saying ‘That’s the way it is,’ you could have said something like ‘We’ll be happy to put this on the top of our list for you in the fall. Bulbs are a wonderful idea!’”
    “That’s not the way you talk,” Mara said. “You don’t sugarcoat anything.”
    “Yes, but—,” I started to say, but then I had to laugh. She was right. In fact, when I thought about it, Mara sounded a lot like me on the phone. “I guess I’ve earned the right to be blunt. Have you ever heard the phrase ‘Do what I say—not what I do’?”
    “Yeah,” Mara replied.
    “Well, try it, okay?” I said. “By the way—what you said was absolutely correct, as you know. And that’s what matters most in this business. But a nicer bedside manner couldn’t hurt.”
    I was working halfway into the night most days now, making endless notes, drafting ideas. I contacted Phil Welling, a site contractor I’d used on other projects and had come to like and trust. We walked the Mackenzie property together as I told him about the plan that was beginning to take shape in my mind.
    “It’ll be a bitch to get done,” he said. “But you’re right. It’s the only way I can see you laying in gardens without eventually losing everything to soil erosion. But how are you planning to connect the different levels?”
    “Retaining walls. Stone steps with wrought-iron railings. I’m visualizing a lot of custom-made ornamentation.”
    “Even more reason to make sure you’ve built up strong, level foundations. I’m pretty sure I can make it work, but just to be safe I’d like to do some perk tests first.”
    “Phil—I’m on spec at this point. I can’t pay you.”
    “Yes, I know. But the word’s out that you’re Mackenzie’s only candidate. It’s a huge score for you, Alice. It’ll be the same for me if it happens—worth investing some money in up front.”
    It was early enough in the season for me to concentrate on the Mackenzie plans and pay Mara to pick up the slack. She contacted our regular part-timers and worked out their weekly schedules for the season. She estimated most of the special requests and sent out quotes. She was putting in a lot of overtime and bringing Dannywith her on weekends. One unusually warm Saturday in early April when I had an office window cracked open, I heard their voices floating across from the greenhouse where Mara was hosing down the walls and cleaning out the seedling trays. We grew our own annuals and some of the perennials from seed that I special-ordered from heritage growers. It not only saved on cost, I found, but also cut down on disease and insect infestation.
    “Do you want to see something magic?” Mara asked her son. I didn’t hear his response, but it didn’t take much imagination to guess what it was.
    “I want you to drop this sunflower seed into that hole in the dirt. That’s right. Pat it down so it’s all safe and warm inside. Now sprinkle a little of this water on top. Not too much—that’s good. Now, do you know what’s going to happen?”
    “Magic?”
    “Yes, but it’s not going to happen overnight. In another couple of weeks that seed is going to sprout—and it’s going to start to grow just the way you are. It’s going to grow all through the summer—and by the end of August it’s going to be even taller than me.”
    “Wow.”
    “And you know the best part? It’s going to turn into