Nora and Liz by Nancy Garden Page A

found an old green suede jacket of her father’s and a matching one of her mother’s, the latter with a broken zipper. Liz, blinking back tears, slipped her mother’s jacket on. It fit perfectly, and she returned both jackets to the closet, though she doubted that Jeff would want their father’s or that she’d ever replace the zipper or actually wear her mother’s.
    Maybe I shouldn’t stay here after all, she thought later, nursing a beer at the table and looking out over the lake. Maybe I should go back to the city tonight instead of tomorrow. Think it over some more, staying here this summer.
    Maybe I really can’t take the memories. Or so much solitude.
    Restlessly, she got up and took her beer outside, surveying the overgrown perennial garden, where a few bright green mounds showed among the decaying fallen leaves and pine needles. Intrigued, she knelt, pulling off the mulch and studying the emerging plants. Then she went back into the cabin, found a pad and a pencil and, outside again, started sketching them.
    When she finally stopped, stiff and damp from kneeling, she realized more than an hour had passed. So, she thought, going back inside, maybe I can deal with solitude after all. And the memories, if I lose myself in stuff like that. She’d felt as close to her mother, drawing her reviving plants, as she had to her father on the dock in the early morning. It was as if the ache of being reminded of them by the static cabin and its contents receded temporarily when she was outside and gave way to a nearly comfortable nostalgia.
    If being here doesn’t work, she thought later, packing to return to the city, I can always leave.
    And go where, you jerk? Not back to the apartment if you sublet it. And if you don’t sublet it, you won’t be able to afford to come here. So you’ll have to burn your bridges, kiddo, at least for the summer.
    Feeling trapped, she opened the car’s trunk to toss in her suitcase—and groaned, seeing the borrowed jack wrapped up in its towel with the other tools.

Chapter Eight
    After knocking at the Tillots ’ door and getting no response, Liz went around back and spotted Nora kneeling in the large garden, with Thomas stretched out in the fading sun on a bare patch beside her.
    “Hello,” Liz called, approaching slowly, not wanting to frighten her. “It’s Liz Hardy again. I’ve brought back your tools. Thanks so much for them.”
    Nora scrambled to her feet, wiping her hands on the enormous apron that covered her faded housedress. “Thank you,” she said. “For bringing them back. I was just weeding.”
    Liz nodded. A neat row of young lettuces marched along the edge of the garden where Nora had been working, and new pea vines rose against a firm, straight trellis. A row of something with large leaves and red stems grew between two lettuce rows.
    “Radishes,” Nora said, nodding at them. “I don’t know why I grow them. My parents hate them, but I love them. Sometimes I even cook them in a cream sauce for a private treat. And they grow really fast.”
    Nora seemed more relaxed this time, happy even, not like a masochist or a martyr at all. There was a smudge of dirt on her face that Liz found herself wanting to wipe away. “Maybe,” Liz said impulsively, “you can give me lessons this summer. I’ve decided to stay in the cabin and fix up my mother’s old garden.”
    Good grief, she thought, astonished; why on earth did I say that, especially since I already more or less asked Mrs. Davis?
    “I’d love to,” Nora replied. “That would be nice. But weren’t you going to sell the cabin?”
    “Yes. But I decided against it, at least for now.” She paused. “Too many memories.”
    Nora nodded sympathetically. “I don’t think I could ever sell this place,” she said, “although I dream about it sometimes.”
    “You do?” Liz was surprised. Despite the fantasies about refrigerators and plumbing that she’d voiced earlier, Nora seemed too settled,