The President's Daughter - Mariah Stewart [10]
It was just about that time that Jude had come across Polly Valentine and had suggested that Dina meet the fragile young woman with the sad past.
Polly, a refugee from a bad marriage, had taken a well-aimed swing at her abusive ex-husband with a baseball bat as he attempted to sneak into her apartment after repeatedly threatening harm to her and her child. Unable to make bail, she’d spent five months in prison, awaiting trial for assault. Though she’d been acquitted, she’d lost almost half a year out of her life, along with her job at a flower shop, her self-respect, and, most important, her nine-year-old daughter, Erin. Jude, a volunteer teacher at the county prison, had met Polly there and had seen something in the young woman’s eyes that had drawn her to the courtroom when Polly’s trial began. On the day Polly was acquitted, Jude waited for her outside the courthouse, and learning that Polly had no place to go, Jude had taken Polly home. It hadn’t taken much for Jude to talk her daughter into hiring Polly on at the shop and renting out the farmhouse to her. After all, Dina needed help, Polly needed a job and a home, and the old farmhouse needed painting. It was a given that Dina, already living comfortably in her carriage house, would never find the time to do it.
It was the best decision Dina had ever made. Polly was a natural with flowers, and she had become a huge asset to the business. She was also a good friend.
The water started to boil, and Dina unceremoniously dumped the pasta into the pot. A second, smaller pot of marinara sauce began to simmer as Dina went into her small office at the end of the hall and took a yellow file from the desk. She cleared a space at the table, then returned to the kitchen, the file under her arm, and, standing up, ate the leftover salad from lunch. The timer went off on the pasta, and she drained it absently, her mind on the yellow folder and the work order within. She prepared a plate, then headed back to the dining room, where she ate with her left hand while her right hand played with the sketches from the folder, landscaping plans for another of the new houses being built out along the river. This one was a beautifully designed redbrick Federal-style house from its roof to its windows.
And Mrs. Fisher, the owner, was insisting on what she termed a “wild English country garden.” Despite Dina’s gentle suggestion that perhaps something slightly more structured might be more appropriate for this particular home and property, Mrs. Fisher would not be shaken from her vision of oceans of waving delphiniums and phlox, hollyhocks and roses. The best Dina could hope for was to plan the beds in a manner that would complement, rather than overwhelm, the architecture. To this end, she played with sketches of a walled garden with a patio and a bricked walk that would wind around a series of raised beds. Back against the walls, the tall perennials would appear more graceful, less serendipitous, than in smaller beds closer to the formal house. Those small beds were just right for an herb garden, the scale of which would be in better proportion to the back of the house, the function more in keeping with the era the Fishers were trying to re-create.
Dina downed the last now-cold bite of rotini just as the alarm on her watch alerted her to the fact that it was coming up on seven. If she was to be in town in an hour, she needed to get into the shower now. She closed her file, took the dishes into the kitchen to rinse, then locked the back door before heading up the narrow stairs to her bedroom, where she stripped off her work clothes.