SORREL WAS HAVING something of the same talk with herself as she bathed. The tub was deeper than the one at home so that the water came right up to her chin. She’d piled her hair on top of her head to keep it dry but after a while she let it down and sank beneath the scented water. The hollow quiet stole over her as she held her breath until she sat back up and blew it out with a whoosh. It was as if that act, sinking, waiting, and bursting forth again, was the mirror of her own state. Breaking away, letting go, taking wing, whatever Sorrel called it, she was beginning to feel almost giddy with freedom. Even the ghostly garden wasn’t going to dampen her newfound high spirits. And certainly bad-tempered Andrew wasn’t either. Although, it had to be said that a man whose heart had been tested, whose own spirit seemed to be as fragile as a sweet pea seedling, had a certain appeal. After all, Sorrel was awfully good at making things grow.
IT WAS AS if the dinner hour burnished the Kirkwoods in all their varied ways. Stella, just bathed and smelling of roses and lavender, stood on a small stool in the kitchen to reach plates and bowls on the shelf over the buffet. Poppy was wearing skinny jeans and an oversized woolly sweater that settled around her neck like a cloud. She sat at the table reading aloud from the Kirkwood book, her floppy-socked feet stretched out toward the fire that flickered in a wood-burning oven set into one honeyed stone wall. Graham was rummaging in the larder for cheese and butter; everyone could hear him nattering to Wags as he poked about, and Andrew was at his post before the stove stirring a pot that steamed a delicious aroma. Sorrel stood for a moment in the doorway, taking it all in and letting it sift over her newfound state of determined, directed cheer.
Yes, she thought, this is where I belong just now, no matter what happens next.
“Darling,” Stella cooed as she stacked the dishes before her. “Come here and wonder at the marvels that Andrew has made for us this evening! Let’s gather and discuss our adventure.”
Andrew turned from the stove with the first effortless smile Sorrel had seen on his lips. In fact, it was a lovely smile, tentative but real and wide enough to show the overlapped front tooth that had endeared him to many a parishioner. He stepped forward to put a shallow bowl of steaming, lemony artichokes on the table.
“Please,” he said, looking at Sorrel. “Let’s take a breath before we all start planning.”
His words seemed almost a call to prayer or grace, and Sorrel found herself sitting with her head bowed. Soon enough the smell of the artichokes and the sound of Graham’s voice and Wags’s tickety-tick toes as she came into the kitchen made her look up and return Andrew’s smile.
“I’ve decided that,” Graham said, a stack of wrapped cheeses balanced in one hand and a roll of the estate’s butter in the other, “as of this evening—only what, six weeks after the spring equinox, in case you hadn’t noticed—all Kirkwoods and Kirkwood-adjacent, that means you and you”—Graham pointed at Sorrel and Andrew—“shall be renewed in body and spirit.” Graham looked at his wife. “I feel extremely optimistic, Stella mine.”
“Of course you do, dear,” Stella said. “Optimistic is your default setting.”
They sat around the table pulling leaves off the artichokes, butter dripping from their fingers until the bowl beside them contained a teetering tower of leaves and the hearts were all that was left. Andrew sliced them into pieces and everyone popped the last bites into their mouths with sighs.
“Asparagus by next week,” Andrew said. “I saw the first of the spears this afternoon.”
Graham poured more wine, and Poppy filled glasses with fizzy water as Stella set the table. It was as warm an evening as any of the little group had had, and with Stella nearly back to her old self and Andrew behaving as if he just might be ready for his own spring, it felt as if Kirkwood Hall itself had shaken off the long winter for good and all.
And so Sorrel’s first day at Kirkwood Hall drew to a close. After the dishes were done, the last of the minestrone put to cool in the larder, and the dishwasher started, Andrew and Sorrel took Wags out for her final walk of the day. They let her off her lead as they strolled toward the chapel, which meant that the dog disappeared into the darkness as if the very hounds of hell were at her heels. Andrew seemed unfazed even if Sorrel was certain they’d seen the last of her.
“She’s after a rabbit,” Andrew said. He looked at Sorrel’s face, which was alarmed. “Don’t worry, she’ll never catch it.”
He was right; as they approached the churchyard, Wags came bounding back, tags jingling, tongue lolling, and completely empty-mouthed. She sidled up to Andrew and matched her pace to theirs.
“I am sorry I’ve been such a dark thing of late,” he said. “I’ve been alone so much in recent days that I think I almost forgot how to be human.”
Sorrel put her hand on Andrew’s arm, and he slowed.
“Tell me why,” she said. “Why are you alone, why are you so angry, or sad or captured by whatever it is that haunts you?”
“Ah, you want my story then,” Andrew said.
“Only if you want to tell it.” Sorrel remembered how Patience had had to tease Henry’s story out of him, how his reluctance to reveal his pain had nearly halted their journey toward each other, and she hoped that Andrew wouldn’t close up just as she was beginning to see him.
“I lost my wife,” Andrew began.
“Oh God,” Sorrel said, “that’s just awful.”
“Oh no! Nothing like that . . . I suppose you could say I was left at the altar.”
“Oh, well, that’s . . . wait, what?” Sorrel asked.
“Yeah, it was rather a jolt,” Andrew said.
“My non-wife? Ex-fiancée? Shit, Miranda is her name,” Andrew began. “We were at university together, a bit of a fling, and then I went on to seminary, she went into the law. We lost touch, as you do, and then reconnected when her sister was married in St. Luke’s, where I was a junior vicar. She’d been called to the bar a few years before and was quite successful—a barrister with chambers in London. Anyway, I was happy at St. Luke’s in Chelsea; it’s the sister church to the one I serve now. The ministry gave me great pleasure, and I loved being near Stella and the children. And then I added teaching to my duties and I liked that even more. No surprise that being around kids made me think of our future, and we decided to marry. Once we were engaged, Miranda seemed more determined than ever to establish us as a ‘social entity.’” Andrew drew quotes around the words.
“And you weren’t interested?” Sorrel asked.
Andrew shook his head.
“Miranda always thought I was a bit poky. Even Christ Church was a bit of a Chelsea backwater to her. She was sure that if I only applied myself, you know, met the right people, went to the right parties, then I could rise through the Anglican ranks and have a prominent post of my own, or, at the very least enjoy the niceties that could be had at the higher levels.”
“That wasn’t for you, was it?” Sorrel asked.
Andrew tilted his head. “It’s so hard to know, now that it’s all over. Miranda worked mad hours trying to prove herself to her firm, and she was exhausted. I was finding my feet as a minister and a teacher, which was less taxing, really, than what Miranda was up against. I mean, I had to prove myself too, but I didn’t have a herd of misogynists riding me. Still, I knew inside that I was happiest as a parish priest.”
He whistled for Wags, who’d gone to the graveyard gate.