"It was bogus. Report was the coed had barricaded herself in the dorm with a knife, a rifle and a bottle of pills. When I talked her out, what she had was manicure scissors, an unloaded twenty-two and a bottle of goddamn Turns."
"It could have been a loaded gun, a bowie knife and a bottle of barbs. You know that. You talked her out, that's what counts. Go on home."
Some days, she thought as she walked out to her car, it felt like it counted more than others.
It was odd, wasn't it, Ava decided, for the man her friend was seeingwas in fact having dinner with that very night-to ask to see her?
She wasn't sure why she'd agreed to meet him. Maybe it was curiosity, or manners, or that easy charm of his. Likely all of that, she admitted as she walked to Whitaker Street.
She'd decided not to drive. Parking could be such a nightmare, and besides, you couldn't window-shop in a car, could you? Or not safely in any case.
And she did love to window-shop. Between her and Essie, she supposed they'd completely corrupted Carly.
Anyway, it wasn't all that far. And Savannah was just gorgeous in April.
She loved Savannah. She loved MacNamara House-and deep in the core, it had been home more than anywhere else. Of course, she'd loved her pretty little house in West Chatham. Picture-perfect life, or so she'd thought. With a successful husband, a delightful little boy. Even the requisite golden retriever.
But there'd been nothing perfect about it, and what a hard blow that had been. Serial adultery wasn't pretty-especially for the blind wife who'd missed all the signals, all the signs until they slapped hard into her face.
So it had been back to MacNamara House. Minus the husband and the dog. She did miss the dog, she thought with some amusement. And she was grateful she'd had a place to go, a place where her son could thrive, where she could be useful.
And if she still wished, occasionally, that the cheating bastard would die in some fiery car wreck, she'd mellowed considerably from the days she'd actively prayed for him to be decapitated by a runaway train. That was progress.
She was lost in her own thoughts and nearly walked right by the house.
"Hey! Ava!"
She stopped, glanced over, and there was Duncan coming down the steps of some poor old house left to ruin.
Talk about window-shopping, she thought with pure female appreciation. It was hardly a wonder Phoebe was taking a lot of looks at this particular piece of merchandise. Rangy build, tousled hair, killer smile. Though she hadn't proven herself the best judge of men, she was betting this one lived up to his packaging.
"Sorry. I was daydreaming. Oh my. Is this the place you bought? The place you told Essie about?"
"Yeah." He looked back at it as a man might a beloved old aunt. "She needs some help."
"Yes, she certainly does."
Boards blinded half the windows while the front veranda sagged like an old pair ofjowls. The paint-what was left of it-curled off the wood in a sickly yellow.
"You have your work cut out for you," she commented.
"That's half the fun. And I kind of wanted to talk to you about that."
"About what?"
"Come on up a little. The steps are fine." He took her hand, drew her up. "Structurally it's in pretty good shape. Some this, some that. But mostly it's cosmetic."
"It's going to take a lot of Max Factor, Duncan."
"Max… right, right. Got it. Yeah, it needs a lot of makeup, but
I've got ideas about that. One of them's about curb appeal, you could say. Your place-MacNamara House?-it's got excellent curb appeal. I hear you do all the gardening around there."
"Most of it." She pulled a bottle of water out of her purse, offered it. "You carry water in your purse?"
"I could open a small sundry shop with what I carry in my purse. I have no idea how you men get along with just pockets. Would you like it? I have two."
"No. Thanks. I'm good. Ah… gardening. Your gardening."
"Mmm." Taking a sip of water, Ava noted the tangled mess of the front lawn, and the viciously healthy bindweed that dominated. "Essie putters a little. Phoebe barely has time to do more than yank a few weeds now and then. I enjoy it most, so I do the most."
"I like to garden."
"Do you?" Now she looked at him with a smile.
"Found it out when I started fooling around with the house I-the house I live in. I'm not too bad. You're a whole lot better. So I thought maybe you might be able to help me out here."
"Here?"
"I'm thinking we'll have to start pretty much from scratch. Mostly what's here has gone woody, or it's dead, except for the weeds, of course. They need a good killing. We'd want some new foundation plants for sure and something splashy. Maybe a dwarf blooming somethinglittle weeper maybe-on the side there. A trailing vine up the trellis." Baffled, Ava studied the sorrowful house. "What trellis?"
"The one I think we should put up. Or an arbor. I got a fondness for arbors." Imagining, he jiggled the change in his pockets. "Then there's pots and window boxes. A lot of big-and let's go splashy again-pots and window boxes. And there's a space around the back? It's small, and I'm thinking a little patio with a pretty little table and chairs, that kind of thing. Needs a couple of beds to frame it in. Potted trees, so on so on. So, think you can help me out?"
"I'm confused. You want me to help you landscape this place?"
"I'm looking to hire you to landscape this place."
Because the breath stuck in her throat, Ava took a long drink to clear it. "Duncan… Why would you think I could take on a project like this? I'm not a landscaper. I just do some gardening."
He did a little gardening, Duncan thought. What Ava did was what Essie did with hook and yarn. She created art. "I don't want a landscaper here, exactly. Nothing against them, not a thing. I want something homey, but a little dramatic. Individual. I like what you've done to the Jones Street place. That's what I'm looking for here. I've got pictures." He pulled a folder from a briefcase on the steps, pushed them at her. "Of the house, the grounds-such as they are, the verandas, so on. And I worked up some of the basic ideas I have in mind. Not set in stone, but ideas. And the budget I was thinking of."
Curiosity got the best of her, so she opened the folder, paged through until she got to the budget. "I'm going to sit down here on these steps."
"Okay." He sat down with her. He did love sitting on a step or a stoop in the city and just watching life go by. So he was content enough to do just that as she was silent for several moments.
"Duncan, I think you must be an awfully sweet man, but you may have a mental problem." When he laughed, she shook her head. "You don't offer a major project like this to someone who isn't proven."
"Well, major's relative. I have a major project elsewhere, which maybe we'll talk about some other time. I want this to look like a home." He wanted the life that went by to see it as one. "That's how I see what you've done. I know something about gardening, and-" She snorted, jabbed a finger. "Tell me half a dozen of the plants you've seen at MacNamara house."
"Well, you've got that one urn thing on the veranda with heliotrope and that dark red phlox, with the lobelia and the sweet alyssum." He moved on to another pot, on to the shrubs and beds in the front.
She studied him now, her eyes narrowed behind shaded lenses. "Did you write all that down?"
"I notice things, especially if they interest me. You could think about it. I've got a couple weeks before I have to lock this in. Maybe you'll come up with some ideas, and we can kick them around. I could…" He glanced at his watch, winced. "But I've gotta get on. Phoebe's coming for dinner in a couple hours so I've got to…"