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“What is this place?” Penelope looks around like she’s never been there before.
“It’s my shop, love, The Book and Hook.” She takes a book from the front table and hands it to Penelope. “Here you go, photographs of beautiful gardens. You sit and have a nice, quiet look.” Germaine makes another call, shaking her head as she waits for someone to answer. “For goodness’ sake, aren’t you young people supposed to be glued to your phones?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Penelope slowly turns the pages of the garden book. But when a boisterous group of geriatric hikers with walking sticks piles into the store, she pulls her legs up to her chest and wraps her arms around her knees like she’s trying to make herself so small that no one will notice her. The hikers, talking and laughing, spread out through the shop, picking up books and asking questions. Does Germaine have a good walking guide, a small laminated map, a first aid book? How about something on geology or the lore and legends of Derbyshire? Germaine pulls out book after book. They want to buy them all and ask if they can pick up some of them later, after their hike.
Penelope watches from the couch, her lips quivering. I try to get Germaine’s attention, but she’s behind the counter, ringing up sales.
“She’ll be a minute,” I tell Penelope. “Can I get you another book?”
“Who are these people? They shouldn’t be here. They should go away.” Her voice is rising. A few of the hikers notice Penelope and shake their heads. One mutters “poor old girl” and then bellows, “Having a lovely day, dear?”
Penelope pulls back like the woman has raised a hand to slap her.
“Please, let her be,” I say, positioning myself in front of Penelopeto block her view. I crouch down and take her hand. “Do you want to go home?”
She nods.
“Wait right here.”
I go to the counter and ask Germaine if Penelope lives nearby. She tells me it’s not too far, maybe a ten-minute walk. I get the address and tell Germaine I’m going to walk Penelope home.
As we exit the shop, Penelope’s hand hovers over my forearm, barely making contact. She is so slight a brisk wind might make her stumble. My grandmother was seventy-six when she died, but I never thought of her as old. She was hearty, working the garden in spring and summer, raking leaves and shoveling snow in fall and winter. The month before she died, she was on a ladder pulling vines off the garage. I can’t imagine her as frail or confused, but if she had become that way, I’d like to think that I’d have cared for her as kindly as Dev does his mother. That I’d be as patient helping my grandmother navigate a narrowing world as she had been raising me.
“We’re talking a walk?” Penelope says as we approach the river. “How lovely.” At the end of the bridge, she stops. “You’ve always been so sweet with me. Who are you?”
“I’m Cath,” I say. “I’m visiting.”
Penelope strokes the back of my hand. “It’s been such a long time.” She reaches up and touches my hair. The map on my phone directs us to a road that winds up a hill. At the first sharp bend, we stop to rest at a wall along the side of the road. In the distance, children are playing soccer in a field. A boy scores and runs in a circle, his arms out like airplane wings.
“Bravo,” Penelope says. “Dev is such a good boy. Is he home from school now?”
“I think you’ll see Dev soon.”
The houses get bigger as we climb, the narrow ones of the villagegiving way to stately homes set back from rows of dense bushes. At the top of the hill, I turn back to look at the view. From this height, Willowthrop is a jigsaw puzzle of rooftops and chimneys, sloping down from us, flat for a while, and then climbing the hills on the other side. It occurs to me that I’m now standing inside the view I see from my bedroom at Wisteria Cottage. I’m tempted to wave, in case Wyatt and Amity are looking, but they’re probably buckled down trying to figure out why someone wanted Tracy Penny dead. I assume they’ve set my mother’s mystery aside, at least for a little while.
As we start descending the other side of the hill, a tiny green Citroën approaches and stops beside us. Dev hops out. Even disheveled, with splotches of dirt on his work boots, carpenter pants, and T-shirt, he’s alarmingly sexy.
“How did—”
Before he can say more, I tell him that Germaine found his mother in the middle of the street and took her into the bookshop, but that it was busy and upset her. Without responding, he takes his mother’s hand and settles her in the passenger seat, clips the belt. I’m about to turn away, I think maybe he’s embarrassed, when he asks if I want to come with them. “The least I can do is offer you a cup of tea.”
I climb into the back seat, which is barely big enough for me. I meet Dev’s eyes in the rearview mirror as he turns the car around. He looks troubled. I don’t blame him. It’s only my third day in Willowthrop and the second time I’ve come upon Penelope wandering alone. Either no one’s looking after her carefully or she’s a talented escape artist.
Halfway down the hill, Dev pulls into a driveway of a brick house surrounded by thick hydrangea. I follow him and his mother down a stone path through the bushes. The door opens and a woman rushes out of the house, her cheeks flushed. “Oh my, oh my, I onlyclosed my eyes for a moment, sitting right beside her. Where did she, how did you…?”
Dev introduces Mrs. Carlton, a housekeeper who helps look after his mother. He’s perfectly polite but there’s a slight edge in his voice that makes me think that Mrs. Carlton’s negligence is not a new problem.
“I’ll take over now,” she says as we walk inside. “We’ll have a cuppa and a nice chat, won’t we dear?” Penelope follows her out of the room.
“Come,” Dev says to me. “Let’s go to the cottage. I’ll put on the kettle.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
I follow Dev on a path that winds through some bushes before opening onto a garden, at the end of which is a cottage with a single chimney. Dev pushes open a thick wooden door. It’s a one-room cottage, with a tiny kitchen in the corner, a square wooden table, an armoire, two armchairs by the fireplace, and a bed covered with an old blanket. There’s a neat stack of books and a spiral notebook on the bedside table, shoes lined up in a row behind the door. The place is sparse and tidy but still cozy. Nothing like my house, with my grandmother’s things mixed up with my own.
Dev fills the kettle and turns on the stove. He keeps moving, his face always away from me. Is he regretting our moment outside Wisteria Cottage? Maybe he’s about to tell me that he’s afraid he gave me the wrong idea by walking me home. Maybe I should apologize for giving him the wrong idea, holding on to his hand like that. Why didn’t I let go? Why am I still thinking about it? A vacation crush should not be this unsettling.