The Unfinished Garden by Barbara Claypole White Read Free Book Online Page A

interest. No one could be that persistent. No one, it seemed, except James.
    “How many times do I have to say, ‘I can’t help you’?” She kept
her voice light, jovial even, but anger foamed inside.
    “I like repetition.” He grinned, flashing even, white teeth.
So, James thought he could whittle her down, did he? Big mistake, because she
could play a mighty fierce game of chicken.
    “Well, gotta run.” Sari headed to her car. “James? It’s been
real.”
    “Want to tell me why you’re here?” Tilly said to James. She
could take him, no problem.
    “Want to tell me why you don’t answer your messages?”
    Tilly threaded her thumbs through her belt loops and gave her
bring-it-on smile. But as the Passat squealed onto the driveway, she glanced at
Isaac, and the fight drained out of her. Poor love, even the promise of
hostility brought a flush of dread to Isaac’s cheeks.
    “Now I feel as if I’m the one who’s always apologizing,” Tilly
said. And how unreasonable was that, since James was at fault? “But I’m sorry.
As Isaac told you last week, I have a family emergency to handle in England. We
leave tomorrow. That makes me kinda busy.”
    There was a difference between persistence, which Tilly
applauded, and pestering, which she abhorred. When someone pushed too hard, her
instinct was to hunker down. It was a Tilly thing. And if her resolve had
wavered with James’s admiration of her garden, it had hardened the moment her
life had started circling the family drain and he’d begun leaving phone messages
that started with “Maybe you didn’t receive my previous message.”
    And why was he wearing a black long-sleeved shirt in ninety
degrees? Maybe he preferred air-conditioning to nature. A person, in other
words, who had nothing in common with Tilly.
    James crossed and uncrossed his fingers in a silent jig. “I
believe Maple View Farm’s ice cream is nationally acclaimed. And since you live
two minutes away, I was hoping, if I promised to deliver you back here in half
an hour, that you and Isaac might accompany me to their country store?”
    “Could we, Mom? Pretty please with Cool Whip and sprinkles on
top?” Isaac’s grin stretched until he resembled The Joker.
    “I’m a little grubby for socializing.” Tilly brushed a cobweb
from her T-shirt.
    “You look beautiful.” James sounded as if he were stating a
historical fact. Okay, so she warmed to him. Not because he had thrown her a
compliment, although that was appreciated, but because she was certain James
would have said, “Yes, you look like shit,” if he had believed it. And honesty
at all times was another Haddington trait, Tilly’s favorite.
    “Shall we take my car?” James asked Isaac, who punched the air
with enough excitement to spontaneously combust.
    * * *
    The forest often closed in around her, but on the farm
shop porch, Tilly could breathe. When the real estate agent had first driven her
by the farm, thirteen years ago, Tilly’s heart had skipped at the lowing of a
cow, the stench of livestock and the sight of a fox ambling across a plowed
field. How excited she’d been to discover this yawning landscape of green space
that reminded her of the Bramwell Chase estate.
    The view hadn’t changed in thirteen years, which was perfect.
Monotony was Tilly’s life preserver. Maybe that was why gardening fed her soul.
She loved the predictability of seasonal change, the certainty that redbuds
heralded spring, that lantana was the belle of summer, that Coreopsis integrifolia lit up her garden every Halloween. And
yet—she shifted and her cutoffs chafed against her sweaty thighs—gardening, like
life, was about the unexpected.
    She eyed the stranger sitting next to her, his waffle cone
mummified in layers of paper napkins. Now that Isaac had run off to tumble over
the hay bale, James had retreated into silence, licking his two scoops of black
walnut into a smooth, dripless nub with a single-mindedness that she had come