“Silver birches alone would be too obvious, don’t you think?” I asked.
Mr. Hillock tilted his head to the side. “Maybe.”
“Dogwoods, too, then. There”—I pointed to one side of the gravel path—“and there. The red bark will bring depth to the garden on the worst days of January. And grasses. We’ll need grasses for height.”
“If we plant them soon, they’ll have time to establish,” said Mr. Hillock.
“We’ll need Christmas rose,” I said, beginning to see possibility. “And sage and holly and hart’s-tongue fern and bellflowers. I’ll write to Adam and…” I trailed off, remembering abruptly that I was no longer employed at Highbury House.
“I will find the plants,” said Mr. Hillock firmly.
My shoulders relaxed. “Thank you.”
“The garden needs a focal point.”
“What did you have in mind?”
“A pool would look well in the center.”
“Maybe a sculptural one, different than the water garden.”
His cap came off again, but this time he held it between his hands. “It could be a memorial. If someone felt they needed to remember something,” Mr. Hillock said.
“The Melcourts would never stand for that.”
“The Melcourts never need to know.”
“You are a good man, Mr. Hillock.” I reached for the man’s grizzled, callused hand. He flinched, but then relaxed, and we sat there together in silence on the hard ground for some time.
? STELLA ?
Stella lay staring at the ceiling. Bobby was finally fast asleep in the cot next to her, exhausted from crying. He seemed fine during the day—quiet but dry-eyed—but as soon as she tucked the blankets around his chin at night, he would begin to weep.
At first she’d tried to comfort him. She’d laid a light hand on his chest. She’d tried singing and reading to him. She’d grown angry and stern. None of it seemed to stop the flood of hot tears that rolled down his face. One day she’d simply gotten up, announced that she had to finish her duties downstairs, and left. When she’d come back, she’d found Bobby asleep, curled around his slightly damp pillow.
She glanced down at him. His hair had fallen over his brow, and he looked peaceful. She knew that some instinct should probably have compelled her to reach forward and brush his hair back or tuck the covers a little closer around him, but she felt nothing except unadulterated fear. She’d barely been able to take care of him when he’d been just another boy, but now he’d lost his mother and father, and he’d seen his best friend die. Surely it was all too much for a child.
Stella pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes, forcing starbursts to explode in the black. The truth had been pressing on her for months now. She’d tried to escape it but couldn’t.
“I can’t do this,” she whispered.
She opened her eyes and looked around the room. Her neat little magazine clippings and tear-outs from travel brochures seemed to mock her. Hawaiian beaches she would never see. Mountain peaks in the Alps she would never climb. She wouldn’t know the feeling of sultry air on her skin in South America, nor would she experience the dry, scorching heat of the Sahara Desert. She was going to be stuck here in Highbury for the rest of her life.
A sourness rose in her stomach, burning her throat. She pushed herself off her bed and went to the nearest wall. Rip! She tore Niagara Falls off the wall. Bobby snuffled and shifted in his sleep, but he didn’t wake.
Rip! Down came the pyramids of Egypt.
Rip! The Great Wall of China fell.
Rip! The sandy beaches of Tahiti washed away.
She worked methodically, piling the pages on top of her bed. When the walls were bare, she turned to her tiny desk and removed booklet after booklet from her correspondence courses. Onto the pile the guides to shorthand and typing went. She pulled out the magazine articles she’d saved about modern girls.
When her desk was cleared, she gathered up the mound of paper and walked out. Down, down, down the back stairs she went, descending into the basement of the house. A clock struck one in the morning. Good. No one would be in the kitchens.
For once, it was silent in the room where she spent most of her working hours. She dropped her papers on the wood worktop and went to the iron range. Heat radiated off it from when she’d banked the fire after supper. Stella opened the front hatch, stirred up the remains of the embers, and began to feed in little bits of wood until she saw flame. She wouldn’t need a big fire.