The Gardens of Covington

by Joan A. Medlicott

  Trees overhanging Elk Road formed a charming bower on sunny days, but dank and fog-banked as it was today, they created a sinister and brooding feel. The fog thickened. Visibility dropped to near zero. Sensing something, Amelia slammed on her brakes.

  When the smack and the grinding crunch struck her rear fender, the seat belt squeezed against her chest and waist, and her neck snapped back. I should be screaming, she thought. They say I screamed and screamed when Thomas and I were hit. But no sound came from her lips. Amelia closed her eyes. Mike would worry when she did not show up. He would come. He would find her here. “Mike?” she said in response to the banging on her car door. “Mike?”

  “No.” The voice was deeper than Mike’s. “It’s Lance, Lance Lundquist.”

  Amelia opened her eyes to the cheerless grayness beyond her windshield. What had happened? The windshield remained intact. Amelia tried the door. It opened easily. Her arms moved normally, and her legs, though gone to rubber, moved. Her neck ached, as did her chest, bruised as it was by the seat belt. There was no fire, as there had been on that fateful day when Thomas died. “I’m not hurt?” she whispered.

  Tall and stocky as a bear, a man stood in the open door of her car. He extended a hand swathed in shaggy brown gloves that reminded her of bear’s paws. A bear that talked? Ridiculous. Amelia blinked, rubbed her eyes. In the flare of headlights from an oncoming vehicle, she noted blond hair turning to silver, a white shirt peeping from a heavy brown jacket. Fumbling with her safety belt, she felt it go slack.

  “Are you hurt? Can you move your legs, arms? Can you turn, rotate your head?” the man asked.

  Slowly, Amelia rotated her head.

  “Give me your hand.” When she did not move, he repeated calmly, “Let me have your hand. I’ll help you out. It’s a rear-end collision, my fault. Thank goodness we were both going slow. My front fender’s damaged, and your rear fender. I am totally at fault. You had the right of way. I didn’t see you when I turned onto Elk Road. My insurance’ll handle it.” He stood there, filling all the space. “They need a light here, one we can see in fog like this.”

  His voice was directive and authoritative. Amelia pictured him striding up to the mayor’s office in Marshall, demanding a stoplight, one that glowed in the fog, and the next day four men and two trucks hastening to install the light.

  “Miss? Mrs.?” he asked.

  “Mrs. Declose,” she replied. “Amelia Declose.”

  “May I help you out of the car, Mrs. Declose?”

  Unwittingly, as if instructed by a schoolteacher to raise her hand, she placed hers in his and stepped onto the road alongside the stranger.

  “That’s better,” he said. “Now, who is Mike? I’ll do my best to locate him for you and notify him of our accident.”

  He made it sound so neat and personal—our accident.

  The large truck coming toward them stopped. A door slammed. Muffled footsteps approached. A bulky form materialized. “Howdy, folks. Need help?”

  It was George Maxwell, the dairy farmer from across Cove Road.

  “Mr. Maxwell,” Amelia said, relieved. “My car. I’ve had an accident. Can you give me a ride home?”

  A tall man, thick-muscled, sharp-featured, with keen dark eyes and graying brown hair that hung lank in the fog, Max, as he was called, moved cautiously around both cars. “Got you a fender bender,” he said. “I’ll help get your bumpers unstuck, and you can probably drive it home yourself, ma’am.”

  Tears rushed to Amelia’s eyes. “I can’t. I just can’t.”

  “The lady’s terribly upset,” the stranger, Lance, said.

  “I have eyes, just like you,” Maxwell said. “Well, we need to push her car off the road before someone crashes into it, again.”

  Dampness from the road oozed through the soles of Amelia’s shoes. The chill of a thousand foggy days slithered up her light wool pants and hugged her legs and thighs. She stood there shivering, watching through mist as the two men disengaged the bumpers one from the other, then shoved her car onto the soggy shoulder, a safe distance off the road. This freed Lance’s car, a Buick Regal, to be driven.

  “Come on, I’ll take you home,” Maxwell said with a nod toward his truck.

  Amelia hesitated. Lance, whatever his name was, had been kind. She owed him the courtesy of a thank you, but before she could speak, Lance took her arm and walked her to Maxwell’s big truck.

