Page 62 of Meet Me in the Garden

“I’ll go with you.”

We start up the walk and Lionel says, “You’ll find we have a long-lost friend inside,” and a hum starts in my ears but there’s no going back. Nathalie’s through the screen door, holding it open, and there’s a woman on the sofa, reading a paperback in the light of the window, and she lowers the book from her face and it’s Ginny.

“Hello,” Nathalie says. “Will it disturb you if I play a record?”

“I’m through with reading now,” Ginny says, her hair still wavy and cropped at her chin, tan arms and a white T-shirt, gold chain disappearing past the neckline. “But thank you for asking.”

“Nathalie, this is Ginny,” I say. “Ginny, this is my daughter, Nathalie.”

Nathalie regards her as she does all strangers—seriously, discerningly—before giving Ginny a nod and busying herself with Lionel’s records and his little Dansette player.

“You’re back,” I say.

“I am.”

She’s sitting on Lionel’s sofa, plenty of room next to her, but I stay standing instead, afraid to get too close. “How was Montana?”

“Wild.” She smiles, dark eyes bright, and I can’t help but smile back. I find a spot on the floor across the coffee table from her, lean against the wall under the window.

“Tell me about it,” I say, and she does.

Nathalie plays Jerry Lee Lewis, Dinah Shore, Ella Fitzgerald. Ginny tells me about the hotel’s underground swimming pool and the pillars in the lobby, made from the trunks of eight-hundred-year-old trees. She tells me about wolves and rabbits and bears, the rhythm of the trains carrying new groups of guests and then taking them away again, about trips with Mare to Missoula and Bozeman, about the slow months between Christmas and the spring, when the hotel was eerily quiet. “It was fun,” Ginny says. “But I couldn’t take another winter there.”

Nathalie’s been turning the volume up a little bit with each song, and at some point Ginny slides down to the floor. Only the coffee table between us now. I trace the glass ring stains on the wood, circle after overlapping circle, when looking into Ginny’s eyes becomes too much.

“A lot’s changed in your life,” she says.

“Lionel told you?”

“Just a little.”

She’s quiet for so long that I have to look up. “What is it?”

She hesitates, sighs, places the tip of her finger on my gold wedding band. “Lionel says he’s a friend from New Orleans?”

“Yes. His name’s Felix.”

“What are you saying about Daddy?” Nathalie asks.

“Nothing, honey. We’re just talking.” I can’t sit here any longer, Ginny’s proximity suddenly a burden, far too much to explain and no easy words for any of it. “We should be getting home,” I say. “Nathalie, let’s go get your brother.”

I should start dinner, but I go into the kitchen and then right back outside again, a tightness in my chest that won’t let me be. In the corner of thepatio, tucked against the wall, a tarp covers my yard-sale chair, untouched since I brought it home. It’s no time of day to start a project but I pull off the tarp and get my upholstery tools anyway. Flathead screwdriver, prying up staples. Knife against fabric, cutting in. The husband’s Manhattan seeped through the cream wool and the cotton batting underneath it, but the wood’s still good as new. Nathalie and Clément are downslope, playing in the forest part. By the time Felix comes home, I’ve finished shaping new batting onto the chair and I’m measuring the fabric, marking it with a sewing pencil. He’s carrying a bag from Wallichs Music City with a record inside. The children run to him, wrap their arms around his waist. He laughs, drags them across the patio to where I’m standing, holding the record high in the air to keep it safe.

“I thought they were children,” he gasps. “But they’re not—they’re barnacles!”

“We aren’t barnacles, we’re leeches!” Clément shrieks.

Nathalie tightens her grip. “We’re sucking the blood from your body! Soon you’ll faint!”

“All right now,” he tells them. “Let Daddy get in the door.” They break away and tromp back down to the forest part, and he says, “Well,thatwas a greeting.”

I smile. “Are you hungry?”

“Not terribly.”

“I’ll start dinner soon.”

“There’s no rush. I got a new record. Miles Davis, a trumpet player. They had it on in the store and I about lost my mind. I’ll enjoy a listen, and you keep going on your project. Or just relax. Do whatever you want to do.”