Free Second Nature by Alice Hoffman Page B

because the bees began buzzing long before dawn.
    “It was the rainy winter,” the Doctor told Robin when he stopped by for a cup of coffee. The bed of his parked truck was filled with branches and canes; wasps hovered above the pickup. “The ground never froze,” he went on. But still he seemed puzzled; there was no real explanation. Usually, roses demanded more care than other plants; they were tricky and cantankerous and had to be coaxed into growing with bonemeal and lime. “So how’s business?” he asked.
    “I’m sort of behind,” Robin said.
    In fact, she’d hardly worked all spring, and if she wasn’t careful she’d have to borrow money from Stuart or, far worse, ask Roy for help again. Stephen was out in the yard now, practicing what she’d taught him about pruning back roses. She was afraid to do the job she knew so well; gardening was a gift, after all, and what was given might be taken away. She didn’t believe in bad luck or curses, but just in case, each time she found a toad in someone’s garden she made certain to set it free.
    “It seems that I have a black thumb these days. I don’t know what to do about it.”
    “It’s the divorce,” the Doctor said as he spooned sugar into his coffee. “Planning a divorce can kill a garden.”
    “That’s a dreadful thing to say,” Robin chided him, although she secretly believed he might be right.
    She made a face at him, the way she used to when he was working for her grandfather and she would annoy him until he shooed her away. It was, indeed, a dreadful thing to say, but the Doctor didn’t give a damn. He had recently celebrated his sixty-third birthday, and although he could still lift a magnolia out of the bed of his truck with no help at all, he figured he was now old enough to say whatever he pleased, whether or not it was true. As far as he was concerned, Roy had made a lot of mistakes in his life, and now he had screwed up the one thing he’d done right. “Have pity on him,” the Doctor suggested.
    “I don’t think that’s what you’re supposed to feel for your husband,” Robin said.
    The Doctor laughed and went to the sink to wash out his coffee cup. He would never have let a girl like Robin get away from him. The problem with Roy was that he was too good-looking. His mother, the Doctor’s wife, had been that way, too, and in the years before she died, she grew colder and more distant, shocked that the world hadn’t offered her everything she’d wanted just because she was beautiful.
    “The boy’s doing a good job,” the Doctor said as he watched Stephen through the window.
    Robin came over and lifted the edge of the curtain, then made herself look away.
    “He’s not a boy.” She laughed.
    The Doctor put his cup on the drainboard. His point exactly.
    “How’s my grandson?” he asked on his way to the door.
    “Sixteen,” Robin said. A word synonymous with moody, and getting moodier all the time. Connor had taken to going out by himself at night. He needed to think, he said. He needed to be alone, and there was no point in her waiting up for him. There was no need to worry about him drinking, he’d stopped completely, she could trust him on that. Occasionally Robin would catch him grinning, and when she’d ask what was so funny, he’d clam up. Whatever it was, it was a serious business, but one that delighted him all the same.
    “Your punishment for having once been a teenager yourself,” the Doctor told her. “Everything we do comes back to haunt us.”
    Later that day, when the Doctor was working over at the Morrisons’, he saw Robin’s truck go by. He felt bad about throwing the breakup with Roy at her. He should have told her there was no such thing as a black thumb; if you believed something would grow it would, plain and simple. Anyone who knew gardens knew that. The Doctor let Angelo and Jim finish up the yard work so he could go to the curb and watch where his daughter-in-law was headed. The Feldmans’