These fields, this work, went a long way toward healing the broken parts of me, at first the girlhood wounds that I carried with me, then later the wrenching grief over Augustus’s betrayal, and last, when Maya fell so hard and we feared we would lose her to her addiction.
I wander through the oregano and rosemary down to the start of the garlic. It’s starting to sprout scapes, the curling buds that have to be removed in order for the garlic to develop its full size, and I break one off to smell, crushing the tiny seed bulbs within to set free a robust fragrance. A dozen possible recipe ideas rush through my mind. How can anyone not like garlic? But I know people who don’t.
The heirloom garlics we farm here are almost entirely Augustus’s doing. He had a dozen garlic specialties, and made a particularly fabulous soup with the scapes, fresh vegetables, and Parmesan rinds. It was hearty and healthy and I suddenly wish I could ask him to prepare me a pot. I wonder if I know the recipe well enough to make it myself.
I feel myself settling into calm. So of course the first bombshell of the day arrives with a ring of my phone. “Meadow speaking,” I say, adjusting my earphones.
“This is Norah Rivera,” she says. “I need to let you know something.”
“Norah!” Startled, I stop moving and look at the top of the ridge. “Where are you?”
“I’m here, in town, but that’s not the thing.”
“Uh . . . okay?”
“The reason I’m calling is Maya broke her arm at work yesterday and she is really in pain. She doesn’t want to call you because she thinks she was mean to ask you to go home, but I think she needs you. You, in particular.”
My stomach pitches to the bottom of a deep ravine. I make myself ask the question: “Was she drunk?”
“What? No! She just tripped over a chair leg or something at work.”
“Good.” I’m ashamed for jumping to conclusions, but already moving toward the house and my keys and my car. “Okay. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Belle l’été?”
“Yes.”
“Norah, how did you know this?”
“It’s a really long story,” she says. “I just wanted you to know.”
“Thank you,” I say sincerely, and then: “Hey, have you talked to the police? They’ve been looking for you.”
“They are? Why?”
“They just want to question everyone in his life, I guess, and they haven’t been able to find you. Honestly, I thought you’d be back in Boston by now.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not yet,” she says. “Look, I have to go. I’m driving.”
“Of course.”
As I whistle for Elvis, my fingers setting free the green, pungent smell of rosemary, I wonder if I should pack an overnight bag. Broke her arm!
The second call comes in as I’m driving down into Santa Barbara. The robot voice on the console tells me it’s the police and I answer the Bluetooth. “Hello, this is Meadow.”
“This is Detective Love. Do you have a minute? We have the results of the autopsy back finally. Most of it, anyway.”
My stomach, which had returned to normal, pitches again. “Yes. Please tell me.”
“There are some results that are inconclusive, so we need to send some tissue out to a different lab, but we have some insight. Did you know he had cancer?”
All the veins in my body ache, all of them, all at once. I lie. “No.”
“It was substantial,” she says.
He hadn’t been feeling well for a while. Complaining of a lack of energy, weakness, even fainting. “Is that what killed him?”
“We don’t think so,” she says. “It’s still not clear.”
To hide my exasperation, I take a breath, hold it, let it go. “Can you release the body?”
“I’m afraid not. We need these last few tests to make sure it was a natural death.”
I frown. “I don’t understand what you’re looking for.”
“Some kind of poisoning, most likely. Which doesn’t mean someone murdered him; it just means something poisoned him. Especially because he worked with the public, we’d like to figure out what that was.”
“Of course.” In reaction, my heart threads unsteadily, as if I’m preparing for a heart attack of my own. “I understand.”
“We’ll keep you posted,” she says, and hangs up.
Furious tears sting my eyes. He was only sixty-seven! If he’d just stayed with me, safely married, he would have stayed healthy.