Garden of Stones - By Sophie Littlefield Page 0,90

from the cleaners and help me hang them.”

Mrs. Sloat liked to have company when she did errands. Often she sat in the car and had Lucy go into the store. She was shy about her limp, less steady than she was at home, where she’d navigated every hall and step a thousand times. Lucy had become accustomed to their trips to town; people no longer gaped and whispered as they once had. The clerks and stock boys even greeted her like a local.

Lucy had no desire to stop what she was doing, but she knew Mrs. Sloat wouldn’t take no for an answer. She sighed and set down the tiny paintbrush she had been using to touch up the color along the gums of a pretty two-point buck shoulder mount.

“She’s busy,” Garvey growled.

There was a silence. Lucy glanced back and forth between Mrs. Sloat and Garvey, who didn’t bother to look up from the striped trout he was working on. Today’s painting lesson had filled the air with acrid fumes, and after a moment Mrs. Sloat sneezed twice in rapid succession.

“Seems like you can’t tolerate the air in here,” Garvey said. “Maybe you ought to be on your way.”

“Not without my employee,” Mrs. Sloat huffed.

The change in Garvey was instant and breathtaking. He jammed his hand down on the wheel so fast that metal scraped on metal and the chair shuddered and turned. It was as though he meant to propel himself out of the chair. In that moment, Lucy wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d stood on his ruined legs and gone after his sister, and she must have felt it too, because she stepped back, nearly falling.

“Whose employee? Whose fucking employee, Mary? It seems to me that you’ve been forgetting something important.”

“I only said—”

“Everything in this house, every inch of this land, every miserable dollar in the bank is mine.” He was bellowing, spittle flying from his mouth, his fists clenched.

“Stop it, Garvey, the guests—”

“Let them hear! Let them all hear! Let them shut this place down, I don’t care anymore.”

“Watch what you’re saying,” Mrs. Sloat said, regaining her composure. “You can’t treat me this way. You can’t run this place without me. You can’t even go up the stairs.”

Garvey opened his mouth in retort, but Mrs. Sloat was back in the fight, and she pulled herself up to her full height, towering above her brother.

“Don’t forget, the money’s not really yours. It’s in your trust. You think if I walk in that bank and tell them my brother’s losing his mind, they won’t shut down your allowance like that?” Mrs. Sloat snapped her fingers for emphasis. “It’s all legal, Garvey. There’s not one damn thing you can do about it.”

“But Lucy doesn’t—”

“Do you really think she wants to be your assistant?—your protégé? I have news for you, oh brother of mine, she might not look like much, but on the inside she’s every bit as cagey and coldhearted as any other woman. She’s looking out for one person and one person only—herself.”

Mrs. Sloat glared at Lucy, then walked out of the room. Garvey watched her go, and then rested his head in his hand.

“God,” he said softly. “What a fucking mess.”

Lucy sat frozen in her chair, unsure of what to do, embarrassed almost to tears by Mrs. Sloat’s insinuations. “It’s true, then?” she asked. “She could do that to you? She could take what’s rightfully yours?”

“No, no, it’s—well, it’s complicated. My mother was trying to be fair to everyone, I guess. And instead she set it up so my sister and I can never escape each other.” He rubbed his face. “You should have seen her, when she went off to college—most beautiful girl around. Could have had anyone she wanted—”

He stopped abruptly, and Lucy knew immediately that he thought he’d offended her. “No, no,” she whispered. “It’s all right.”

“No. It’s not. Lucy... Look at me.”

Her gaze traveled a slow path from her hands twisted in her lap up to Garvey’s face, full of anguish but still handsome, still perfect. What a pair they made; Garvey as good-looking as a movie star, stuck with a body that didn’t work—and Lucy, lithe and strong from her work, but doomed with a face that would always turn people away.

“The things I said to you,” he said softly, “when you first came here. I was... I was horrible to you. I’m so sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s all right.” Lucy tried to blot out his apology with her words; she couldn’t