The Night Garden (11 page)

Olivia had stood quietly at the kitchen sink, washing her father’s
dishes, listening. She knew then she would not be able to tell Sam the truth about what had happened to her. She needed to keep him away from her—at least until she found a cure. She could not bear the idea that repeated exposure to her might make him worse.

Sam came up to her where she stood at the sink and started to put his arms around her waist. But she elbowed him lightly, told him she wasn’t feeling well, and did not kiss him good night at the door. The next day, she’d broken up with him. She hadn’t actually expected that she would never find a cure for her condition and never be with him again.

Now she tried to go easy on herself when she spotted Sam in the distance crossing the fields toward her. If her stomach fluttered weirdly and the backs of her knees began to itch every time she saw him, it was only because her teenage self was still lurking somewhere down beneath her pragmatic and levelheaded twenty-nine-year-old self.

“I’ll tell him to back off,” Tom said. “If you want.”

She gave a smile she didn’t feel. “It’s okay.”

Sam was with them a moment later; he wore his dark blue uniform, which only seemed to emphasize how long and trim he was. His shoes were shiny and his radio crackled at his side before he turned it down. Even in the middle of the summer, the allergies he’d suffered as a child seemed to have abated. She’d been watching him closely to see if his occasional proximity to her was causing any reactions; so far, she’d seen nothing to indicate that his sensitivity to her had worsened over time.

“Hi, guys,” he said.

“What’s going on in Mayberry, Officer Fife?” Tom said. “Rescuing cats out of trees?”

Sam stood tall in his uniform. “I need to talk to Olivia. Alone.”

“Now?” Olivia said. She felt suddenly self-conscious of the
way her long cotton skirt was hitched in her belt, exposing her work boots and socks and perpetually bruised shins.

“I’m on the clock,” Sam said, his face tight. “So, yeah. Now would be good.”

“What do you think, Liv?” Tom asked.

“Well, we were just about done here anyway,” she said to Tom. “You’ll call Robbie about the bugs?”

“You got it,” Tom said. “I’ll page you in ten, let you know what he says.”

She nodded; Tom didn’t need to page her. He was just telling her he’d check up on her. The gesture embodied the kind of tacit affection that had marked her relationship with Tom from the beginning, though they’d never spent time together apart from work. She watched as he walked away, and when he was out of earshot, she turned her attention to Sam.

“Are you okay?” Olivia asked. “You seem upset about something.”

“Your neighbor’s at it again.”

Olivia rolled her eyes. “What is it now? Are the peacocks too noisy for her? Did she find one of my barn cats sleeping on her porch swing?”

She waited for Sam to laugh but he didn’t. “She was down at social services yesterday. That’s what everyone’s saying.”

“What’s that have to do with me?”

“Not you. Your father.”

“I don’t understand …”

Sam told her how Gloria had made her way to the social services offices and began asking questions—off the record, she’d said.
Hypothetically speaking, what would you do if I knew someone who was abusing an elderly parent? I’m not saying I know anybody, but what if I heard this person had her father allegedly living like a dog in a shack in a ravine, without even the basic necessities? What would be the next step?
Of course, the woman who worked behind the
front desk, Sam’s childhood babysitter, had known immediately that Gloria was talking about old Arthur Pennywort. And she’d called Sam to tell him right away.

“But they can’t do anything,” Olivia said. “It’s not like I’m abusing him. Or neglecting him. I trek down there to see him at least once a day, sometimes more. He’s got everything he says he needs. There’s nothing more I can do.”

“I know that. Everyone in Green Valley knows that.”

“Except Gloria. What do you think she’s trying to do?”

“Hard to say. She hasn’t actually made a move. But it seemed like she was asking about getting him in protective custody.”

“You mean, she wants him taken away,” Olivia said.

Sam nodded.

“But she can’t, right? There’s no way she could do that?”

“I don’t know. Gloria’s made friends where it counts. More every year. She’s looking for the spot where you’re going to have your greatest vulnerability.”

She looked out at the gentle rise of the field.
That’s definitely my father,
she thought.

“Or, who knows? It could just be that she thinks she’s doing the right thing,” Sam said.

