Chapter 5 - Every Saturday
The next Saturday morning I heard a car door slam in the driveway.
Brooke got out in spotless white sneakers, big sunglasses, and gardening gloves with the store tags still hanging off them.
"This is humiliating," she said.
I handed her packet number one. "That's lavender."
She turned it over. "Where's it go?"
"Directions are on the map."
She unfolded the laminated sheet and stared at it. "You've got to be kidding me. It's measured."
"All of it's measured. It was Grandma's garden."
An older woman from the next cottage came across the grass with a pitcher of lemonade. Mrs. Ainsley had known my grandmother for thirty years.
"Oh," she said, smiling at Brooke. "You must be today's gardener."
Brooke's smile was thin. "I'm only here because Della made me."
Mrs. Ainsley looked at me, then back at her. "Winifred made people, too."
"Excuse me?"
"She used to say a garden only loves the people who keep showing up."
Brooke sighed and knelt down by the first bed.
Ten minutes later: "I think I broke a nail."
Mrs. Ainsley didn't look up from the weeds she was pulling.
By noon Brooke had dirt ground into the knees of her jeans, mud caked on her shoes, and not one shred of patience left.
"How many have I done?"
I checked the clipboard. "Eight."
She stared at me. "Eight?"
"Only 278 to go."
Her shoulders dropped.
The following Saturday she showed up in old jeans instead of designer ones. Progress.
Halfway through a section she stopped. "Why are these spaced so weird?"
"They're not. They wrap around the bench where Grandma and Grandpa sat every anniversary."
She looked at the map. "Oh."
A week after that she pointed at another bed. "What went there?"
"Bee balm. She planted it after a rough summer."
"Why?"
"She said the family needed something cheerful."
Brooke nodded slowly. She wasn't making jokes anymore.
Every Saturday, it seemed, another neighbor drifted over with another story. Each one knew a different corner of that garden.
"Those roses made it through the big storm."
"Winifred grew those herbs for her soup."
"The lilies went in the summer Della graduated."
Little by little, Brooke stopped seeing plants and started seeing people.
One afternoon she stood under the bare arch she'd left behind.
"I thought it looked beautiful," she said, looking over at the beds we'd been rebuilding. "But I stole that beauty from somewhere else to make it."
I didn't say anything. She'd already gotten there on her own.
By the eighth Saturday there was one packet left. Number 286. A peony root.
Brooke held it in both hands. "Is this—"
"The last one."
She knelt exactly where the map told her to. She measured the depth twice before she set it in. Then she covered the roots over, slow and careful.
No rushing. No complaining. Nobody watching.
When she stood up, her hands were black with soil.
"So these were planted the year you were born?"
I nodded.
She brushed off her palms. "I thought I was cutting flowers that would just come back." Her eyes moved across the whole garden. "I didn't get that I was cutting people out of their own memories."
For the first time since the wedding, I believed her.
Brooke had finally learned the thing that makes an apology so hard. Saying sorry isn't the hard part. Coming back every week is.
As we packed up the tools, Grant came over with lemonade and handed his sister a glass.
"I owe you an apology too."
She frowned. "For what?"
"I kept asking Della to be the reasonable one because I already knew you wouldn't be." He looked at me. "That's not keeping the peace. That's making the kinder person pay for it."
May you like
Brooke looked down. "I'm sorry."
Neither of them made a speech out of it.
