Shadow Notes by Laurel Peterson (cool books to read txt) 📗

dried seed pod, but Mother kept all the pieces under control, including persuading Loretta to sit and eat. I greeted and gave condolences and kept trying to figure out which man was involved with Hetty. I came up empty. I looked at the people eating and thought the shock and guilt we felt were only as real as the rented plates in our hands.

Most of the guests drifted away by two o’clock. Once, I saw the chief and tried to get his attention, but he merely waved. Later, I noticed Mother corner him and Bailey. Before I could find out her arrangements, Ernie cornered me. He looked exhausted.

“You and me, we need to talk.”

“Now?” I said.

“Fifteen years is long enough to put a conversation off.”

He led me to a small office created from one of the bedrooms. “This one’s mine,” he said. “Loretta’s got the one next door. When we’re ready for lunch, we bang on the wall.” He tried to smile, but it didn’t make it to his face. “Have a seat.”

A desk faced the room’s one window, and bookshelves lined two walls. More books lay stacked on the floor, and a well-used red leather wing chair hugged an arched floor lamp with a butterscotch linen shade. I slid onto the leather, braced myself. Ernie sat in his desk chair, a practical looking black job on wheels, and rolled toward me. “You’re grown up, Clara. You’ve had fifteen years to sow your wild oats, figure yourself out. It’s time you came home and faced your responsibilities.”

“Ernie, I—”

He held up his hand. “You knew from the moment your father’s will was read that this moment would come.”

I thought about my father and how much he had loved his work, about all those trips he’d taken me on to show me his work in action. I remembered the smell of worms and dirt, the sharp citrus of green leaves, the silk and glitter of flower petals. I sank into memories, the crumble of dark earth across my palms, the sun’s warm hand on my neck. And then, an image interrupted of my turning away from trying to persuade Mother that he needed help.

I’d abandoned him. The thought snapped me from the reverie, like an electric shock in my gut. “What do you want?” I asked.

Ernie gave me a funny look. “What your father wanted was for you to learn the business from the ground up. Sorry, bad pun.” He shook his head. “Half of it is yours anyway; I’ve run it for you, sent your profits to your investment company, and not complained about it, Clara, but I’m not a young man anymore and the responsibilities are getting to be too much for me. The business is growing, and with Hetty gone, Loretta needs me. I need a partner I can trust—someone I can turn the business over to in another five years when I retire. That person should be you. If you don’t want the responsibility, then we need to sell soon, while the market’s good and buyers are interested.”

I thought about what my nomadic life had netted me. Not much, as Bailey pointed out, besides experience and a soon-to-be ex-husband. I had, however, fallen in love with many parts of the world, and I’d organized my life abroad around visiting major gardens and making friends of their directors. Not being able to pick up and travel at a moment’s notice daunted me, but if I had no meaningful purpose, where was the thrill?

“What would you think about making us a more international company? Specialty landscaping projects, big installations worldwide.”

“I think, Clara, that if that’s the kind of business you want to build, you’ve spent fifteen years setting up the contacts for it.” He shook his finger at me. “You’ve got the education and the eye, but you have a long way to go before you understand what it takes to run a business like ours—especially if you want to work internationally. You need a year of supervised time on the job before the state will license you, and you need to start studying to take the LARE exams. CLARB offers the multiple choice part twice a year, and the next sitting is in March.”

I stared at him, felt my world closing in. Could I really manage a business? Could I handle living close to Mother? What if I had to see my rapist father at Starbucks? Or as my senator in Washington? Getting far away from him was supposed to be my reward for using my gift to save my mother.

Ernie thought I hadn’t understood him, “The L-A-R-E, Landscape Architect Registration Examination?”

I shook my head to clear it. “Right, CLARB, the Council of Landscape Architectural Registration Boards.”

Ernie nodded and went on, as if I had agreed with him. “In the meantime, I’d like you to come to the office. We’re shorthanded anyway; our technology guy just left for another job. It’s a big blow, and it would be great if you could find his replacement.” He shrugged. “That’s just administrative stuff, but it’s as good a place as any for you to start.”

Wind and sun had creased Ernie’s face, and those long delicate hands showed age spots and loose skin. I knew he was near sixty, so his willingness to give it five more years, well, maybe that was generosity on his part. He loved my father a great deal as did I, but a lot was at stake. “I need a few days to think.”

I had to deal with Mother’s situation first.

He nodded, rubbing his hand tiredly across his forehead, and in that moment, I really saw his age. It wasn’t in the physical things; it was in a sort of sagging of spirit, of being worn down by too much responsibility for too long. Hetty’s death would weight him now, too, as would the grief Loretta carried. That grief would always be a heavy piece of their souls. My feelings of guilt and loss around my father