Heirlooms, page 15
I shook my head. “Not well. Nick was right. CSAs have really come into their own on the island. Anyone who wants one has pretty much signed up. I started late in the game. I might see if I can add some additional vegetables, or maybe some of the pickled stuff in the cellar to jazz up our offerings, until next year, when I can make more on the flowers . . . somehow.” I turned toward her. “You okay with how things went tonight?”
She nodded. “I think it’s pretty clear now that no one had any idea about that baby, and I’m not even sure it has anything to do with my family. Maybe Mi-Ja isn’t even someone’s name. I mean, it’s just a beautiful child. I’d like to just let this go now if it’s okay. I have a lot to concentrate on to make sure I pass, and honestly, I’m still having a hard time studying. I must pass the test.”
But then who was the baby her halmoni was kissing in the picture? And why had Gran insisted we look together? Grace looked straight forward, neck taut. I needed to focus on work, too. Now that Annika had taken a lot of the gardening tasks, I’d have time to build more into the CSAs—or come up with an alternative. “Okay,” I agreed. “Consider it closed.”
A couple of weeks after we’d had dinner with the Kims, I was almost finished sorting through Gran’s paperwork. A few more hours should finish it off. I opened the second-to-last file from her creaky, faded, pre–World War II filing cabinet.
There was a hanging file labeled Home Equity Loan. A red sticky tape said, Mention to C. at Easter.
C. Must be me. And Gran hadn’t made it to my planned Easter visit.
I opened the file and pulled out a contract for a home equity loan taken out against the land. The line of credit was for $100,000, but only $75,000 of it had been used. Clipped to the loan contract were receipts for repiping the house inside and out, upgrading the electrical system to code, new siding, and water damage repair. A checking account statement was next to it with a password and log-in.
I pulled up the account and saw a balance. I had not realized that there was an additional bank account because Gran had always kept everything at the Navy credit union. This account was with the local bank that had made the loan.
Each month there had been a withdrawal for the home equity payment, and I quickly calculated the payments against the remaining bank balance. There was enough in there for two years’ worth of payments. So that’s what she’d meant when she said she’d given me a head start. Which was great, because even after the two years, I’d be okay; this payment was less than rent would be.
I walked downstairs and knocked on Grace’s office door. “Found something. Can you take a look?” I showed her the documents.
“Wow. Gran hated debt, right?”
“Right,” I said. “But how else was she going to upgrade a hundred-year-old house when she was in her mideighties?”
She put her hands up. “I wasn’t calling her out for it. No worries.”
I sat on the chair next to her. “Sorry. I’m a little defensive. Am I good with this?”
“Seems like it.” She quickly scanned the paperwork. “I can look more closely later if you want me to. The payments are being made from her account. In a couple of years, when the account looks like it’s going to be tapped out, you can just add some more. Sometime in the next month or two, head over to the bank and get the accounts put in your name too.”
“Okay.” I sighed with relief.
“I’m heading into Seattle tonight for a study break,” she said. “Justin bought concert tickets. I’ll stay at home afterward and be back tomorrow night.”
“Okay! Have fun!” I headed out to the garden, brushing my hands against the silky rose heads as I did. I’d begun snipping some for bouquets in the honesty stand when I heard a car pull up. “Brenda!” I started to walk toward her.
“Don’t come to me. I’ll come to you, Mary, Mary,” she called out. “I want to see how your garden grows.” She walked by the herb boxes. “These are coming along nicely. The thyme is blooming, and everything else will shoot up with another couple of months of heat. Freesias are gorgeous, and I do hope you’re going to sell some of the lilac branches. They go at a premium since no one thinks to cut them.”
“I’m big into bouquets of branches,” I said. “I’ve already sold a few.” Very few. There wasn’t much money coming in, and I didn’t tell her how much I’d already composted. “You were right about a low level of traffic out here.”
