In early evening, when the sun was getting low and the brunt of the heat was breaking, Jane called. After asking about Noah, she informed me that Anna still couldn’t make up her mind about the dress and that she wouldn’t make it home that night. Though I assured her that I had expected as much, I could hear a trace of frustration in her voice. She wasn’t as angry as she was exasperated, and I smiled, wondering how on earth Jane could still be surprised by our daughter’s behavior.

After hanging up, I drove to Creekside to feed the swan three pieces of Wonder Bread, then swung by the office on the way back home.

Parking in my usual spot out front, I could see the Chelsea Restaurant just up the street; opposite was a small grass park, where Santa’s village was set up every winter. Despite the thirty years I’ve worked in this building, it still amazed me to realize that the early history of North Carolina could be found in any direction I looked. The past has always held special meaning for me, and I loved the fact that within blocks, I could walk through the first Catholic church built in the state, or tour the first public school and learn how the settlers were educated, or stroll the grounds of Tryon Palace, the former home of the colonial governor that now boasts one of the finest formal gardens in the South. I’m not alone in this pride in my town; the New Bern Historical Society is one of the most active in the country, and on nearly every corner, signs document the important role New Bern played in the early years of our country.

My partners and I own the building where we keep our law offices, and though I wish there was an interesting anecdote concerning its past, there really isn’t one. Erected in the late 1950s, when functionality was the single criterion architects valued in design, it’s really quite drab. In this single-story, rectangular brick structure, there are offices for the four partners and four associates, three conference rooms, a file room, and a reception area for clients.

I unlocked the front door, heard the warning that the alarm would sound in less than a minute, then punched in the code to shut it off. Switching on the lamp in the reception area, I headed toward my office.

Like my partners’ offices, my office has a certain air of formality that clients seem to expect: dark cherry desk topped with a brass lamp, law books shelved along the wall, a set of comfortable leather chairs facing the desk.

As an estate lawyer, I sometimes feel as if I’ve seen every type of couple in the world. Though most strike me as perfectly normal, I’ve watched some couples begin to brawl like street fighters, and I once witnessed a woman pour hot coffee onto her husband’s lap. More often than I would ever have believed possible, I’ve been pulled aside by a husband asking whether he was legally obligated to leave something to his wife or whether he could omit her entirely in favor of his mistress. These couples, I should add, often dress well and look perfectly ordinary as they sit before me, but when at last they leave my office, I find myself wondering what goes on behind the closed doors of their homes.

Standing behind my desk, I found the appropriate key on my chain and unlocked the drawer. I put Jane’s gift on my desk and gazed at it, wondering how she would respond when I gave it to her. I thought she would like it, but more than that, I wanted her to recognize it as a heartfelt—if belated—attempt to apologize for the man I’d been for most of our marriage.

Yet because I’ve failed her in ways too frequent to count, I couldn’t help but wonder about her expression as we’d stood in the driveway this morning. Hadn’t it been almost . . . well, dreamy? Or had I simply been imagining it?

As I glanced toward the window, it was a moment before the answer came, and all at once, I knew I hadn’t been imagining it. No, somehow, even accidentally, I’d stumbled onto the key to my success in courting her so long ago. Though I’d been the same man I’d been for the past year—a man deeply in love with his wife and trying his best to keep her—I’d made one small but significant adjustment.

This week, I hadn’t been focusing on my problems and doing my best to correct them. This week, I’d been thinking of her; I’d committed myself to helping her with family responsibilities, I’d listened with interest whenever she spoke, and everything we discussed seemed new. I’d laughed at her jokes and held her as she’d cried, apologized for my faults, and showed her the affection she both needed and deserved. In other words, I’d been the man she’d always wanted, the man I once had been, and—like an old habit rediscovered—I now understood that it was all I ever needed to do for us to begin enjoying each other’s company again.

Chapter Thirteen

When I arrived at Noah’s house the following morning, my eyebrows rose at the sight of the nursery trucks already parked in the drive. There were three large flatbeds crowded with small trees and bushes, while another was loaded with bales of pine straw to spread atop the flower beds, around the trees, and along the fence line. A truck and trailer held various tools and equipment, and three pickups were packed with flats of low flowering plants.

In front of the trucks, workers congregated in groups of five or six. A quick count showed that closer to forty people had come—not the thirty that Little had promised—and all were wearing jeans and baseball caps despite the heat. When I got out of the car, Little approached me with a smile.

“Good—you’re here,” he said, putting his hand on my shoulder. “We’ve been waiting for you. We can get started, then, yes?”

Within minutes, mowers and tools were unloaded, and the air was soon filled with the sound of engines rising and falling as they crisscrossed the property. Some of the workers began to unload the plants, bushes, and trees, stacking them into wheelbarrows and rolling them to their appropriate spots.

But it was the rose garden that attracted the most attention, and I followed Little as he grabbed a set of pruning shears and headed that way, joining the dozen workers who were already waiting for him. Beautifying the garden struck me as the type of job where it is impossible even to know where to begin, but Little simply started pruning the first bush while describing what he was doing. The workers clustered around him, whispering to one another in Spanish as they watched, then finally dispersed when they understood what he wanted. Hour by hour, the natural colors of the roses were artfully exposed as each bush was thinned and trimmed. Little was adamant that few blooms be lost, necessitating quite a bit of twine as stems were pulled and tied, bent and rotated, into their proper place.