Olivia wished there were something she might sit down on other than the ground, for her legs suddenly felt wobbly. “I don’t know what I can do to make him come back to the farmhouse. I’ve tried everything. It’s his choice.”

“Why is he down there?”

“I guess he just likes it down there.”

“Whoa. I’m not judging. If he wants to live in the ravine, then he wants to live in the ravine. But … is he … 
okay
?”

Olivia looked toward the dense woods where the sunny fields stopped and the shadows began. She had not mentioned to Sam that her father wanted the three of them to get together; she wasn’t nearly ready for that. She didn’t like to talk about her father.
She didn’t talk about him with anyone. Not even Sam. His reasons for moving down into the ravine had never been entirely clear to her.

“Dad’s fine where he is,” she said. “He’s been there for ages, getting by. I just don’t understand why Gloria’s doing this. I think I’m a pretty good neighbor. I mean, I try to be. I know that living next to the farm can be kind of—kind of—”

“Like living next to a farm,” Sam put in.

“Yes. But still—it’s not like I’m going out of my way to antagonize her.”

“Is there anything she wants from you?”

Olivia thought a moment. “She wants my boarders out of the barn.”

“That makes sense.”

“Most of the time things are fine,” Olivia said. “But then once in a while, there’s a, oh, a minor problem. Like last month, when one of the boarders took a nap on her porch swing. That’s wrong—I know it. But I can’t evict all the boarders because of one or two bad apples. And they’re not
bad.
Not really. They’re just … lost. People don’t come to stay with me because they’re perfectly happy. They come because they’re stuck in the middle of something tough. And it’s not always easy to make good decisions when you’re in that mind frame.”

“You’re good to them, Olivia,” Sam said. “I bet your mom would have been proud.”

“Thanks,” she said. “That’s … I … It means a lot.”

A moment passed. She glanced at Sam to see him looking firmly back. Men had been coming to the farm, heaping praise on Olivia for years—lauding the beauty of her tomatoes and her rarely brushed hair—but not one compliment had made her chest feel as warm as if the sun itself were shining from inside her. Though he hadn’t moved and she hadn’t moved, she felt as if she was being drawn toward him, that the afternoon around
them was shrinking down so that the only point to exist was the patch of earth where he stood and she stood and a small watermelon grew between them. She thought maybe Sam was feeling it, too—until he stepped back and cleared his throat rather abruptly. “So Gloria wants your boarders out. Where does she expect them to go?”

“Oh. Right. Well, she wants them in the new homeless shelter. She keeps stuffing these fliers about it in my mailbox for the grand opening. I’m pretty sure the reason Gloria and her White Lake Ladies Club had it built was because they want my boarders out of the barn. They don’t understand that these women aren’t here because they have nowhere else to go. They’re here because they don’t want to be anywhere else. At least, not until the maze gives them their answers.” She shook her head, wishing Gloria was with them right now so they could clear things up once and for all. “I won’t let her take the Penny Loafers away from me. I won’t. They’re too important. They’re—”

She stopped. She’d almost said,
They’re the only friends I have.

Her father had moved into Solomon’s Ravine early in the winter when she was sixteen. The days at school were bleak and lonely. The nights alone in the farmhouse were filled with noises that they’d never been filled with before, sinister and lowering noises that made her heart race with fear. When she trekked down into the ravine to see her father, he no longer smiled; instead, a look came over his face that was so despairing she couldn’t help but feel it echo within her. It was the longest, coldest, saddest winter of her life.

When the Penny Loafers finally began to trickle in with the spring rains, Olivia felt a relief like nothing she’d ever known. She crawled into an empty cot at the end of a row and faced the wall so no one could make her doubt her right to live among them. But as days passed, not one woman reprimanded her for skipping her showers, or for not doing homework, or for throwing
rocks at the window of the farmhouse kitchen until it broke. Olivia hadn’t been surprised, exactly, when the boarders began looking to her for direction about the garden maze. It was their faith in her that gave her the confidence to quit school and take over managing the farm.

