© Copyright 2006
by Elizabeth Delayne

Hope That Blooms

Part III

Over the next several weeks, Cooper saw Dani off and on. She would arrive as his crew finished the shift and shut down. She said little to him, but he kept an eye on her and her progress as she began to cut away and remove the overgrowth.

Gradually the land became bare. She removed only the stones that she had to, and brought in more from the local quarry to fill in the rest. She was careful to keep to the Abigail Grace’s paintings in the overall design, though she added color and a little flair, just as she’d said she would.

He knew because she would bring her designs with her and leave them on the back stoop. Several times, after his crew left for the day, he would settle down and glance at them while he watched her. She showed, not only talent, but a love for her work.

If not for the house itself.

He liked watching her—liked the way her hands worked so efficiently with quick, clean movements. He liked the way her brow furrowed behind her sunglasses as she lost herself in the task.

And he really liked the way she would smile, as she stood back and looked over her work.

Those feelings were something to think about. And he did.

Often.

He was checking the kitchen cabinetry when he saw her stop mid dig and toss the shovel away like a desperately thrown spear. It wasn’t just the incident, it was something in the set of her frame that alarmed him. He set down his tools, ignored the remaining men, and left through the back door.

She had dropped wearily to the grown and had pulled off her gloves.

He sat down beside her and looked at the tree that sat waiting to go into the hole.

“I can’t do this anymore,” she said at last.

“Maybe you should take a break. You’ve been pushing yourself. Trying to do it all by yourself. Let me help, or get some friends to help.”

“No—it’s not that. I can’t ... be here—face this—I thought I could. I wanted too.”

“You’ve been pushing yourself pretty hard. Doing yourself what you have a crew for.”

“It’s personal.”

And that he understood. “Penance?”

“Something like that. I know you look at this place and see value—a heritage worth preserving. I look at it and see what isnt there.”

“Your mother.”

“And those before her. And after. Mama, my grandmother, my father. My grandfather ... the one my grandmother kicked out of her house. Annabelle Grace ... her Elijah.”

“But you found Annabelle Grace.”

“But not mama,” she looked passed him to the flowers he’d watched her care for on the first day and several days sense. “When she died, the three of us grieved in our own ways. Jacey made up stories. She’s always made up stories. And Carrie clung to my father, then the house, because it was important to him ...”

“And you had your grandmother.”

“Sometimes. Sometimes ... it was just me and the flowers and the bright blue skies,” she picked up a dandelion she’d had yet to weed out, and spun it in her fingers, watching the yellow flower turn, around and around.

“Not that she wasn’t a good grandmother. She was. She really was ... she just wasn’t an ... easy woman, a little hard around the edges. Not unpleasant—until the end. Just ... not affectionate, unless it was with the house or her flowers. My mama bonded with my grandmother over her flowers.”

She nodded toward the roses that bloomed next to the house.

“The flowers, of course, were just an extension of the house. Funny I can love one and despise the other.”

He picked at dandelion that had lost most of it’s white florets and twirled it and thought of the seasons of his life. The seasons in life.

“You love, I think, that which you can nurture, change.”

She laughed derisively. “Maybe. I just knew the money went into the house and we didn’t have a lot growing up. And when it passed to us, I knew if we sold it, how I could use my share to build my business. I had it all planned out. What I’d do with every cent. What Carrie and Jacey could do with theirs. Forget what they wanted. What they really wanted.”

“Looks like you’re doing fine without the money. With your business. I saw an article about you in the Knoxville paper. Have worked a few jobs around your ... creations.”

She shook her head and smiled as she tossed the dandelion aside. “Oh, but you can dream. I sure can.” She looked up at the house that towered over them—a southern castle, some would say—her eyes hidden by her sun glasses. “Maybe I got it from the Lindsey’s. Obviously, I’ve got some ancestors who dreamed bigger than reality.”

“And look what they did with it.”

“I try not to.”

He stood, held out a hand to help her up. She only stared up at him, her hands resting over her bent knees. “Come on. I’ll help you finish off that tree, then take you out for a burger.”

“And have you claim that it’s a date.”

“It is a date. The way I figure it, it’s our third or forth. Depending on where you start.”

“We’re not starting anything.”

“Sure we are. We have,” he lifted a hand as she reluctantly smiled. “Besides, you owe me. You never returned my calls. You still haven’t told me about the chest and what you found out ... unless, you really were avoiding me.”

“I told you I wasn’t.”

“I’m not sure what I found.”

When she hesitated, he reached down and pulled her to her feet.

“Don’t worry,” he said as she brushed off her backside. “I won’t ask you to marry me until after the tenth date. At least.”

* * *

That single night turned into ... well, more. They started to eat dinner together. First, so she could tell him about what the university was finding out about Annabelle Grace’s chest. Soon, they were together all the time ... just talking. She would tell him about her day, then about her plans for the garden. He would tell her about the ongoing saga of restoring the heritage, and she feigned an interest. Her knew it and she caught him testing her.

Several times.

“We knocked out that wall to the dining room this morning ...”

