“Do you garden, Merritt?”
I shook my head. “No. Not that I wouldn’t want to learn, but I’ve never had the opportunity. Cal and I only had a small yard, and he hated to spend any time working in it, so it was pretty sparse.”
The old lawyer looked at me oddly. “Follow me through the kitchen. Edith really loved her garden, although as you can see, it became too much for her in the end.”
We walked through a kitchen with appliances that were decidedly midcentury but, as Mr. Williams explained, were all in fine working order—including the refrigerator and stove, which looked like they’d been ripped out of a scene from the fifties TV show Leave It to Beaver.
He opened the back door and waited. I smelled the garden before I saw it, a sweet, heady fragrance of flowers I was not familiar with, mixed with a rich green aroma not unlike the pluff mud. There was a narrow porch and then a wide flight of tabby steps, and I stood on the top one, staring at the magical place in front of me. Four wind chimes dangled from the porch, and I found their presence somehow unnerving, their soft sound like a constant whispering where you couldn’t understand the words.
“What’s that?” I asked, pointing to a narrow door at the end of the porch.
“The entrance to the basement. Nothing you need to see. Mostly cobwebs, I expect. Still has the dirt floors and timber rafters. Slave quarters back in the day, I suspect. Not much use for it now except for a wine cellar, most likely.” He winked.
I turned my attention back to the garden. A winding brick walkway meandered its way through patches of brightly colored shrubs and flowers, skirting the high wall I’d seen from the front yard. It was covered with a climbing vine that drew me to it with its scent. I stood before it and couldn’t help but smile.
“That’s Confederate jasmine,” Mr. Williams offered. “Has a short growing season, but every garden has at least some of it.”
“It’s gorgeous,” I said, taking in a deep breath.
“Cal put in this bench for Miss Edith, so she could sit and enjoy her garden. He made it just for her.”
Behind me, against the side garden wall, surrounded by potted flowers that seemed to have run amok, was a pretty curved wooden bench with a high back and wide arms big enough to rest a glass of lemonade or a cup of tea on.
I touched it, wondering who this Cal had been. My Cal claimed to have no knowledge of how to wield a hammer or nail. Or how to plant living things and make them grow.
I looked around at the wild beauty of the garden, imagining Cal there. “You said Cal used to help Edith with the garden?”
Mr. Williams nodded. “Yes. He’d do all the heavy lifting for her, but he also liked to help with the planting.” He paused, as if measuring his words. “He said it was the only place he could find that would calm his soul.”
Our eyes met, and I couldn’t help but wonder to what extent Mr. Williams knew of Cal’s troubled soul. And to what lengths Cal would go to find the peace he so desperately sought.
I looked away, not wanting to know the answer, and my eye touched on the statue of a saint standing lopsided between two billowing rosebushes, one of its hands missing.
“Saint Michael,” Mr. Williams provided.
“The protector,” I added quietly. “Cal put a small Saint Michael by our front door.” I stared at the stone face, at the eyes turned heavenward, knowing why Cal had thought we needed one. And wondering why his grandmother had thought the same thing.
I bent to smell a rose, its scent pungent in the afternoon heat. “Were Cal and his brother close?”
I felt Mr. Williams shrug before turning to look at him. “They were ten years apart, so Cal was raised almost like an only child. It must have been a shock for him when Gibbes arrived. But even if they’d been closer in age, I don’t know how close they might have been. Cal was like his father. Very . . . physical. Both were high school football stars—did Cal tell you that?”
I shook my head, pretending to examine the roses more closely.