Page 10 of Drawing Home
Her hybrid teas and floribundas had fared well over the winter; luckily, it had been mild enough not to test their hardiness too severely. Still, on close inspection, she saw that some of the canes were brown and shriveled. She pulled on her gloves, picked up her lopper, and set to work paring back the branches to reveal the fresh, white inside.
The usual peacefulness settled over her as she worked, although she still had the nagging feeling that she should have insisted Penny come outside and, if not help her, at least get some fresh air. An hour earlier, she’d found Penny in her room with a bunch of Henry Wyatt drawings spread out on her bed.
“Hon, you can’t just stare at Mr. Wyatt’s drawings all the time. It’s upsetting you.”
“Thedrawingsaren’t upsetting me. Hisdeathupsets me. I didn’t even get to say good-bye. Why does life have to suck all the time?”
“Penny, life doesn’t suck all the time. I wish you didn’t feel that way. Sometimes good things happen.”
“When’s the last time something good happened?”
Emma had reached out to ruffle her hair. “Hmm. Well, maybe the day you were born. That was a good day.”
“Fourteen years ago? That’s sad, Mom. Really pathetic.”
Emma hated to hear Penny being so negative, so fatalistic. It reminded her of her own mother, someone whom Emma certainly didn’t want Penny to end up like.
Her mother, Vivian, was the one who taught her to garden. It was one of the few things that had brought her joy in life after they’d lost Emma’s father suddenly when he was in his early forties.
“Life offers so little beauty,” her mother had said. “The least we can do is try to grow our own.”
Vivian was more ambitious with her roses than Emma. She didn’t shy away from the finicky varieties and had a real focus on the most fragrant blooms, which were generally the darker and more heavily petaled flowers.
Every Saturday morning, her mother made blueberry pancakes, and then the two of them would work in the garden for hours. By her mother’s side, Emma learned everything about soil and planting, how to harden off the roses in preparation for the winter, how to protect them from pests in the summer, and, her favorite part, how to cut the flowers. Her mother was a master at artfully arranging the blooms in vases all over the house.
But gradually, in the years following her husband’s death, Vivian Kirkland became less and less functional. Growing up, Emma accepted her mother’s constant headaches and days spent in a dark room as normal. Vivian lost nearly every job she managed to get except for one, and that was because she’d quit before they could fire her. At least, that’s what she told Emma.
When Emma was in high school, the last of her father’s life-insurance money ran out. Vivian seemed to lose her already tenuous hold on normal thinking and behavior. She became very accident-prone—fender benders, slips on ice in the winter. Emma began to suspect that these “accidents” were deliberate, sources of lawsuits and, therefore, money. They also had the side benefit of getting doctors to prescribe painkillers, to which her mother had developed a nasty addiction.
By the time Emma was a senior in high school, her mother gave up on the garden. Emma took over, tending to the roses until the day the bank foreclosed on the house.
Vivian suffered a fatal overdose when Emma was three months pregnant. But when Emma was in the garden, her mother was still with her. To this day, the smell of roses, even in someone’s perfume, brought back Vivian Kirkland.
“Mom?” Penny leaned against the back door and called to Emma in the garden. She was dressed in cutoff jeans and a Bleachers T-shirt, and Emma observed, not for the first time, that Penny’s face was changing; she was starting to look like a young woman, not a child. With her height, her curly dark hair, and her dark eyes, she also looked strikingly like her father. It was a cosmic test, surely, to make the daughter she loved so much look like the man who’d hurt her so badly.
“Some guy is at the front door,” Penny said.
“Some guy?”
“An old dude wearing a tie.”
“He must have the wrong address. I’m coming.”
Emma pulled off her gloves and wiped her moist hands on her jeans. Penny trailed her into the house and stood by the stairs.
Emma looked out the dining-room window and saw a short older man, silver-haired and wearing horn-rims. He carried a black leather briefcase. Strange.
The man rang the bell yet again and Emma opened the door warily. “Can I help you?”
“I’m looking for Emma Mapson.”
“That’s me. And you are?”
He extended his hand. “I’m Victor Bonivent, attorney with Smythe, Bonivent, Worth.”
“What can I do for you?”
“May I come in?”