“I’m sorry.” She handed an empty basket to me. To thank her for her help in organizing the plant drive, I’d made a huge picnic basket filled with things from our garden, cellar, and freezer. “In better news, this was delicious. Marv said he might leave me if you’re still single. He especially loved the hand pies and wondered if he could put in an order. I’m not much of a baker. You could throw in some of that sourdough and unusual—delicious—butter too.”
I laughed. “Thank you. I’m glad you both appreciated them. I don’t sell the hand pies or the sourdough, because they are a signature labor of love I gift to those I care for, but I’d be happy to make more for a friend. Thank you for everything you’ve done for me. The blue poppies are coming up nicely.” I waved my arm to show her. “Let me pick some for you before you go.”
“You are so welcome, honey. And I’d love a bouquet of those rare beauties. They make me so happy.” Her eyes twinkled. “Anyway, I’m sure we’d pay for another basket like that if you ever felt bored.” She scanned the huge acreage. “Not likely. Proud of all of these flowers, though. Everyone who returned them would be too. In fact, a few of them have driven by to surveil and reported back, happy.”
I set the picnic basket on the table in the middle of the garden, where we ate lunch, drank lemonade, tea, or coffee, and where, soon, I’d start holding our family dinners. As Brenda left, DJ and Annika arrived. I got DJ set up in the little lean-to with his iPad and showed him where I’d refilled the bird foods.
Annika had fallen behind at the weeding. She’d been doing great for a while, and then all of a sudden, the weeds went untended. There were other tasks in a late May garden—watering, feeding, making sure each plant had enough space to grow and had been placed near companion plants to help each other along. But I was going to have to talk with her and make sure she stayed on task. She was taking a lot of pictures, too, which was great. But I couldn’t pay her for those. What kind of a boss and mentor would I be if I just let her slack?
I went to meet her. She stood among the peonies and roses, twisting her fidget cube.
“These beds are the ones that need to be weeded,” I said, hoping to remind her.
She balked and looked miserable. “I can’t weed them,” she said. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to fail you and your family another year. But I just can’t bend into the flower beds. I tried.” She tucked the small cube back into her pocket before looking at me.
Well, the flower to veg ratio was like five to one already and growing, so this might be a problem I needed to solve. “Hey, let’s go have a seat at the picnic table and talk about it,” I said. “We can keep an eye on DJ from there.” We headed over and sat down.
“I’m deathly afraid of bees,” she said. “I keep telling myself they aren’t going to hurt me. But they do sting. Have you ever been stung?”
I had to be honest. “Yeah. Not often, but yeah. Once I knelt on one, and it stung me through my pant leg.”
Her eyes grew wide.
I rushed to reassure her. “It was a long time ago!”
She pulled out her phone and opened her camera roll. “Look. Didn’t get close. But look at their bee faces.”
“Cute?”
She shook her head and zoomed in. “Beady eyes, and those stingers are like a medical syringe filled with poison. I can avoid other sharp things with the gloves and the boots but not the bees.”
“They’re pollinators,” I said quietly. “They need to be there for the plants to grow. No bees, no fruit. No bees, no blossoms.”
“I know.” Misery swelled her voice. She scrolled through the photos.
I looked over her shoulder while she did. “Wait!”
She looked at me.
“Go back to the ones in the greenhouse.”
She scrolled back to some close-ups of the glass flask I used for the salad dressing I’d nestled in Brenda’s basket, right up against a wooden bowl with tongs, and the lettuce softly settled at the base. “This is gorgeous! Like, magazine-worthy!”
She blushed. “Thank you. I see everything in the world as a photograph. I just see the right lines and the right light.”
“Do you have more pictures like this?”
Nodding, she opened the album called Cassidy, and there were hundreds, maybe more, photos of flowers, of the wagon, of the orchards in bloom and then with their tiny apples and pears hanging like dangle earrings from each branch. “This one’s my favorite,” she said. It was the sign that said Mickey, hooked like a crooked smile on her grandfather’s tree. “I’m sorry about the bees like I was sorry about the strawberries. I’m sure you’ll have to fire me,” she said.