She remembered her last day of high school in vicious detail—mostly because there was nothing special about it. She hadn’t told any of her former friends she was leaving; only a few teachers knew, and she avoided looking at them because she didn’t want to see the pity in their eyes. Her former friends did what they always did: They mocked her openly because she’d pulled away from them without explanation. She passed Sam in the hallway—he didn’t look at her—and she wished she could curl up in a hidden hallway and cry. By the time the bell rang and school let out, Olivia was filled with a sense of enormous relief that she would never have to return to high school again.

The Penny Loafers had gathered her in, opened their hearts, and made a place for her in their improvised and jerry-built home each and every summer as she grew into adulthood. They didn’t question her rules about not wanting to be touched; they simply treated her as one of them, a woman as lost as they were, in a way. In the cold and brittle chill of the winters, when the barn was empty and the fields were frozen and the possibility of summer seemed as remote as the possibility of flying to Mars, the Penny Loafers’ return was Olivia’s sustaining hope. She would never have close friends, never know a husband’s touch, never have children of her own. Her father would eventually pass away. But as long as Olivia had the Penny Loafers to care for, as long as she could offer them something they couldn’t find anywhere else, she knew she could bear the loneliness of her condition for the rest of her days. Otherwise … she could not think of the
otherwise.

Sam was studying her; she could feel it. She began to look
down, but he reached to tip up the brim of her wide, round hat so that he could see her face.

“Olivia,” he said. “Whatever I can do to help you with your father, with the boarders, I’ll do it. You must know that.”

“I … I don’t know how to thank you.”

He held her eye, not speaking, and she knew—then—how he might want to be thanked. She broke away first, looked out to the long fields, and balled her fists at her sides.

“Okay,” Sam said.

“Okay?”

“Don’t worry. I’m going.”

“Going? Why so fast? No enormous spiders to show me? No questions about what the shapes of the clouds might mean?”

When he spoke, his voice was unusually flat. “I just wanted to tell you about Gloria. That’s all.”

Some of Olivia’s happiness at seeing him began to ease out of her. Although he had come to the farm many times in the past few days with an eagerness to talk, it appeared that her façade of indifference was finally starting to wear down his determination. He just looked at her, with a hint of sadness in his eye that caused disproportionate pain to bloom in her own heart.

She tried to smile.

“Well, I’ll let you get back to it,” he said. He started to walk away. Her whole body felt heavy with disappointment. He’d been so unfailingly kind to her. He looked out for her. And yet, how awful she’d made herself act toward him. His walk seemed heavier than normal as he headed away.

“Wait, Sam!” she heard herself say. He stopped. The words had come out fast, and once they had left her mouth, she wished she could take them back. She really had nothing else to say to him; she simply didn’t like to see him leave looking so sad. “I’m sorry if I seem … if I … you know … I just want to say, it’s
good to know someone’s looking out for me. It’s … it’s a nice change.”

He did not fully face her. “I’m not going to give up, Ollie.”

A shiver rustled along her spine.
Ollie.
What he’d always called her. “What do you mean, give up?”

“I’m not going to just disappear. I live here now, so I don’t care if it takes twenty years for you to warm up to me again. I’m not going anywhere.”

“I’m not
not
warm to you,” she said softly. Some part of her was feeling quite warm, warmer each day she saw him crossing her fields. She looked at his narrow face, his skin that was less pale than it had been a few days ago. “I just don’t understand …”

“What?”

“I don’t understand what you want. From me, I mean.”

“What I want?” He frowned, tense with frustration. “What I want is to have at least one neighbor in Green Valley that I actually like. And Gloria’s not exactly the leading candidate.”

“You want us to be friends?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Oh. Well—okay,” she said. Her relief felt like a rush of cool wind. He only wanted friendship, nothing more. The declaration should have made her happy; instead, she felt the slightest chill of disappointment—which she intended to ignore. “I’d like to be friends.”

“You would?”

“Sure,” she said lightly. “I didn’t know we
weren’t
friends already.”

He smiled, but there was something to it that wasn’t exactly pleased or earnest. She wondered if he knew she didn’t quite believe her own words. Like him, she too thought it would be nice to have a neighbor again—someone who could sit on the porch with her in the evenings and talk lazily about the day past, someone who might come over during the long, lonely winter
for the occasional game of cards. But were the risks of befriending Sam greater than the rewards—for both of them?