Chapter 9 - THE GARDEN WITHOUT WEEDS
We didn't build a new porch.
We built an art studio.
It was twenty feet by sixteen feet, set into the back corner of my acre in Matthews, where the willow oak met the property line. Marcus had poured the slab in November, framed the walls with two-by-six cedar, and installed four enormous north-facing skylights that flooded the interior with clear, clean Carolina daylight.
On a Saturday morning in mid-December, Waverly and I were hanging her canvases on the white shiplap walls.
The room smelled of fresh pine, linseed oil, and the faint, sweet warmth of the small woodstove Marcus had vented through the roof.
Waverly was standing on a wooden stepstool, hanging her latest work—a massive, thirty-inch acrylic painting of a great blue heron rising from a marsh, its wings wide and gray against an indigo sky.
"Is it straight?" she asked, her head tilted.
I stepped back, coffee mug in hand.
The neck pain was completely gone now. The headaches had stopped three weeks after the hearing. When I looked in the bathroom mirror in the mornings, the skin over my thyroid cartilage was smooth, clear, and pale.
"Up a quarter-inch on the left," I said.
She tapped the frame with her knuckle. "Now?"
"Perfect."
The gravel in the driveway crunched.
Waverly didn't freeze. She didn't drop her hands. She simply stepped down from the stool, walked to the south window, and looked out toward the front gate.
"It’s Mr. Henderson," she said.
I walked to the door.
Ray Henderson was walking up the flagstone path Marcus had laid between the house and the studio. He was seventy, wearing his flannel hunting jacket and a knit cap, carrying a cardboard produce box lined with newspaper.
"Morning, Tamson," Ray said, his breath pluming in the crisp air.
"Morning, Ray. What have you got there?"
"Winter pears from the orchard down in York," he said, setting the box on the studio porch. "Martha made four jars of apple butter to go with 'em. Said if I didn't bring 'em over to Waverly, she was going to feed 'em to the coons."
Waverly grinned, coming to the door. "Thank you, Mr. Henderson!"
"You’re welcome, little bit," Ray said, winking at her. Then he looked at me, his eyes dropping for a fraction of a second to my throat before returning to my face.
"Saw the moving van over at your mother’s place yesterday," he said quietly.
"Did you?"
"Yep. Some corporate relocation outfit from Atlanta. Took everything out—furniture, rugs, the big grandfather clock in the foyer. Sign out front says *Under Contract*. Heard she bought a two-bedroom patio home down in Sun City."
"Good," I said.
"Ray Henderson doesn't gossip," Ray added, leaning his hands on his knees, "but I will tell you this: she tried to stop me at the mailbox on Thursday. Wanted me to give you a letter. Said it was about Waverly’s college trust."
I didn't blink. "What did you tell her, Ray?"
"Told her that if she didn't get off my property, I was going to turn the garden hose on her," Ray said simply. "Told her that my wife and I have lived on that road for forty years, and we know the difference between a mother and an executioner."
He touched his cap, smiled at Waverly, and turned back toward the gate.
"Pears are good for another week," he called over his shoulder. "Don't let Waverly eat all the apple butter in one sitting. It’s mostly brown sugar."
We watched him walk down the gravel, his boots kicking up small puffs of dust in the morning light.
Waverly looked up at me. "Mom?"
"Yes, honey?"
"Do you miss them?"
I looked around the studio.
I looked at the paintings—the herons, the river stones, the bright, orange sun that sat above the mantle. I looked at the West Boulevard closing certificate framed on my desk. I looked at my daughter’s hands, which were covered in cobalt-blue paint and smelled of sweet pears.
"No, Wave," I said.
And for the first time in my life, there wasn't a single grain of guilt, doubt, or hesitation in the words.
May you like
"Not even a little bit."
***
