Read Online The Unfinished Garden by Barbara Claypole White - Free Book Online

up at the Milky Way. When light came and his
day started, Tilly’s would be half over.

Chapter 7
    Tilly breathed in recycled air, heavy on the antiseptic
and burned coffee, and grinned. She loved night flights with the dimmed cabin
lights, the stirring of passengers settling to movies or sleep and the constant
thrum of engines. She and Isaac were submerged in airplane twilight, wrapped up
in blankets in a row of two. Life didn’t get any better.
    “I like James.” Isaac nestled into her, and Tilly fought the
urge to tug him closer. “Do you like him, Mom?”
    She mussed his hair with her nose. Just
For Kids mango splash shampoo. Best smell ever. “I’m not good at
meeting people, you know that.” Not exactly an answer, but then she hadn’t
prepared for the question. She hadn’t given James a second thought since the ice
cream incident. Although she was still miffed that he had asked her to sit on a
towel for the short ride home. Who kept a clean towel, in a ginormous Ziploc, in
the trunk of his car?
    “But do you like him?”
    The people in front had left their blind up. Tilly peered
through their window, but there was nothing to see beyond the small, white light
blinking on the tip of the wing.
    “I guess.” She sat back. “Although I have no idea why.”
    “Does that matter?”
    “I suppose not. It’s just normally when you make a new friend
you find common ground, a shared passion. Like gardening.”
    Isaac scowled. “Ro hates gardening, and she’s your best
friend.”
    “That’s different. We’ve been on the same life raft since we
were four years old. I could pick up the phone and say help, and she would catch the first available flight.” Just as Ro
had done after David died, camping overnight at Heathrow to come standby via
LaGuardia. Tilly remembered the cab speeding down the driveway, Rowena flinging
open the door while the vehicle was still moving, her only words, Where’s Isaac?
    Tilly twirled a lock of Isaac’s hair around her finger.
“Besides, she spoils you rotten.”
    “So—” Isaac picked a piece of fluff from Bownba, the
once-fluffy FAO Schwarz teddy that now resembled a squashed possum. “You like
James, then?”
    “Clearly not as much as you do.” Should she worry that her
eight-year-old still dragged his teddy bear to bed every night? Tilly attempted
to squish her feet under the seat in front, but between the bottle of duty-free
Bombay Sapphire, her canvas backpack and her floral Doc Martens boots, there was
no room.
    “Are we going to help him?”
    Why was her son suddenly more tenacious than a Jack Russell
terrier? Bugger it. She had been enjoying the growing distance between herself
and James, herself and Sari, herself and the stings of everyday life. Thanks to
Isaac, they rushed back, and all she wanted was a reprieve.
    “You need to understand, Isaac—” Oh crap, now he looked
crestfallen. “It’s not that I don’t want to help James, but he has that neat
I-want-it-this-way thing that screams perfectionist.” Or worse, a Virgo, like
Sebastian, and the last thing she needed was another Virgo. Although,
technically, she didn’t have a Virgo in her life, not anymore.
    “Cripes. Not like you and me, then.”
    “Exactly!” Tilly wagged a finger. “Think of the trail of
possessions you and I can leave across two continents. A woman as scattered as
me could drive a man as uptight as James seriously nuts. You do the math. It
ain’t gonna work.” She would be barmy to get involved with someone that
persnickety. Which didn’t explain why she had agreed to talk with James in
September.
    “Well, I’ve been thinking about this,” Isaac said with great
solemnity. “I hate hiccups. They scare me because I want them to stop, but
nothing I do works. I need you to help me. That’s a horrid feeling, isn’t it?
That your body won’t do what you want it to do.”
    “Sounds like middle age,” Tilly mumbled.
    “I bet it’s a whole lot worse if it’s your brain