Chapter 6
For a moment nothing happened. The room held its collective breath, the way a garden holds still before wind moves through it. Then two things happened at once.
Claudia's hand went to her chest, to the gold charm bracelet on her wrist, and she turned to the window with her mouth open as if to speak — but whatever she was going to say was lost, because from the far end of the table Warren Ellery stood up.
He was tall and broad, stooped at the shoulder but still substantial, and he took his time about it. He set his flat cap on his arm. He didn't look at Claudia. He looked at Hollis.
"Willowmere," Warren said, "was my mother's name."
Hollis blinked.
"Not the surname," Warren went on. "Her grandmother's name. From the farm across the river. The Willowmere family planted these roses before the town existed." He gestured at the terrace beyond the window. "Margaret kept the greenhouse locked because her father kept his tools in there, and some things you don't want strangers touching."
He reached into the inner pocket of his vest and brought out a brass key.
"She gave me this the week before she died," Warren said. "Told me to hold it until you asked."
He placed the key on the table between them. It caught the light from the window, warm and heavy.
Hollis looked at the key. He hadn't asked. He'd been carrying his aunt's key to the greenhouse in his own keepsake box, wrapped in tissue paper, with her note about not opening the door until he was sure. He'd thought she meant the ownership, the land, the question of who got to stand on it.
He hadn't thought about the greenhouse itself.
"There are two keys," Warren said, reading his face. "She gave you the one she said she trusted with the garden. She gave me the one she trusted with what the garden was for." He pushed the key a little closer. "Go and see. Everything's still inside."
The pressure of forty years of history sat in the space between Warren's hand and the table.
Hollis reached out and took the key. It was warm, and heavy, and worn smooth along the edges.
"What's in there?" he asked.
Warren shook his head. "I don't know, and I never asked. Margaret said you'd understand when you saw."
So Hollis left the office in the bright, stunned silence, with the second key in his hand and the whole of the garden club watching him go. He didn't have to turn around to know that Claudia's face was pale, or that Priya was looking at something on the far wall, or that Millicent had begun to write.
He walked down the gravel path past the terrace, past the boxwood hedge, to the greenhouse at the far edge of the property, where the glass was filmed with dust and the door was mottled with green where moss had grown as close as it dared.
His hand trembled as he fitted the key to the lock. It turned easier than he expected — oil, and regularly, the way his aunt would have kept it. The lock opened. The latch lifted.
The door swung inward with a soft creak of dry wood, and the late-morning sunlight cut across the threshold in a long bright band.
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