Nora and Liz by Nancy Garden

bother. We’ll be glad to help. Your mother would have loved that, you restoring her garden. She loved all her gardens, she did, especially the perennial one, remember, Harry? Why, for a few years we even bought flowers from her, annuals along with the perennials, and sold them, she grew so many. The customers loved them. We could do that again, dear, if you want.”
    “Why, sure,” Liz said. “If I can get it going. I didn’t remember Mom did that.”
    “It was years ago, dear, when you were just a wee one.” Clara paused, looking at Liz a moment as if considering whether to say something else. Then, shyly, she said, “But I heard you were selling the cabin?”
    “We were going to, Jeff and I, but we’ve decided to hold on to it at least for a while. I think I’ll be staying here this summer. I’m still a teacher, you know, so I get summers off.”
    Clara seized Liz’s hands again. “Oh, my, that’d be wonderful! We’ll have to have you for dinner, then, and of course we’re just down the road so if you ever need anything, you can just shout.” She paused again, with the same expression, hesitant but curious. “But surely there’s a young man or two, a pretty girl like you?”
    “No, Mrs. Davis, there isn’t.” Liz tried not to mind the assumption. “I’m fancy free.”
    Clara squeezed her hands, then let them go. “We’ll just have to see what we can do about that.” She winked at Harry, who looked startled, then puzzled, but finally chuckled. “There’s one or two nice hardworking fellows around here.”
    “That’s kind of you, Mrs. Davis, but I’m not in the market right now.”
    “Oh-oh. I’m sorry. Broken heart?”
    Well, why not, Liz thought. “You might say that,” she told her. “I’ve just split up with someone and I need to be by myself for a while.”
    “I’m sure he didn’t deserve you, dear. Don’t stay alone too long, though; that’s no way to heal, I always say!”
    The phone rang inside the white frame farmhouse.
    “There’s your phone,” Liz said hastily, giving each Davis a hug, surprised again at Harry’s frailty. “And I should be going. I’ll see you in a few weeks, when I come back for the summer.”
    By the time she’d finished driving to all her old haunts and treating herself to an ice cream cone at Harmony’s, where she and Jeff had always argued over which was better, butter pecan or peppermint royale , it was late afternoon and Liz had no inclination to stop at the Tillots ’ farm. What a depressing place, she thought, turning deliberately away from the farm road; that poor woman, stuck there with two old people and no electricity! I’d have left long ago.
    Maybe she enjoys it, though; maybe she’s some kind of masochist or one of those do-good types, a martyr to duty.
    But Liz had to admit that Nora really didn’t look the part.
    Back at the cabin, Liz baked a huge potato, cooked herself a steak, and ate them, plus a salad, at the table overlooking the lake. She sat there for a long time, sipping red wine and watching the sun set, then took her wine out to the dock and, wrapped in a thick sweater, watched the moon and the stars rise and listened to soft night sounds till she felt sleepy enough to go to bed.
    This is the life, she thought as she dropped off, the life I want.
    But toward morning she dreamed uneasily of Megan and woke aching and covered in sweat.
    ***
    The cabin seemed full of ghosts again the next morning: Megan, her parents, she and Jeff as children. Liz felt too restless and too sad to go back out to the dock, so after a quick breakfast of toast, coffee, and an orange, she set about pulling things—dishes, pots, cleaning supplies, books, games, knickknacks, clothes too old to wear anyplace but at the cabin—out of cupboards and closets and off shelves, sorting, rearranging, and throwing away. By noon, there was nothing she hadn’t touched, but the ghosts were worse than before, especially when she handled the clothes and