Chapter 10 - The Garden on the Water
Six months later, the spring had finally arrived in the lower Hudson Valley.
The private landing at the estate in Garrison—twelve miles north of the Westchester property where Chloe had had her wedding—smelled of wet cedar, moss, and the fresh, cold water coming down from the Catskills through the gorge.
The house sat on seventy acres of limestone bluffs, surrounded by hemlocks and sugar maples that had just begun to unfurl their pale green leaves beneath an April sun.
There were no fountains on the terrace.
There was only a wide, flat lawn of rye grass that ran down to the gravel beach, where a thirty-foot wooden launch was tied to the floating dock, bobbing gently against the rubber fenders with every passing wake from the river traffic.
Lily was sitting on the wooden dock wearing a bright yellow raincoat with duck buttons and a pair of red rubber boots that reached her knees.
She had a bamboo fishing pole held between both hands, its red plastic bobber floating thirty feet out in the green water, her tongue tucked into the corner of her mouth as she watched a dragon-fly circle the line.
“Daddy,” she called out, not taking her eyes off the bobber. “The fish is thinking about it.”
Adrian was sitting on an overturned cedar crate behind her, wearing a faded navy sweater with the elbows patched in suede, a pair of worn jeans, and boat shoes that had no socks. He had an old wooden tackle box open between his feet, its brass trays filled with lead sinkers, artificial flies, and a pair of needle-nose pliers he was using to crimp a split-shot onto a spare line.
“He’s not thinking, Lily,” Adrian said. “Fish don't think. They just react to the bait.”
“This one thinks,” she said firmly. “He told me his name is Barnaby.”
“Barnaby is about to become dinner if he doesn't watch his mouth around that worm.”
I came down the wooden stairs from the lawn carrying a tray with three mugs of hot cider and a plate of shortbread Mrs. Gable had baked that morning.
My dress was a simple, loose-fitting sweater-dress of dove-gray wool that hit below the knee, warm and dry against the breeze off the river. The bruise on my collarbone had vanished four months ago, leaving only a tiny, faint white line near the tendon that nobody could see unless I tilted my chin toward the sun.
I set the tray on the stone bench at the edge of the gravel and walked out onto the dock.
The wood was warm beneath my feet.
The wind carried the smell of pine needles and the distant, low horn of a freight train moving along the eastern bank toward Poughkeepsie.
Adrian looked up as I sat down beside him on the edge of the dock, letting my legs dangle over the clear green water. He reached out with his left arm, caught the back of my waist, and pulled me against his ribs with that easy, habitual strength that had become the horizon of my life.
“The post came,” I said.
He didn't stop crimping the lead shot. “Anything interesting?”
“Chloe’s divorce was finalized on Tuesday,” I said, looking out at the white line of the train moving through the trees across the river. “She’s working at an interior design showroom in Stamford. As a receptionist.”
“She always liked furniture,” Adrian murmured.
“And my father’s sentencing is set for the fifteenth.”
Adrian set the pliers down in the brass tray with a quiet clink.
He looked at Lily, who had just shouted because the red bobber had dipped an eighth of an inch beneath the surface.
“The judge is going to give him eighteen months at the county facility in Valhalla,” Adrian said. “He’ll do eight with good behavior. His lawyer tried to get an alternative sentence at a halfway house in White Plains, but the prosecutor pointed out that eighteen months in a minimum-security annex is considerably warmer than forty-degree water in October.”
I leaned my head against his shoulder.
The wool of his sweater was rough against my cheek, smelling of woodsmoke and the sea salt from the boat engines.
For five years, I had thought that justice was something you had to wait for in the dark. I had thought that if you were quiet enough, patient enough, and stayed out of the way of the people who owned the silver spoons, the world would eventually let you have a corner of the porch without shouting at you about the rent.
I had been wrong.
The world didn't give you peace because you were small.
It gave you peace when you built a wall high enough that the wolves broke their teeth trying to reach the latch.
“Mommy!” Lily screamed, her little arms jerking the bamboo pole upward with such sudden, violent energy that she nearly tumbled backward into the cedar shavings. “I got him! I got Barnaby!”
A four-inch yellow perch came flying out of the green water, flapping against the silver leaders, spraying tiny drops of river water across our faces.
Adrian laughed—that deep, booming sound that made the crows fly up from the hemlocks along the bluff—and reached out with both hands, catching our daughter by the waistband of her yellow raincoat before her red boots could touch the edge of the dock.
“Good catch, little bird,” Adrian said, swinging her up into the air until her laughter echoed off the limestone cliffs behind us, bright, clean, and completely unafraid of the water below. “Now let’s go show your mother how to cook a fish that has a name.”
I watched them walk up the gravel path toward the house, the tall man in the navy wool and the little girl in the yellow coat, their shadows stretching long and unbroken across the rye grass toward the open door.
May you like
The river moved behind me, wide, deep, and cold, heading down toward the sea where nobody remembered the names of the small men who had shouted at the fountain.
I picked up the tray, turned my back on the water, and walked home.
