Page 32 of We All Live Here
She stares at the word count and feels something unfamiliar and triumphant. “I can do this,” she says aloud. “I can bloody do this.”
Lila feels a little guilty about how brusque she was with Jensen earlier so she makes him a mug of tea, and steps outside. He is at the far end of the garden, up a ladder, from which he is carefully pruning a lilac bush, wearing a faded T-shirt and a pair of camouflage shorts that come to his knees. He has a farmer’s tan, cut off at the neck and sleeves, and the tanned bits are the deep caramel of someone who spends most of their life outside. She walks to the end of the garden, tailed by Truant, and waits at the bottom of the ladder for him to notice her.
He stops and makes his way down the rungs, accepting the mug gratefully.
“Looking good,” she says brightly, although she genuinely has no idea if the bush looks good or not.
He gazes at it. “Yeah. I won’t go hard on it, although they’re proper thugs. I could probably take four feet from it and it would still look about the same size next year.”
She nods, as though any of this makes any sense. “Sorry about earlier. I mean, it’s rare that I get the house to myself, these days, so I just needed to get in and…Deadlines…”
He shakes his head, as if it’s of no matter, and swigs at his tea. Lila experiences a moment of peace, the kind of peace she can’t remember feeling before. It’s like smelling a fragrance from childhood, a reminder that there was another version of Lila from way, way back, one she had almost forgotten.
“I read your book.”
It takes her a moment to register what he’s said. “You read my book?”
“I didn’t read the whole thing. I’m not a very fast reader. But I read a lot of it. Like I skimmed it.”
“Probably best you don’t read all of it. Turns out it was pretty muchfiction.” She smiles. She can smile about it today. With the new words,The Rebuildis already receding into the far distance.
“Yeah. Bill told me. Sorry about that. Oh, look. A squirrel.”
She waits for him to ask more questions, but he stares at the squirrel and appears to have forgotten the conversation. It is then she sees his wedding ring. She wonders if the rest of her life will involve checking which men are wearing one and which aren’t. She still misses her own—it was the only bit of jewelry she never lost.
“How long have you been doing gardens?”
“About four years.”
“Is that what you wanted to do?”
“No. I wanted to be a male model. But David Gandy had me run out of town. Didn’t like the competition.”
“I’ve heard that about him,” Lila says. “Very insecure.”
“Horribly. You know, the dadbod fills him with fear.”
She starts to laugh.
“What—you don’t think…?” He looks down at his stomach. It’s not big but he puffs it out a little, happy to go with the joke.
Lila tilts her head. “I’m also really sorry about the whole staring-at-the-tree thing. There’s been burglaries around here and—”
“And I give off strong criminal vibes. I get it. But you’re okay. You have Bill.”
She looks at him sideways.
He takes a final swig of his tea. “I’m serious. He gives good teacher face. You wouldn’t mess with him.”
“He can be very stern.”
“He gave me quite the talking-to before I started. About how you were going through a lot. And how we should all give you a lot of space.”
“He said that?”
“He loves you.” He says it so simply.
Lila realizes suddenly how rare it is for her to hear a man discuss lovein open, simple terms. After the early days, Dan rarely told her he loved her. If she asked him he would look at her with an expression that was half bemusement tinged with faint irritation, as if to say,Why are you asking me that?She thinks sometimes that she always felt she was a little too much for him, too needy, too angry, too sad, too hysterical.
