Lavender Hill Sample Chapter
February 12th. 2009(c) 2005 Kimberly J.Fish
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, business establishments, or events is entirely coincidental.
Chapter One
Before choosing plants for your garden, you must first decide on the perfect patch of earth. Look at the soil, study the sunlight and judge the ease for watering before you till the ground. –Lessons from Lavender Hill, a gardener’s manual
Autumn Joy Worthington dusted her hands and closed the trunk for a customer who had purchased every plant that AJ, as she preferred to be called, offered as native and drought tolerant. With spring blowing across the ranches around Comfort, Texas folks were inspired to dig in their yards again.
She deadheaded a Queen Anne’s Lace bloom growing wild at the edge of the parking lot and tossed the seeds into the abandoned yard next door hoping wild flowers would soften the eyesore. Her best friend, Kali Williams, had suggested they buy the house, remodel it, and open a tearoom. She’d been seconds from calling the realtor with a ridiculously low bid when her mother’s email popped up on the computer. Funny how a few sentences can put the brakes on good times, dreams and the future of the known world. But there she was indulging in momentary insanity mixed with drama. One thing AJ almost never did on purpose was channeling her dramatic side. It smacked too much of her parents.
She felt a tap on her shoulder and turned to see one of her employees, Betty, holding the portable phone.
“A man named Luke English wants to talk to you. Are you free?”
AJ glanced at the customers milling around hedge plants. Everyone seemed happy enough browsing. She glanced at her watch realizing it’d been hours since she last sat down. “I’ll take the call in the kitchen. Has my grandmother finished watering the seedlings?”
“I don’t think so, Inez handed me the phone and just left. Said she had something better to do.”
Not again. AJ took the phone and stepped onto a pebbled walkway wondering what she was going to do about her grandmother’s absences. And yesterday, Inez Worthington, former society matron and Junior League president, stuck her tongue out at a customer who had complained about the price of soil.
AJ climbed the cottage shop’s porch steps, breaking off a curling ivy leaf from the trellis. She dreaded having another “talk” with her grandmother, but orneriness wasn’t as cute as Gran might think. Opening the door she breathed in the mixed-up scents of candles, sachets and potpourris. She passed a couple scanning artwork and headed though the swing doors blocking the original 1960’s era kitchen. Even with the peeling linoleum, it was command central for the staff.
Craning her neck to one side to relieve the strain of thinking about her grandmother, she sat down in a hand-me-down chair. Propping her feet on another chair, she tilted her face to the cooling fan and connected the line. “AJ Worthington, how may I help you?”
“Hello. Luke English here. I understand you’re in charge at Lavender Hill and I believe in going right to the top if you want the best information.”
She smiled hearing his straightforward tone. An executive. She was a CEO too, of sorts. “I’d always heard the most reliable information came out of the mail room.”
“I started there, but a lady named Inez warned me she had a tendency to lose messages. I didn’t want to risk this getting stuffed in file 13.”
A sense of humor, great. He was just a better than average salesman with a voice that oozed Faulkner and slow summer nights. She lifted her heavy braid from her shoulder to let air circulate around her collar. “What makes you think I would be any more informative than the mail clerk?”
“I don’t know, but I’m desperate,” Luke English said. “I’m looking for someone, and the information roads lead to Lavender Hill. Simply put, I would appreciate any information you have regarding July Sands.”
She sat up straighter, undone by that snakey tingly feeling old women like to say is someone walking on your grave. She pushed the kitchen curtain aside, wondering if paparazzi were disguised as customers. “Then you should have stuck with the mail room,” she said with a calm that belied the clench in her stomach. “Contrary to what you may have heard, Lavender Hill is not a lost and found.”
The man chuckled. “Well, that’s an improvement over what Inez said.”
Luke English must be a private investigator, or worse, a bill collector with a mint julep tongue. “Did she tell you we were a nursing home?”
“A juvenile detention center.”
That’s a new one. “Did Inez say anything else?”
“The more I asked about Ms. Sands the more she said I needed to talk to you.”
Unusual restraint. Was that a new trait for Gran? AJ didn’t have time to ponder her grandmother’s pop-up mood swings and temperaments because she was more worried Gran had given away a lot by what she didn’t say. “Miz Sa-ands?” AJ stalled as she tried to think of a clever way to steer this man away from her business. “Are you selling a new brand of fertilizer?”
“Excuse me?”
The media hounds were going to be right behind this guy, whoever he was. “We’re a landscape center, Mr. English. If you’re not a salesman or a customer, there’s really nothing for us to talk about.”
“But I thought—”
She loudly rapped her knuckles against the table top. “Oh, someone’s knocking, I have to go. Thanks for calling.” She disconnected the line with more oomph than necessary. “That ought to teach you scavengers to leave us alone.”