What to do? I mean, hadn’t I said a business decision had to be a business decision? And yet here she was, doing what she loved even though it was inconvenient. Like me with flowers.
I could tell her that I was sorry, but I couldn’t keep her on because I needed help with the weeding and up-close plant care, and there were sure to be bees. Or I could do more of it myself. “I may have other things for you to do,” I said. “Those orchard signs need to be painted.”
“I could paint them and take before and after photos,” she said. “The weathered look is cool.”
She was a woman in love. With her camera. I smiled. “You’re right; it is. Let me think about what else you might be able to do, and maybe DJ can do a little of the weeding, too, if he’s willing to come alongside me. Do you mind sweeping out and straightening the honesty stand? Packing stuff to sell there once it’s picked?”
“Not at all. I can dig in new plants, too. Weed anything but blossoming flowers.”
“Let me think on it,” I said.
I was back to clipping a few peonies for bouquets and organizing the summer bulbs for planting when Nick walked up with four iced lattes in a carrier.
“Hey. All hail the queen of spades.” He glanced at my shovel and grinned.
I looked at the coffees. “This is most welcome.”
“Me or the coffee?”
“Both. It was sweet of you to think of everyone.”
“I remembered from your last order that DJ likes decaf with caramel and Annika prefers low-fat milk.” He handed a wrapped package to me, too. “So since we know you have all the actual flowers you’ll ever want . . . ,” he said, looking at the acre outside the greenhouse, vibrant with new plant life.
“A book?” I pulled the ribbon, undoing it, and then unwrapped the package. The Fully Illustrated Guide to Victorian Flower Language, Updated for the Modern Woman. “Oh! Perfect!”
He grinned. “I thought you might like this, after talking about the apple blossom meanings and all.” Warm pink flushed his face.
I reached out to hug him. “Thank you for this. It means so much.” I paged through a few, stopping at poppies, their meaning listed by color. Blue, the ones I’d just snipped for Brenda, represented spiritual faith. I’m not despising this small beginning, Lord. Thank you. I took the book over to the picnic table, and Nick sat down next to me.
“So,” he said, “I’ve got bad news.”
I looked up from the book. “What?”
“I’ve been monitoring the website responses . . .”
I knew where he was going. “Me too.”
“So you realize we probably can’t rustle up enough interest in CSAs. I know I said produce was the way forward, and I still think it is. But there are so many CSAs on the island now that without something to stand out, we’re not going to make it.”
“I’m not selling enough flowers, either,” I told him. “I’m not going to make enough money in time. I need to think about what to do, and I know I don’t have much time.”
He glanced at the picnic basket. “What’s this?”
“Brenda came by and told me how much they loved the basket I sent over, especially my sourdough and hand pies, and could I please sell another one to her. I’m so happy that they liked my little thank-you.”
Annika and DJ made their way over to sit down.
“Thank you . . . Nick,” DJ said as the two of them sat down and took their coffees.
“Perfect!” Annika said. “Thanks for remembering!”
“You’re welcome.” Nick looked at the basket again. “So . . . ,” he started again and then snapped his fingers. “What about a picnic basket subscription box? With salad, that fantastic sourdough, herbal dressing, and your hand pies? A small bouquet of your rustic-wrapped flowers? We could add up all the parts that come from the property and put it toward that $1,500. It’s different. It’s not just the typical CSA. Exactly what we’re looking for!”
“A picnic basket subscription? With my bread and hand pies?” My heart sank, but I wasn’t sure why. “I mean, I guess we could consider it.”
“But will people on the island want salads week after week?” Annika said.
“You’re right,” I said, relieved without understanding why. “I don’t think it will work.”
“Hold on, sunshine,” Nick said. “What about people who come to the island for weekly summer rentals? I can reach out to a couple of landlords. I can also add that to your website. It won’t take long at all. Maybe a day or two tops.”
Something inside me recoiled. “Maybe we need to slow down a little here? Let me think about this?”
