She had asked the question before, of course, but she hoped now she would get a more detailed answer.
“Truthfully? Ashbourne’s too large to manage without help, and I thought we needed the time alone to heal after your daddy died.”
“How about later?”
“By then I’d grown to love this place. I couldn’t imagine the two of us rattling around the big house. Then Jake came along…”
Julia couldn’t imagine Jake at the big house, either. Ashbourne had been built by and for people who assumed that they, too, were somehow larger than life. Jake had no such illusions.
Since the conversation was going well, Julia ventured further. “Ashbourne almost seems like a museum. A record of life on the day my father died.”
“Ashbourne belongs to you. I never saw the point of changing things or selling the antiques. I like living here. It will be up to you to decide what to do with Ashbourne once you’re ready.”
“Bard would like to live there.” Ashbourne was grander than Millcreek, although Millcreek had been in his family since the Revolutionary War.
“I always thought as much.”
“But not until you open the property to the Mosby Hunt. It would be too embarrassing for him to live there if you didn’t.”
“And I won’t.” Maisy plunked more dishes on Julia’s side of the sink. “Not as long as the land’s in my name.”
Maisy’s objection to foxhunting at Ashbourne was legendary. Her determination to keep foxhunters off her land had made her the butt of many a local joke and the occasional prank. Julia, by default, had suffered, too.
“Speaking of Bard…” Maisy turned off the water. “I think that’s his car.”
Julia had been waiting all evening for the low purr of the BMW’s engine. Now she heard it, too. “This should be a laugh a minute.”
“Where would you like to talk to him?”
“Somewhere Callie can’t overhear. How about the garden?”
“It’s a little cool tonight.”
“I have a sweater in the dining room.”
“I’ll get the door and the sweater.”
Julia listened as Maisy’s footsteps disappeared. She had steeled herself for this confrontation. Her marriage to Bard had always seemed simple and forthright. It had also been untested, and it was failing this one, as if the added weight of her blindness had tipped a precariously balanced scale.
Moments passed. She heard murmurs from the front of the house, a door close, then footsteps. She dried her hands and turned, leaning against the counter with her arms folded. When he crossed the threshold, she was ready.
“Hello, Bard.”
“Julia.” His voice was tight, as if his throat was closing around it.
“We expected you earlier. Maisy saved a place for you at the dinner table.”
“I’d like to talk to you alone. If I’m allowed?”
She was annoyed by his tone. “You don’t need to be rude. Maisy?”
“Right here. I brought the sweater.”
Julia held out a hand, and Maisy placed the sweater in it. “Need help getting it on?”
“No, I’ll manage.”
Maisy must have turned, because her voice came from a different place. “Julia would like to have this conversation in the garden. Can you help her get there?”
“I can still escort my wife any place she needs to go.”
Julia spoke without thinking. “And any place I don’t need to go, as well.”
“Now who’s being rude?” Bard stepped forward to help her with her sweater.
She didn’t apologize, although it had been a cheap shot. “Let’s go out through this door. Callie’s in the barn with Jake.”
“I understand you sent for Feather Foot, too. Just how long do you intend to stay?”
“As long as I need to.”
She heard the kitchen door open, then felt Bard’s big hand on her upper arm. “Let’s finish this outside.”
He was a large man with a long stride. He did little to modify it as he propelled her to the garden. She stumbled once, and he slowed down, but she could tell he was annoyed by the way he continued to grip her arm.
“You should try this sometime.” Julia came to a halt when he did. “Being dragged along by someone bigger than you. It’s not a reassuring feeling.”
“I didn’t drag you.” He hesitated. “Damn it, I’m sorry. Okay? I’m just so angry.”
“Is this what happens when you don’t get your way? Or hasn’t that happened often enough for you to recognize the signs?”
“You’re determined to be stupid about this, aren’t you?”
“Stupid?”
“It was stupid for you to escape from the clinic. Do you have any idea how that made me look?”
“Let me guess. Like the husband of a stupid woman?”
“Damn it, Julia!”
She was silent, waiting for him to gain control. Although a large part of her wanted to have a screaming match, a larger part knew better. Not only would Callie hear, nothing would be accomplished.
He took a while to get hold of his temper. She imagined steam rising from a boiling kettle, then an unseen hand turning off the heat. The steam billowed, then puffed, and at last died away altogether. But the water was still hot enough to scald.
“Let’s sit down,” he said at last.
“Where are we?”
“There’s a bench under a tree.” He led her there. She could hear him brushing leaves from the wooden slats; then he repositioned her. She could feel the bench against the backs of her knees. She sat gingerly.
Julia knew enough of her mother’s gardening style to visualize how this garden looked in moonlight. With fall in the air, Maisy would have planted gold and orange chrysanthemums. Purple asters bloomed here when the weather began to turn, perhaps there was flowering kale this year. Maisy’s gardens were chaotically haphazard and more beautiful because of it, as if God Himself had randomly sprinkled all the colors of the world with a generous hand.
“I came here a lot as a teenager.” Julia explored the bench with her fingertips. “You can see the road through those trees.” She inclined her head. “Sometimes I’d see you riding by. Did you ever notice me?”
