“It’s much more interesting on the inside. I’ll show you around, and then we can chat,” Harriett offered. “The garden really is wonderful this time of year.”
The idea didn’t appear to appeal to him. “Are you certain we’ll have a place to sit?”
It was another strange question. “Of course,” she said.
Before the attorney had arrived, she’d been lying on a patch of bare dirt in the center of the garden. She’d cleared the ground herself the previous day. Soon, she’d build a compost heap on that spot. The imprint of her naked body remained in the dirt. Around it, a fairy circle of thirteen white mushrooms had sprung up.
“Look at these beauties!” Harriett squatted down as if to greet old friends face-to-face. “So that’s what I felt growing beneath me. Chlorophyllum molybdites. Highly poisonous. My mother was an avid mushroom hunter. She used to call it ‘the vomiter.’”
“Careful,” said the attorney, reaching out as though to drag her back.
“Why?” Harriett laughed and looked up. “I don’t plan to eat them.”
Her gaiety drained away as she watched the man’s eyes roam her garden. What he saw was wild and dangerous. She rose to her feet and guided him to two chairs that stood facing each other on the garden’s last remaining slab of concrete. As she sat down across from the lawyer, she caught a glimpse of her dirty feet and hair-covered legs and wished she could tuck them beneath her. When she spoke, she did her best to sound sane.
“So, Mr. Clarke. What does my ex want from me now?”
Clarke opened his briefcase and pulled out a document. “Your husband is offering to purchase this house and the land on which it stands. Given the current state of the property, I’d say his offer is quite generous.”
Harriett shook her head. The suggestion was silly. “This is my house,” she said. “I gave Chase first choice of the properties. His lady friend decided she wanted the apartment in Brooklyn. So I took the house. It was all decided months ago. As far as I’m concerned, the arrangement has worked out beautifully.”
“Apparently he’s received a few phone calls from concerned neighbors. I’ve witnessed the evolution of your garden myself, and I’m afraid I’ve also heard the chatter about town. Everyone in Mattauk is talking about the weeds.”
“What weeds?” Harriett asked.
Temporarily speechless, Clarke sat back in his chair. Then he pulled in a deep breath, apparently determined to see his mission through. “I don’t ordinarily make recommendations of this sort, Ms. Osborne, but in this case, I feel the need to. You are clearly struggling to take care of your property. And when I tried to reach you at work, I was informed that you’ve been taking some time off. Take the money your husband has offered, Ms. Osborne. It’s a substantial sum. Buy yourself an apartment and hire someone to help you. You’ll be able to live comfortably for the rest of your life.”
Harriett had seen the look on his face before. After her parents died, her grandparents had worn it as well. She scared him—the way she’d once frightened them. Without uttering a single word on the subject, they’d made it clear that something about her wasn’t right. It seemed Mr. Clarke dealt with fear the same way her grandparents had—by turning it into disgust.
“I don’t understand,” she said, attempting to adopt a logical tone. “What makes you think the property isn’t exactly the way I want it?”
“For heaven’s sake, look around you, Ms. Osborne!” he cried, as though making one last-ditch appeal to what little of her sanity was left. He rose from his seat and cupped a bunch of purple berries that dripped off the end of a scarlet stem. “I don’t know what these are, but my wife spends half her time uprooting plants just like this from our yard. You’re letting them grow into giants.”
“That’s pokeweed, and I planted it. The berries are generally written off as poisonous to humans, but there are healers who swear they can treat skin diseases and various forms of inflammation. I thought I’d investigate.”
What she’d been convinced was a perfectly reasonable response was greeted with thinly veiled scorn. “You thought you’d investigate? Do you have a medical degree?”
“No,” Harriett countered, without much confidence. “But I have read a fair amount on the subject, and as you pointed out, I do have time on my hands.”
Clarke gaped at her like she’d announced she was building a spaceship to travel to Mars, then glanced down. “What’s this?” With the tip of his shoe, he nudged a tangled clump of green spilling over the sides of a planter she and Chase had purchased on their honeymoon in Provence.
“It’s red clover.”
“Isn’t clover considered a weed?”
“By people who don’t know any better. This summer, I harvested the flowers to make tea.”
His eyes widened comically. “Did you drink it?”
Harriett’s throat was tight and tears had sprung to her eyes. If she’d known why she was under attack, she might have fought back. The fact that Clarke’s cruelty was unprovoked made it smart all the more. What was the point of this, she wondered? Why had this man she barely knew—this man she was paying—come to her house to berate and humiliate her?
“Women have been drinking clover tea for hundreds, maybe even thousands, of years. It helps regulate our hormones during perimenopause.”
Clarke squirmed with discomfort and promptly changed the subject. “And this lovely thicket?” He swiped his hand across a patch of plants whose formerly bright yellow parasols were now turning brown. “What purpose do these plants serve?”
Harriett winced. “That’s wild parsnip. It really doesn’t like to be touched.” The plant contained a powerful phototoxin. She would need to give him a salve to soothe the rash that would cover his hand by the end of the day.
“So you’re telling me you purposely grew all the weeds in this garden.”
“I didn’t say that.” He was putting words in her mouth.
She pulled her gaze away from him and let her eyes roam the garden. There wasn’t a leaf she didn’t recognize or a seed she didn’t know how to use. Once colder weather arrived in mid-November, the vegetation would die and the neighbors could rejoice. But next spring, when the plants from her living room joined the garden, Harriett’s magnificent vision would be realized. This was her land they were standing on, she reminded herself, and yet this man was insisting she view the garden through his eyes. Where she saw promise and possibility, he saw proof of a broken mind. Harriett knew she would never convince him of her sanity, so she found herself faced with a choice. She could either believe her own eyes—or she could see what the man told her to see.