  Once she was safely inside the truck, the stranger motioned for her to roll down the window and asked for her phone number and address. “I’ll drop by later, when the fog clears, to get the information I’ll need for my insurance company.”

  “Thank you, Mr.?” She hesitated. The cab of Maxwell’s truck was warm and smelled of dogs, and tobacco.

  “Lance,” he said.

  His intense gray-blue eyes met hers and held them. “Lance,” she said. “Thank you for your help.” She wondered if he heard her above the din of Maxwell revving his engine. Then they were off.

  “Why would you thank that fellow? He hit you.”

  It was true, why had she thanked him?

  “Which one of the ladies are you?”

  “I’m Amelia, Amelia Declose.” She reached out her hand to shake his, but he leaned into the steering wheel, gripped it with both hands, and squinted into the gloom.

  “Dangerous drivin’ in this kind of weather,” Maxwell mumbled. “Lucky he wasn’t comin’ at you head-on.”

  Amelia shivered.

  Having stripped off her scarf and coat, Amelia paced from the foyer to the living room and back, the portable phone in hand, giving ladybugs threatening looks while she waited for the manager of the market to page Mike. Please let him still be in the store, she prayed. When the doorbell rang, relief swept through her. Mike, she thought. He’s here. Grabbing up her blue cashmere scarf, she flung it about her neck and threw wide the door.

  Lance Lundquist, hat in bulky, brown-gloved hands, stood in the doorway. Gray-blue eyes fixed hers from under wild eyebrows. They were thick and bushy with fugitive white hairs curling toward his forehead and others straggling like vines off to the sides. Amelia ignored the urge to get out her scissors and trim the vagrant eyebrows into conformity. She wondered about his age; he looked about sixty, younger than she was, surely.

  Realizing that she was staring, Amelia drew back and motioned him inside. “Excuse me a moment,” she said, hearing a sound on the portable phone in her hand. “Mike? Is that you? I’m so glad I got you. I had an accident. No. I’m not hurt.” She listened, all the while waving Lance into the kitchen, which seemed the place to bring a strange man. “Just the rear fender. The man who bumped into me is here now. What’s his name? Lance?” She looked at Lance with raised brows.

  “Lundquist,” he said.

  “Lance Lundquist,” Amelia relayed to Mike. She looked at the stranger, who was removing his coat and draping it, along with the shaggy brown gloves, over a chair. Then he drew out a chair and sat, waiting, his hands crossed on the table, his eyes glued to her face. “Mike wants you to wait until he gets here.”

  “Certainly.” He smiled for the first time, and Amelia noted that several of his front teeth overlapped one another.

  She relayed his full name again to Mike and hung up, then stood in the doorway watching him uneasily. He raised his hands. “No weapons.” He smiled. “Maybe while we wait, we could go over the insurance information, your driver’s license number, insurance policy.”

  Amelia left the kitchen and returned a moment later, rummaged in her purse, and extracted a billfold with all the information needed. Lance copied it in a meticulous print into a small blue book he then tucked into his tweed jacket pocket. Then he asked, “How long have you lived here?”

  “A year and five months.” Amelia slipped into a chair across from him. “Would you like a cup of coffee? A cookie? My housemate, Grace, makes incredible cookies.”

  “I’d love a cup of coffee. No cookies. Mike’s your husband?”

&nbs
p; “Mon Dieu, no.” She chuckled. “Mike’s taught me all I know about photography. He’s a very dear friend. I was on my way to meet him. We were going to shoot pictures of the forest in the fog. You can get some spectacular shots in the fog.”

  Amelia poured coffee into a mug and brought sugar and cream to the table. She had let a strange man into her home, but he seemed so pleasant, had been so apologetic about the accident, and she was glad not to be alone. “So, you live in Loring Valley?”

  He took a long drink of coffee and held the mug in both hands, as if to warm them. “Yes, for two months now. I’m originally from Nevada. I’m an architect, retired, but I had my own architectural firm in Denver for years. Last year I sold out, got into my car, and traveled for four months.”

  He’s larger than life, Amelia thought. He fills the chair, the whole kitchen it seems. Her heart did a strange unaccustomed flip-flop.