She set the phone on the table with clatter. She knew that at the very least, hanging up on the media or bill collectors or whoever Luke English was, would be like waving a green flag at a NASCAR event.
Leaning back to rest her head against the wicker chair, she watched the swirl of the fan blades. It had started. This time was more sluggish than the usual curiosity that trailed her mother, but it wouldn’t be long before Entertainment Tonight would accost her employees for gossip. AJ rubbed her eyes. The one thing no one ever said about living in a fishbowl was that the bottom feeders were never satisfied.
“Hi.”
AJ turned her face toward man leaning against the doorjamb, his Comfort High School Football T-shirt hanging loose against jeans. “Hello.” The youth director at her church always seemed to find her at her most grimy. “I didn’t hear you walk in.”
Ethan Ross shrugged his shoulders as if the bulky muscles weighed nothing. “You must be giving things away today. There were so many cars I had to park down by the cemetery.” He pulled a stool close and rested. “Your nose is sun burnt.”
AJ touched the tip, regretting that even more freckles would soon pop up. “I’m trying a new sunscreen. I guess the organic ingredients aren’t working too well.”
“Sun kissed.” Ethan brushed long bangs from his eyes. “I believe that’s the term.”
“It’s better than ‘fried’ which is what my grandmother would say.” Thinking of Inez made her itchy. She stood, moving to the counter where cold cans of lemonade spilled from an ice chest now that the refrigerator was on the blink. “Would you like a beverage?”
“No, thanks.” Ethan folded his long fingers together, looking ministerial. “I heard some interesting news through the grapevine.”
“Can’t believe everything you hear.”
“I think you’re the victim this time around.”
AJ popped the top of the can and took a long sip, buying seconds. July had been in hiding since she Sunday. Only her grandmother, her housekeeper and Betty knew she was installed at the house, but they had strict orders to lie if questioned by media. Even under threat of death. A baritone voice with a soothing Southern accent came back to mind. If he knew, then someone had cracked. “Okay, preacher boy, what have you heard?”
“You have a visitor. One who will corrupt you and drag you straight to H-E-double hockey sticks.”
She reached for a cookie from the tray knowing immediately who’d talked. “And so you came straight out to Lavender Hill to see for yourself?”
“I did some checking first. I couldn’t believe the woman whose songs I grew up listening to had fallen into such dire straits.”
AJ did thank God that there wasn’t a photographer hiding behind the bushes when July Sands crawled off a Greyhound bus a few days ago, unrecognizable to most as one of People magazine’s most beautiful celebrities of 1985.
She debated whether to continue the charade that her mother wasn’t here. July had never been one to enjoy rest therapy, even when she paid for it at an Arizona clinic. And If Gran was telling Ethan, a man she’d previously claimed had never been taught manners since girls should not be addressed as “dude,” then she figured the best approach would be . . .cautious truthfulness. Self-preservation made her drop her voice to a level she almost didn’t hear herself. “Don’t believe everything you read, Ethan. Dollar signs drive those stories.”
“Some have said your mother’s made her bed, and now she has to sleep in it.”
“That would be my grandmother talking. She’s convinced Mom has slept in way too many beds as it is, but Dad isn’t without his share of the blame.” AJ almost covered her mouth with her hand. One little poke at truthfulness and she’d gushered like an untapped well.
She heard the backdoor screen slam.
“Sounds like you might need to talk.” Ethan stood, propping his hands in his back pockets. “You want to go grab some sushi tonight? That new place on Sixth Street isn’t half bad.”
His eyes looked sincere, but she’d asked him a week ago if he’d read anything more recent than Harry Potter, and he hadn’t. “Sorry, but I’ve got to sort through some end of the month statements before Keisha drops me as her client. I also have to write text for this gardening manual my publicist says I need, but tell the gang to think of me next time.”
He shuffled on his feet. “This wasn’t going to be a night with the others from the singles’ group.” He lowered his voice. “I was thinking just you and I could go out, you know, as special friends.”
AJ glanced at the blonde soul patch under Ethan’s bottom lip. She’d suspected he was interested in her. Kali had been teasing her about it for weeks. But he was twenty-four to her twenty-nine. She’d be dating a man she could have once babysat. Not that she had, but still.
“I’ve been out of the loop too long, AJ. I didn’t know you had ‘special friends.’” July Sands leaned against the door jamb as if she was holding up the kitchen wall instead of the other way around. Her tall, willowy frame was decimated from countless miles on the road and a steady of diet of Pepsi, pills and cigarettes.
Even with faded auburn hair, a papery complexion and shoulders that looked fragile as sparrow’s wings, AJ still saw beauty in her mother. Rather like a perfectly dried rose petal. “Ethan’s just a friend, Mom, and our church youth minister. So, be kind.”
