He took her shoulders and stooped to look in her eyes.
“It is not true,” he rasped, the first time he had spoken aloud to Delphine. “Cruel gossip,” he said and handed her his handkerchief.
Delphine covered her face with the hankie and let out her breath.
“I know,” she said. “You are very kind, Gabe.”
Gabe accepted his handkerchief and let Delphine walk back to her inn. It would be days before she returned for her post.
Even now, as he laid Maggie gently in her bed Gabe couldn’t think of a single incidence of a dog being affected by the garden. Still, he was convinced and now he would have to convince Andrew for good and all. Later, after Gabe picked at the leftovers Delphine had packed for him, after he heard Graham and Stella and Poppy laughing as they walked by on their way to the village, after it was finally dark, long past nine, he took Maggie and walked as far into the woods as he dared. He dug a small grave for her and placed her in it, still in her bed, still wrapped in her blanket. He began to shovel dirt in when he remembered the little wren from the garden. He jogged to the shed and opened the steamer trunk. He gathered the bird and the handkerchief in his hand and locked everything up again. But Gabe was drawn to the awful garden, the stillness in the air around it, the lack of birdsong, of insects, the absence of any sound at all.
When he entered through the gate, Gabe sensed the change. The poison was spreading. He strode to the back corner and even before he reached it, he could smell the rot. The darkness crawled toward him, draped with dead and dying plants. It had reached the first parterre, the low boxwood hedge had yellowed, and when he brushed it, white dust and mites flew out. Just inside, the dense little row of pinks Sorrel had planted for the intense scent had closed into brown nubs, and if there was any scent it was only of decay. There was no way to gauge how fast it would move, this ugliness, now that it had begun in earnest. But Gabe knew he had to move faster. He returned to the forest and finished burying the first victims before the Kirkwoods came home from the village. Then he lay in bed, eyes wide the whole night through. Tears stood as if unable to fall because the loss now and that of the future was simply too great.
SORREL WAS WORSE in the morning. Andrew had trouble rousing her, and her lips were dry and cracked from fever. When she finally sat up, Andrew was shocked at how pale she was. Even the sun-kissed tops of her shoulders looked pallid. There were dark circles under her eyes, and her hair was tangled in a salty wad.
“No work for you today,” Andrew said as he brought a cool, damp washcloth in from the bath.
“I’m afraid the garden won’t wait for me to get over the creeping crud,” Sorrel said. “In fact, it has its own creeping crud to get over.” She swung her feet over the side of the bed. “Man, I feel rotten,” she said and flopped backward.
“Can’t Gabe do whatever needs doing?” Andrew asked. Then he remembered the night before. It had faded as he slept until it took on a dreamlike distance. But now, looking at Sorrel, who was fragile in a way Andrew had never seen, the logical part of his mind clashed with the overwhelmed-by-love part, and those ran into his clergy self, which vacillated between wonder at the power of belief and horror at the power of, well, belief.
“Shit,” Andrew said. “I need to talk to Gabe.”
“Why?” Sorrel asked from the bathroom.
“Because he might have an answer to your ‘whatever this thing is’ thing.”
Andrew stuck his head around the door of the wet room.
“Don’t go anywhere till I get back, yeah,” he said.
Sorrel had turned on the shower. “Yeah,” she said and leaned against the sink waiting for the water to warm.
GABE WAS STANDING outside the garden walls by dawn. He’d been standing there for two hours by the time Andrew found him and tapped him gently on the shoulder so as not to startle him.
“Sorrel’s really ill,” Andrew said.
Gabe pointed. “So’s the garden,” he said.
“I don’t give a fuck about the damn garden,” Andrew shouted, the noise lost on Gabe, but the anger and fear apparent without a sound.
“You must,” Gabe signed. “This is where it started.”
“Oh God, Gabe,” Andrew said, “You can’t really believe that?”
Gabe took Andrew’s arm and all but dragged him into the garden. He pulled him toward the back, and they both had to step over fallen stems and crushed blossoms.
When Andrew saw the ruined parts, he heard Sorrel’s voice talking about creeping crud.
“All this since yesterday?” he asked Gabe.
Gabe nodded.
“Well, clearly there’s something toxic in the soil, something neither of you twigged to when you started.”
Gabe shook his head.
“OK then, blight, bugs, mold in the irrigation hoses.”
Again Gabe shook his head.
“What is it then?” Andrew asked. “And don’t tell me the Kirkwood curse.”
Gabe said nothing and stepped gingerly through the mess to collect his shovel. Whatever was happening here, Gabe planned to remove as much of the filth as possible and burn it. He grabbed the shovel and turned to leave. Andrew was pointing behind him.
“What in the world?” he asked.
Gabe looked back. Damn it, he thought, and lunged for the fairy house in the corner.
“Gabe, is that one of Mathilde’s?”
Gabe had no answer for Andrew.
“Jesus, Gabe, what did you think the fairy house was going to do here?”
Gabe signed with vigor. “I hoped that putting them back where they belonged one by one might keep everything from going wrong again,” he said.
“Them? All the houses are still around?” Andrew spluttered.
“I kept them. It was too sad to burn them,” Gabe signed.
“You have to tell Delphine, now, today, Gabe.”
Gabe looked at Andrew pleadingly.
“No, you have to do it,” Andrew said. “I’m going to ask Stella about her flu last February. Maybe there’s a link between my sister’s bug and Sorrel’s.”
Gabe watched Andrew go. He envied him his ignorance.
STELLA AND POPPY were in the kitchen, naturally, when Andrew found them.
“Listen,” he said, “Sorrel’s ill, fever, stomach, general mess.”
“Oh, poor thing,” Stella said. “I can call Dr. Hancock, have him come out.”
“I’m not sure Sorrel would agree to that,” Andrew said. “She seems less concerned than I am.”
“Maybe you should talk to her sister, Patience,” Poppy said.
“Oh, good, let’s get the witch of Granite Point involved in our haunted garden,” Andrew said.
“Whoa,” Poppy said. “What are you on about?”
“Sorry, I’m a little worried, and Gabe’s got me all bollocksed up with his superstitions and then that puppy.”
“Maggie?” Stella asked. “I think it’s sweet the way she’s his shadow.”
“Not anymore,” Andrew said. “She’s dead, and Gabe thinks it’s the garden.”