and …” Excitement filled his rheumy old eyes. “She wants me in her life again, Emily. She says she still has a lot to tell me about the war years, but I told her I knew about her husband coming back, and let her know how happy I am that she’d been able to share so many years with him. I think that was the ice breaker. It let her know I didn’t want to relive the past or question anything about her family. I only want to look toward the future … with her as my very, very dear friend.”
I gave his arm a little rub. “You’re okay with that, are you?”
“Yup. I’m not one of those high-maintenance fellas, Emily, but I mean to tell you, it’s sure nice being remembered, and treated not like you’re a useless old man”—his voice cracked as he drew in a calming breath—“but someone special.”
I flashed a wistful smile before leaning over and kissing his forehead. “You’ve always been someone special, Osmond.” I nodded down the path. “I’m headed for the water garden. You want to tag along with me?”
“Uhh, I’ll catch up with you right after I hear back from Solange. I just asked if she’d give me her opinion about the differences in France’s geopolitical landscape under its last six presidents, so I’m hoping for an answer any minute now.”
I thought he might be sending Solange messages of a more personal nature, but given what a political junkie he was, maybe a message about geopolitics was personal.
Leaving my two stragglers behind, I followed the path leading to the water garden and entered a world where a wood sprite might play hide and seek amid a cluster of ferns, or dance atop leaves that were big as elephant ears. The path meandered beneath a leafy canopy that rustled in the breeze and filtered light into the space below in a haze of silvery-green. A mud-brown stream flowed beside the walkway, its banks reinforced by wooden stakes that were woven together as intricately as a reed basket. I passed weeping willows whose narrow leaves drooped over the water like a mane of unbound hair, and a forest of bamboo whose stalks were growing straight as chopsticks. Clumps of purple and blue-violet flowers bunched together at the edge of the stream, while other blossoms coiled their way around tree trunks, swaddling them in clusters of bubblegum pink and fuschia. The gang had apparently dashed through this section, because they were nowhere to be seen, but I spied Bobbi and Dawna up ahead, sitting all by themselves on a bench, filing their nails.
“Have you run out of scenery to take pictures of already?” I asked as I neared them.
Bobbi eyed me with cool regard from beneath the brim of her cowboy hat. “Priorities, darlin’.”
Dawna swatted an insect off her bare shoulder, nearly stabbing herself with her nail file. “Trees and bugs,” she whined. “I mean to tell ya, we got plenty of trees and bugs in Nacogdoches, so I don’t know why I had to get dragged here to see more.”
“Because these trees and bugs once belonged to Claude Monet,” I pointed out.
Bobbi gave her nail file a lackluster twirl in the air. “Woo hoo.”
“Well, Claude Monet can have ’em,” drawled Dawna. “I think they’re borin’.”
Nope. Couldn’t let that pass. “They’re not boring to the tens of thousands of tourists who pay to see them every year.”
Bobbi narrowed her eyes into a squint. “Do you get paid for bein’ so irritatin’, sugah? I’ve seen you talkin’ to that bunch of old geezers. Are they payin’ you to babysit them or somethin’?”
“Actually, they pay me quite handsomely to escort them on trips around the world.”
“You gotta be jokin’.” Dawna laughed in disbelief. “You’ve conned folks into thinkin’ they need to pay you big bucks to hold their hands while they travel?”