Page 66 of Saltwater Memories
It’d be good to get out of the house and get out of her head. Amanda got into her car and drove to the farm, surprised to see that it was quite busy.
She felt suddenly nervous about seeing Sue and Paul again. They were probably busy helping customers; they didn’t have time to catch up. Or worse – what if they reallywantedto catch up and Amanda did something inappropriate like burst into tears? She wasn’t usually one to cry, but the day had her on edge.
She avoided the bustling greenhouses and instead turned to walk through the empty lavender fields. The plants were all dead now, as it was winter – or maybe not dead, but dormant? Amanda wasn’t sure. She never did get very interested in plants.
The lavender bushes still stood cheerful and wide, but their leaves were gray and stiff. She bent down to get a closer look. Were they dead? Or were they just…waiting?
Amanda couldn’t really tell, but it was peaceful to walk up and down the fields. She admired the way the lavender rows flowed ever so gently with the rolling hills in the distance. In the summer, the lavender would surely come back to life, rows and rows of the purple flowers all coming together and swaying like a dream.
Her mom had loved lavender. She grew it along the walkway to the house. That was one plant that survived with little maintenance – the lavender came back year after year.
Amanda’s footsteps felt heavy; she must not have slept well. She decided to take a break and sit down in the dirt. The ground was colder than she expected, and it felt like it was draining the heat and the life from her body.
She didn’t care.
She sat there and thought of all the times she’d come here with her mother, annoyed that she had to spend a weekend pulling weeds or digging up grass to make more room for flowerbeds. Amanda had hated everything about gardening. She hated wearing a big hat, she hated the way that her hands got sweaty inside the gloves and how they stung. She hated the bugs that emerged from the soil and surprised her, making her scream. She only did it because her mom made her do it, and now she was looking back on gardening as one of her fondest memories.
That was all she had now. The memories. She’d never get to make more memories with her mom. She’d never get to walk these fields together again, annoyed by whatever escapade they were on, or by whatever disagreement they’d had.
Surely, if she were still alive, they’d be annoying each other with some regularity – but in a good way. A loving way. Amanda might’ve casually complained to her friends about her mom wanting her to come home and visit, or she might’ve had to tell her mom to take it easy on her new boyfriend. She laughed to herself – what would her mom have thought of Rupert?
Unlike her dad, her mom was able to keep her opinions to herself. She might not say anything at all, though she likely wouldn’t have liked him proudly announcing that he wasn’t “the marrying type.”
Would Amandaeverget married? Would any guy want to commit to a life sentence with her?
It didn’t matter – her mom would never meet him anyway. She buried her head in her hands as all the silly feelings came spilling out. The emotions caught in her throat and she let out a sob – first one, quietly, then more, until she was flat-out crying, like a loon. Luckily, there was no one but the lavender to witness her breakdown.
Until, of course, she heard a voice from behind her. “Amanda?”
She thought she was imagining it. She looked up, hurriedly wiping the tears from her face, but no one was there.
“Are you okay?” said the voice.
Amanda stood up to see Will standing behind her in the next row of lavender. At first she thought that she was imagining him, but there he was. The real Will, with the dead plants blowing in the breeze between them.
“Hi, how are you?” she said, trying to recover the quiver from her voice.
“I’m fine, but are you okay?”
Her hips were stiff from standing up so quickly; how long had she been sitting in the cold dirt? “Yeah, great. Everything is great.”
“I came by the nursery for my landscaper – your recommendation, by the way. Thank you again for that, he’s great.”
“You’re welcome, glad that it’s working out.”
“And I thought I saw – well, something bobbing around out here, I thought it was a loose dog.”
She looked around. There was no one else. “Oh, ah – maybe I missed him. A big dog?”
He looked down then back up at her. “Are you – ”
She sighed. It was nice of him to try, but the dog ruse didn’t make sense. “I used to come here a lot. With my mom. She loved flowers.” Amanda laughed at herself. What a bizarre statement to make. But then again, what a bizarre situation to find herself in.
“Oh yeah?”
She nodded. “I used to fight with her so much about gardening when I was in high school. I hated it. I still do. But she loved this place. She loved the lavender. Have you thought about putting lavender on the estate? It’s a very San Juan Island sort of thing.”
He smiled. “I haven’t, actually. Hang on a sec.”