  Lance set his mug on the table. “After Denver, I wanted someplace with mountains, but warmer. Picked up a brochure on Loring Valley at one of the welcome stations, and came up to have a look.” He leaned a bit toward her. She straightened and leaned away.

  “How do you like the area?”

  “The scenery’s great, but I expected Asheville to be more cosmopolitan.” He shrugged. “Maybe I’m judging it too soon.”

  “It’s not cosmopolitan, in the sense that we don’t get Broadway musicals or opera with full sets. Asheville’s . . .” She thought a moment. “. . . less homogeneous than some other cities in the South. There’s been a lot of migration into the area from everywhere in the United States.” She bit her lip, looked thoughtful. Should she tell him that Asheville hosted a large gay and lesbian community? And he must recognize all the adult hippies sporting gray beards, long hair, and wearing sandals, and the women with trailing hair and skirts. He must know about all the new retirement communities being built in Weaverville and Asheville, and the golf courses. “There’s art here, and lots of fine crafts, and theater, more summer stock than Broadway.”

  “But no flashy musicals straight off of Broadway, eh?”

  “One can go to Greenville in South Carolina or down to Charlotte for theater, but I don’t think there’s a stage large enough here to accommodate a huge cast and sets. We keep hoping they’ll build a cultural center with a fine theater, not a multipurpose arena, but I guess we’re years away from that.”

  “Perhaps the infusion of outsiders will bring the money and interest sooner rather than later,” he said.

  She wondered if Lance was one of those rich, interested newcomers. “Perhaps. That would be wonderful.”

  A car door slammed. Hurried steps crossed the porch, announcing Mike’s arrival, and moments later he called from the hall, “Amelia, where are you?”

  Lance sat stiffly. He straightened his tie.

  Amelia half rose from her chair. “In here, Mike.”

  Mike lighted in the doorway, strands of long brown hair adrift from his ponytail, his dark, sensitive eyes wide and worried. Then, tearing off his cashmere scarf, a gift from Amelia, he rushed to her and flung his arms about her. “I was frantic. Horrid fog. It’s my fault for asking you to come out on a day like this. It’s terrible in your valley.” He spoke in quick sentences, all the while unzipping and removing his windbreaker and draping it over the chair he pulled out next to Amelia. He took her hand in both of his and held it securely, possessively.

  “I love this woman,” he said to Lance, a huge grin on his wind-reddened face. “She’s incredible, and such a talent. Have you seen her work, her book? Glorious.”

  “Stop it, Mike.” Amelia blushed, but she liked it that Mike tooted her horn, letting Lance know that she was a woman to be respected.

  “I haven’t,” Lance said, “but, I’d like to.” His eyes sought Amelia’s, and a shiver of—what? excitement?—whipped through her. His eyes were filled with greater interest now, and curiosity, Amelia thought.

  “I’ll get her book,” Mike said, releasing Amelia’s hand. He returned moments later with the coffee table book of photographs, Memories and Mist: Mornings on the Blue Ridge, and opened it on the table facing Lance. “See what splendid work she’s done?”

  Lance turned the pages, slowly perusing the photographs. “The light in your photographs is marvelous. You have quite a talent.”

  Mike stood behind Lance as he turned the pages. “A real talent. I love this woman,” Mike repeated. His eyes shone with affection as he looked at Amelia.

  “And, I love you, Mike,” she replied softly, then added, “you’re such a good friend.”

  11

  Lance and Amelia Meet Again

  With her camera dangling from one shoulder, her camera bag filled with lenses dragging down the other shoulder, and her tripod teetering under her arm, Amelia struggled to lock the front door of the farmhouse behind her.

  “Here, let me help you.”

  Shivers raced along Amelia’s arm and neck. She had not heard his car or his footsteps, but she would know Lance’s deep, resonant voice anywhere. “Hi.” Stepping aside, she allowed him access to the door, which he pulled firmly shut, then locked the dead bolt with the key she handed to him. “Thanks.”

  “It’s a fine, sunny day today, so I thought I’d drop by and see how you were, after yesterday’s jolt. See if you needed a ride, with your car in the shop and all.”

