Nora and Liz by Nancy Garden Read Free Book Online Page B

good memories of him instead of guilt at his having died alone and horror at imagining what he must have gone through when his heart had given out. The loss still ached, but less sharply than before, here in the place they had both loved above all others. She felt less rootless, too, less abandoned here than in the city where the shock of his death, so soon after Megan had moved out, had made her feel insubstantial, adrift in a world that had lost its meaning.
    Piney Haven had already begun to anchor her again, and she stretched, congratulating herself for her decision. She could heal, she felt sure, if she woke here every summer morning to long, quiet days with nothing to do but read, swim, row, fish, repair the cabin, and perhaps even try to restore the gardens Mom had made at the edge of the woods. Mom would like that, she thought. There’d been a perennial garden, a cutting garden, and a vegetable garden with a small herb bed. The weedy, overgrown perennial garden might be the place to start. She’d have to do some reading; for all her knowledge of biology, Liz was weak in botany, and by the time gardening had begun to interest her, she was already living in the city.
    Piney Haven is so empty now, she thought, the garden bringing back an unexpected wave of sadness. She stood to shake it off, and stretched. So empty.
    ***
    Later, after washing windows and making a list of which ones needed repairing, she made herself a lunch of tunafish salad on an English muffin. Afterward, she took inventory in the tumbledown toolshed at the edge of the cabin’s clearing, and then, as she set off in the car to buy putty and glazing points, she remembered the jack. But after her stop at the hardware store, she found herself driving back roads, retracing childhood Sunday rides instead of going to the Tillots ’ farm. When she passed her parents’ favorite vegetable stand, she spotted a plump late middle-aged woman and recognized Clara Davis, who owned and ran it with her husband, Harry. Clara was applying a fresh coat of white paint to the stand’s neat clapboard walls.
    Grinning, Liz pulled into the gravel parking lot and climbed out of the car just as Clara looked up.
    “Liz Hardy, my word!” she shouted jubilantly, her wrinkled, weatherbeaten face one huge smile. “Look, Harry, it’s the Hardy girl,” she called to her husband, who was just coming slowly around the edge of the stand, leaning heavily, Liz was startled to see, on a cane.
    “Mrs. Davis, how nice to see you again.” Liz took Clara’s outstretched hands. “You’re looking well.”
    “And you, too, dearie,” Clara said as Harry reached them. His blue eyes looked a little vague, but he nodded at Liz and touched his hand to his head as if tipping a hat. “What brings you here?” Clara asked. Before Liz had a chance to answer, she went on. “I was so sorry to hear about your father, dear. What a fine man he was! We’ve missed you, all of you, these years since your sweet mother died. What has it been, five, six years? So sad, losing her. And how’s your brother? Is he here with you?”
    “No, but he’s thinking of coming. He’s married now, living in California. And he has a little boy.” Liz pulled her wallet out of her back pocket and extracted a picture of Gus, a chubby, smiling, blue-eyed baby. “He’s bigger now, of course.”
    “Oh, my. Looks just like Jeff, don’t you think, Harry?” she shouted.
    Harry nodded; Liz remembered that he was hard of hearing and stubborn about getting a hearing aid. He didn’t seem to be wearing one now.
    “Getting ready to open, are you?” Liz said.
    “Yes. Though we had such a strange winter, we’re not at all sure how we’ll do. Lettuce is coming along, though; we’ll start selling it next weekend, I think. And the peas don’t look bad.”
    “I’m thinking of restoring my mother’s old perennial garden, “Liz told them. “So I might be bothering you with questions.”
    “Oh, no bother, dear, no