“Tyler wanted to install a picture window on the front of the house, to capture the oaks that run up the lane ...”

And of course, the most obvious ...

“We need to replace that plane of glass in the upstairs bedroom above the kitchen. It’s scratched.”

She found herself accidently defending the historical merit of the house a few times, but usually sje only went along with his outlandish claims.

“Sure ... if you think its best.”

And ...

“It will only help Carrie sell it faster. That’s what I want, isn’t it?”

He knew what he was doing and—unlike herself—loved the old place.

Soon, he was helping her plant on his knees, at her side. She began to talk—about her mother and the tumultuous relationship she’d had with her grandmother. Everyone, including her father, had believed it to be loving. Dani talked about the relationship she had with her sisters, losing her father—things she’d never been able to say to anyone before.

Including her sisters.

And Cooper opened the doors of his life with her. Maybe it was because he’d shared with her that she opened up to him. In the end, she couldn’t remember who had spoken up first.

He’d made mistakes, done some time in juvenile and crawled his way back up. Relationships that had been damaged, that he’d damaged, he was repairing, if he could. None of it was simple, even a decade after the worst of his mistakes had passed.

It gave Dani hope though, that it was possible ... that things could be better.

That God had more for either one of them.

At some point, she began to read Annabelle Grace’s journals. First, she read at night, feeling like a criminal, hiding away in the dark. Soon, she was reading with Cooper, in the dying light of the summer sun, as well as alone at night, well into the morning hours. She read through a girl’s hopeful wishes, the first glowing embers of love.

And the devastating loss of her Elijah....

Cooper found her in the garden, the morning after she’d read the event/ She’d called her foreman, rearranged her schedule. The loss was deep. Something akin to the loss of so many others she’d felt before. Her mother, grandmother, father ... even the early, loving relationship she’d had with her sisters.

Sitting on the back stoop and with the old journal in her hands. Without speaking, Cooper sat beside her. He was good with the quiet, good about giving it to her. She opened to the page she’d marked and handed it to him.

She couldn’t bare to look at him. They’d shared so much, even this. She hadn’t been able to sleep that night because she’d needed to share this with him.

The loss.

The history.

The love.

“She came out to the garden,” Dani said as Cooper finished the entry. She stared off at the newly planted persimmon tree. “So did I.

The day my father died. I didn’t tell my sisters where I was going. I didn’t want them to come. I just left them there—“

“And came to grieve,” Cooper pointed out.

Grieved maybe, Dani thought, but she hadn’t cried. Not since before her mother died.

Not since that summer so long ago when they’d been shipped off to live with her grandmother while her mother went in for tests and surgery. Dani alone had known the seriousness. She’d heard her mother talking about it, had seen the worry in her father’s eyes.

Her grandmother had found her in the garden weeping and had handed her a spade.

“Put yourself to some good use,” she’d said in that gravelly voice of hers. “You’re no good like this.”

Dani shook off the memory and felt Cooper’s hand grip her own. She looked down at it, the way his workworn hand endfolded her own. They both had their scars, she thought. They both had their own rough places.

But their hands fit together so perfectly.

“I came her,” she said at last. “I don’t know what that means. What that says about me. I left them, I came here.”

He let her hand go to slide his arm around her. “Maybe it just means you were grieving. Nothing more complicated then that.”

“Maybe. I wish I’d been there. With them. Maybe I wouldn’t blame this house so much then. Blame myself.”

He didn’t try to sooth her with cliches. She shouldn’t blame herself. She knew she couldn’t changed the past.

Neither could you forget it.

But maybe Cooper was right about soemthing. Maybe the more your ran, the more what you ran from chased you.

She sighed as she stood, and felt Cooper stand beside her. She turned to find him smiling down at her with a certain bit of mischief in his eyes.

“What?”

“Maybe it means,” he said slowly as he turned her toward the house, “that you actually love this place. A little.”

She looked through the newly framed kitchen window and could almost see her grandmother there at the sink, cutting apples for apple pie. And Jayce would be at her side, reaching her hand out for the long, spiraling curls.

Her mother would be humming in the back and Carrie would be upstairs in the library with her father, sitting b the fireplace, below the painting by L. E. Grace.

And down the hall from her father was a window pane, carved with the words, My beloved Elijah.

Dani tried to hold back the smile. Love? she thought as she felt the warmth trickle just a little around her heart.

“I wouldn’t go that far.”

“Maybe you ... care for the place, then.”

“I don’t know,” she admitted as she looked up at him. “But I do think I care a little for you. That should say something. I wouldn’t have chosen a person that wastes his time on condemned houses.”

He grinned. “Only a little?”

In a quick move, that caused her to laugh, he yanked her into his arms. It reminded her of his strength, and of how nice he made a t-shirt seem.

“You know,” she said slowly. “We’re past our ten dates.”

She leaned forward and rested er head on his shoulder. She knew exactly what he was referring to.

“Not just yet,” she murmured, though she thought he was only teasing.

She looked up at the Heritage, at her past and at her troubles ... and found herself thinking of Annabelle Grace.

And her beloved Elijah.

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