The Unfinished Garden by Barbara Claypole White Read Free Book Online

bills would tear into
my profits.”
    “Yeah? What about your time? Is it better to spend five hours a
day watching a hose piss or five hours a day potting up saleable plants?”
    “Watering systems fail, but the worst thing a hose does is
leak. Besides, if I can feel the water flow, I know the job’s being done.”
    “Jesus, Tils. Lighten up. You wanna spend your life worrying
about what might happen?”
    If they were friends, Tilly would point out how ludicrous that
question was. After all, the thing she had dreaded most had happened. What did a person have left to worry about after that?
The mister system whooshed on, spraying a film of water over the newly rooted
cuttings. The paddles of the fan whirred into action, and a belt of hot air
walloped Tilly across the face.
    “This is why you have to check the greenhouse every day.” Tilly pointed at the fan and then drew a
diagonal line through the air with her finger. “See how the fan blows the mist
away from this flat? These cuttings will die if you don’t watch that.”
    “Understood. That it?”
    “No. See this mister up here?” Tilly poked a spluttering
nozzle, and tepid water drizzled down her arm. “It gets clogged. Then these cuttings will die.”
    “Yup. Cuttings die, excellent. I’m outta here. See ya up at the
house.” Sari tugged the door open, and a pale vehicle, probably the FedEx van,
flashed past. At least Sari could sign for a package without killing
anything.
    Sod it. Tilly gave the mister head
another poke. She was tempting disaster, but if the nursery went belly-up, so be
it. She and Isaac would have to stay in Bramwell Chase. Or maybe not, now that
Sebastian had decided to nest there. Tilly pinched absentmindedly at her left
breast. What was he up to? Bramwell Chase had never been his home. Sebastian was
a Yorkshire lad, and according to his mother’s last letter, happily ensconced in
Hong Kong.
    At fourteen, Sebastian was her life. By nineteen, he was her
ex-lover, and even though they drifted through two reunions and a near miss
before she met David, Sebastian remained part of her life. When her father was
dying, Tilly flew home alone, insisting David fulfill his commitment to a
well-paid lecture in Montreal. (If he had ever balanced the checkbook, he would
have known how desperately they needed the money.) Tilly had swept in,
determined to take care of everything, but the magnitude of family grief had
nearly crushed her. Until Sebastian had stepped forward to handle the practical
side of death, freeing Tilly to console her mother and sisters. After that,
their friendship was sealed. Or so she thought.
    Tilly made plenty of excuses for his lack of contact in the
years that followed. He had a new wife, a new baby; they moved and had another
baby. But then her world imploded. David died, grief eviscerated her, and
Sebastian mailed a condolence card signed by his family like a corporate
greeting. And for that—Tilly tugged open the greenhouse door—she would never
forgive him.
    * * *
    A basketball pounded the concrete and a man laughed. No, absolutely not. Tilly curved around the
giant red oak and groaned. Tucked between Sari’s bumper-sticker-covered Passat
and the tumble of logs that passed for the log pile, was a sparkling Alfa Romeo
convertible. Oh, this was too much. She had a thousand things to do, half of
which she couldn’t remember, but would if she wasn’t being harassed by a wealthy
retiree who was giving her son advice on free-throws and encouraging her only
employee to giggle like a sixteen-year-old on date night.
    Tilly paused at the end of the driveway, hands on hips. She
was, if no longer a Haddington in name, a Haddington in heart. One never has an excuse for rudeness. Although James
Nealy was testing her on that particular philosophy.
    Since the conversation with her mother two weeks earlier, Tilly
had developed a strategy for handling James: ignore him. She figured by the time
she left for England, he would have lost