“You just said you were running out of time, right? Time is money—tax money—so no slowing down. I can look for some royalty-free pictures of general farm and flower stuff. I’m sure I can find a picnic basket and some salad photos.”
“Wait!” Annika stood up. “I have hundreds of pictures, and I can take hundreds more.”
Skepticism crossed Nick’s face, just a slight upturn of the lip, but I knew it well. He was a perfectionist where marketing graphics were concerned.
Annika opened up her photo roll and thumbed through the pictures. “Look at these flasks!” she said. “And I took some of Cassidy’s hand pies as she was pulling them out of the oven.”
He low whistled. “These are great. I’d need to pay you.”
Annika shook her head. “I’m already being paid. You guys can tell me what you want shots of, and I’ll do them during my regular work hours when I’m not painting or whatever.”
She looked so happy to have solved the problem of keeping her job by doing what she loved. It did seem like a good solution, and I was happy that she was happy. “Thank you,” I said, clinking my coffee cup with hers in a kind of toast. But why wasn’t I happy?
“What should we call the business?” Nick looked at the fence by the rose garden. “White Picket Picnics?”
“Picnics!” DJ said. “We . . . pick . . . Nick.”
We all laughed at his joke. “Okay,” I said. “White Picket Picnics it is!”
Nick gave Annika his email address to send photos to him, and then Annika and DJ went back to work.
Later that evening I headed up to the attic, clicked on the light, and moved to the far, still-dry corner where I’d found a small stash of picnic baskets. Frugal Gran rarely threw away anything she thought might still be useful. On my way to grab a few more, I saw a bit of my mom’s wedding veil sticking out of the hope chest. I didn’t want it to get crimped, so I opened the trunk to rearrange it so everything fit in neatly. I lifted out the photos and the hanbok, which were now on top, and set them to the side. Then I took out my baby blanket and put that on the floor. As I did, I knocked over a small wooden thread box inside the hope chest, one I had not noticed when we’d sorted this the first time. As I picked up the box, spools and spools of thread fell to the side, including one of shimmering gold, which reminded me of Rumpelstiltskin. Flat inside the box, under spools of thread, were two onionskin airmail letters, addressed in English to Choi Eunhee, Grace’s halmoni—opened once but now taped shut.
Ohhhh.
Maybe these letters weren’t anything to cause a problem.
But then why had they been tucked into the previously locked hope chest?
I shook my head. Nope. I’d promised Grace the matter was settled. A promise was a promise.
CHAPTER TWELVE
September 1958
“You’ll have to care for her at home now,” the doctor told Helen. “It’s been two weeks. We simply can’t let her take that bed any longer. I’ve given her the birth certificate.”
“Has her bleeding slowed?” Helen asked.
“It’s slowing. Keep an eye on her. She’s lucky to have you. Does she have a mother nearby who can help? I know you have shifts and patients of your own.”
“I can take care of both Mrs. Roy and my patients,” Helen assured him. “I can take care of quite a lot of people at once.”
“Good. That is what I told Captain Adams.”
They’d discussed her? The hospital had more drama and complications than As the World Turns. She and Eunhee had enjoyed watching soap operas while Eunhee was in the hospital and Helen visited her room.
“Is the baby well?” Helen asked. “She was premature.”
“She’s as stable as she’ll ever be. There is little anyone can do for her. You’ve heard her heart . . .”
Helen nodded. The thumping murmur signaled a heart condition that Helen had been told was common among babies born with Down syndrome. Not only did the heart not work correctly, but Mi-Ja’s lungs also had trouble due to the heart defect.
“Your best bet is to investigate institutions. I understand that the Buckthorn Institution is the place that would take the child. They have medical personnel and a nursery. People suited to care for the baby. It is best,” he said, “for Mrs. Roy to forget she ever had this child. The child will die soon enough, and the mother is a young woman. Maybe she will go back to her country, find a husband from there, and start over. However, she should just be on her guard. She may have another damaged baby.”