  “I’m fine. I have Hannah’s station wagon. I was just on my way to shoot my neighbor’s roses. Want to come? It’s just down the road.”

  “Sure.” Without asking, he slipped the heavy camera bag from her shoulder and the tripod from under her arm. “I’ll be your caddy.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “I do have to. Besides, I want to.”

  In silence they drove the short distance past the church, to Velma Herrill’s house with its wraparound porch. Velma was sweeping her front steps. She stopped and waved. “Had to get it spick-and-span before you started takin’ pictures.”

  “It looks fine,” she said as she slid from her car. “Velma, this is Lance Lundquist, one of the new residents over in Loring Valley. Lance, my neighbor, Velma Her-rill.” She waved her hand toward the roses, luscious, pink clusters twining in and about the porch railing. “Just smell them. They’re marvelous.” Amelia lifted a heavily laden branch and bent to inhale the sweet odor.

  “Old world, heritage roses,” Velma said. “They’re the hardiest, and smell the best. They’ve bred the smell out of most of the hybrid teas.”

  “I know. That’s why Hannah used only red Chrysler Imperial roses along our drive. They’re among those hybrid teas that retain their smell, and it’s delicious, like these.” She bent to take another whiff. “Only your roses smell, well, more delicate, lighter, and they bloom longer.” Amelia motioned Lance to smell them, then she stepped back. “A hedge of rambling roses, absolutely lovely.” Amelia knew she was rambling, nervous with Lance there.

  Setting up her tripod, Amelia screwed her camera onto it. Without stretching, or straining, or bending, her eye fit right over the viewer. First she would get a wide shot of the front porch, then she would focus on the roses. She asked Velma to bring out a large bowl, partly filled with water, the kind she would use on her dining room table. When Velma complied, Amelia instructed her to cut roses to fill the bowl. Velma leaned way over the railing, and as she did, Amelia shot frame after frame, then reloaded her camera before Velma moved to the front steps, sat, and began to place the roses in the bowl. So absorbed was Velma in arranging the roses that she seemed to forget Amelia, who soon forgot that Lance was leaning against the car watching her work.

  Later, when he drove Amelia to Mars Hill to turn in the film to be developed, Lance said, “I was impressed. You’re incredible, how you got her to relax and forget you were there.”

  “You get the best shots that way.”

  “You love this work?”

  “I certainly do. I never worked before I found photography.”

  “Why not?” />
  “I had a husband with big dreams and big projects who wanted me at his side in attendance constantly.”

  “Maybe he needed your help.”

  “Maybe Thomas did. I’ll never know.”

  “Men need women, especially someone as lovely as you are,” he said. “A man is enhanced when he walks into a room with a beautiful woman on his arm. I understand your husband’s desire to have you by his side. You’re fresh and lovely as a sunrise.”

  Amelia flushed bright red. Enhanced. What an odd word to use. Lance seemed so self-assured, why would he need any woman in order to feel enhanced? Still, she had enjoyed it when men and women looked, not at Thomas, but at her when they walked into a room. She’d forgotten.

  “I’d like to take you for dinner. I’ve heard there’s a lovely restaurant and dancing down at Lake Lure. Would you go?”

  “I’d love to go.”

  “Saturday night, then? I’ll pick you up about six.”

  “Fine. Thank you.”

  “No, lovely lady, I thank you.”

  Suddenly, Lance swerved to avoid a car. “Damned idiot.” He looked behind, and Amelia noted for the first, but not the last time, the cold gray that banished the blue from his eyes.

  Later that night, Amelia sat at the kitchen table with Hannah and Grace, addressing flyers to members of the Sierra Club. “Lance came by,” Amelia said. “He went with me to shoot Velma’s roses. Then he drove me to Mars Hill. He’s asked me to go for dinner and dancing Saturday night at Lake Lure.”

  “Lake Lure, eh? Long drive up a mountain and down with so many nice places right here and in Asheville,” Hannah said.

  “Of course there are nice places here, but the lake and all, and the moon’s nearly full, it’ll be gorgeous, and so romantic, don’t you think? It’s been so long, I’ve forgotten what it’s like getting all dressed up and walking into a room on the arm of a stunning man. It’ll be fun.”