July exaggerated a shiver. “Yikes. You should never be friends with a minister. Perfection is contagious.”
Ethan whipped around so fast he tripped on a peeling corner of linoleum. “Miss Sands, I’m like one of your biggest fans. My mother used to put me to sleep at night playing your records. That one where you sang about the voice of God being like the wind, it was my favorite.”
July wagged her nicotine-stained finger. “And doesn’t that make me feel so ancient. AJ, this grown man was a baby during the peak of my fame.”
AJ ignored her mother’s pout and handed her a can of lemonade. “Here. You look like you could use some hydration.” A steady infusion of protein and an I.V. of vitamins would be good too, but she’d start with what she could get her hands on.
July took the can, but she did little more than hold it as an accessory. “That girl, she’s always taking care of people,” July said to Ethan. “When she was a child, she adopted every stray that wandered into the yard. Be sure and have her tell you about the round robin of animals she named Sassy.”
July was still controlling the stage, even if it was on a cracked kitchen floor. By tonight, Ethan would be telling everyone how wonderful July was and that she was the most misunderstood celebrity ever tarred by Hollywood. AJ wiped damp hands on the back of her cutoff shorts. She’d seen through that charade the summer her mother started crying herself to sleep every night. “Okay, well, one of us has to go back to work, so if you’ll excuse me, I have customers.”
July’s glib expression melted right off her face. “You’ve made such a success of your life, AJ. I wish I had a reason to get up every morning like you do.”
AJ glanced at the ceiling for heavenly guidance. Nope, no neon signs today either.
“Miss Sands–” Ethan fidgeted with the leather bracelet on his wrist. “Would you like to come hang out with the youth group this Friday night? You could bring your guitar and play a few songs.”
“Tempting though that sounds–”
“Mom’s retired.” AJ had just gotten her mother home. She wasn’t going to let anything derail the first voluntary seclusion in years. “She told me she’s burning her guitar on the pyre of her past. The ceremony is tonight at midnight. Sorry. You’re going to have to find another singer to impress the teenagers.”
Ethan folded his arms and stared at AJ. “I had no idea you had such a cold heart.”
AJ never realized Ethan struggled with sudden on-set amnesia either.
“AJ’s heart isn’t cold. She’s the only pragmatic one in a family full of dreamers. It’s one of her best qualities.” July’s sincerity developed an edge. “Now, are you two dating or what?”
In unison, they both chorused, “No.”
“Oh, that’s right. AJ is married to Lavender Hill.” July ambled toward the wicker chair. “My beautiful golden child, who could have any man she wants, doesn’t see anyone unless they’re muddy, stinky or otherwise engaged in farm work.”
AJ saw July’s bunions poking through the sandals. As a child, those bumps had equally scared her and fascinated her as she rubbed lotion into her mother’s feet after shows. “Mom, Ethan is a Man of God. We’re not supposed to lie to him.”
“Who’s lying?” July’s shoulders lifted along with her Yenta inflection.
AJ saw her mother’s cheeks had brightened. Must have been the attention of a male fan under the age of seventy. Some habits never die. “If you’re bored, you can inventory that new shipment of candles that came in this morning.”
July beguiled Ethan with her smile. “AJ’s trying to put me to work because she thinks if I’m busy I won’t dwell on the wasteland that my life has become. Worthingtons don’t do depression. They’re stoic folks.”
“AJ needs cheap labor.” She plopped the sweaty cowboy hat back over her braids wishing she’d done a better job anticipating when July would bore of the farmhouse. She should have come up with a Plan B before she had to explain the prodigal’s return to friends. “Might as well keep an eye out for Keisha Dawes. She’s supposed to swing by this afternoon to collect the sales records for this month. Apparently I’m behind on tracking my revenue.”
July squinted like she was remembering nine multiplied by seven. “Keisha is that young woman you met doing baseball statistics at little league?”
“Keisha also owns her accounting business and takes care of a whole lot of math-challenged people besides Kali and me. Maybe she can sort through your checkbook and find enough money to pay your bill collectors too.”
“Ouch,” July cooed. “The kitten has claws.”
AJ sighed with equal parts physical exhaustion and emotional frustration. The real challenge of having a former music star for a mother was putting up with the fragments of woman weaned on adulation. Maybe that’s why she loved gardening. Plants didn’t forget your birthday, step over your plans or ding your dreams. But those days were behind them.
“As you can see, Ethan, Gran overrated the gossip here at Lavender Hill. So don’t worry about me. You go on and sort through the issues of high school and unrequited loves. We’re going to settle into a nice, normal routine around here. Just Mom and me. Right, Mom?” AJ saw her mother staring out the window at the customers. She wondered how long it would be before July needed a stage like most addicts need a fix. “Right, Mom?”
July turned back to AJ, but her eyes were glassy. “Whatever you say, honey.”