Chapter 23: The Hundredth, Reversed

Edith came home on the first warm Sunday of spring, in a wheelchair she called an insult.

The old gardener pushed it down the lawn himself, and Edith rapped his knuckles with her good hand for every bump.

"I can see the roses perfectly well," she said. "You may slow down, you brute."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Not that slow."

Hattie laughed so hard she had to sit on the grass.

Dylan stood beside her in a clean blazer, holding a tray of lemonade and wearing a boy's grin.

He had been told it was Edith's welcome home.

He had not been told anything else.

The garden was green again.

Beyond the hedge, the harbor lay flat and bright, with white sails on it.

Imogen waited at the end of the lawn, by the mud bed, in a plain blue dress.

It was not the dress from the video.

But it was close.

Percy came down the path from the house in a pale shirt with the sleeves rolled up, carrying nothing.

Since the night in the garden house he had asked her to marry him eight more times.

She had said no every time.

Each time he had said "Okay, that's another one" and gone back to burning the toast.

The ninth was coming, and she knew it, and today she meant to get there first.

He saw the blue dress and stopped dead.

"Imogen."

"Come here."

"What is this?"

"It's a Sunday," she said. "Come here."

He came.

He stopped in front of her on the soft turned earth, and she watched him realize where he was standing.

His face went very still.

"This is the place," he said.

"Yes."

"Imogen, if you're about to say what I think..."

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