Homeport

could see the paint peeling on the porch rail, and winter-browned weeds poking up through the chipped surface of the flagstones that formed a walkway to the cliffs.
    Her grandmother had tended the house and the grounds as a mother tends beloved children, she remembered. Now she and Andrew had let it go, ignoring the small details, shrugging off what they considered the more tedious responsibilities.
    Major repairs and maintenance were simple. You just hired someone to deal with it. She didn’t think either she or Andrew had ever mowed their own lawn, raked leaves, pruned a bush, or yanked a weed.
    It would be a good change, she thought. Something they could share. The manual labor, the satisfaction of seeing the improvements would be good therapy for him. And, she decided, for her. One way or another, the cycle her life was in just now would end. When it did, she would need something to fill the hole.
    Casting her mind back, she tried to remember how the side garden had looked when she was a child and her grandmother had still been fit and well enough to tend it.
    Tall spiky flowers, she recalled, with deep purple and deep red blooms. Something butter yellow and daisylike in a flower with stems that bent gracefully under the weight. Her pencil began to move as she brought it back into her mind. Clumps of green with a slender stem shooting up and ending with an upturned white cup. There was a scent too, from flowers that looked something like carnations with red and white blooms and a strong spicy fragrance.
    Others with rich blue trumpets. Yes, and snapdragons. She was ridiculously thrilled she finally put a name to a variety.
    While Ryan made his pitch on the phone to the mother, he watched the daughter. She was relaxing, he noted, smiling a little as she drew. Fast sketching, the kind that took innate talent and a good eye.
    Her hair was tousled, her fingers long, the nails neat, short, and unpainted. She’d taken her glasses out of her pocket and put them on. Her sweater bagged at the shoulders, her trousers were the color of putty.
    He thought she was the most stunning woman he’d ever seen.
    And because thinking that, he lost his thread, he turned away and wandered to the far end of the porch.
    “Please, call me Ryan. I hope I may call you Elizabeth. I’m sure you know just how brilliant and how delightful your daughter is, but I must tell you what a tremendous impression she made on me. When I learned she’d taken a leave of absence, well, disappointed is a mild term.”
    He listened for a moment, smiling to himself. He wondered if Miranda was aware her voice had that same upper-crust pitch when she was trying to disguise annoyance.
    “Oh yes, I have no doubt there are members of the staff at the Institute who could take the basic idea and implement it. But I’m not interested in working with the second line. Although Lois Berenski at the Chicago Art Institute—you know Lois, I assume. . . . Yes. She’s very competent and quite interested in this proposal. I’ve promised to get back to her within forty-eight hours, which is why I’m taking the liberty of bothering you at home. My preference is the Institute and Miranda, but if this can’t be accomplished before my deadline, I’ll have to . . .”
    He trailed off, grinning openly now as Elizabeth began a hard sell. Getting comfortable, he swung a leg over the rail, straddling it while he let his gaze sweep the coast, watch the gulls swoop, and allowed Elizabeth to wheel and deal until she gave him exactly what he wanted.
    It took forty minutes, during which time he wandered into the kitchen, made himself a small snack plate of crackers, cheese, and olives, and carried it back outside. When it was done, he and Elizabeth had agreed to have drinks the evening before the gala—he was calling it a gala now—and raise a toast to their mutual project.
    He hung up, popped an olive in his mouth. “Miranda?”
    She was still sketching, well into her third angle on her proposed garden. “Hmmm.”
    “Answer the phone.”
    “What?” She glanced up, vaguely annoyed with the interruption. “The phone’s not ringing.”
    He winked. “Wait for it,” he told her, then grinned when the kitchen phone pealed. “That’ll be your mother. If I were you, I’d act surprised—and just a little reluctant.”
    “She agreed?”
    “Answer the phone, and find out.”
    She was already leaping up, dashing into the house to snatch the phone off the hook.