Garden of Betrayal

The screen door slammed behind me before I could catch it, that familiar crack of wood against frame that meant summer and home and my mother yelling from the kitchen. Some things don't change. The house smelled like lemon polish and something baking, and my duffel bag hit the hallway floor with a thud that sent dust motes spinning through the afternoon light.

"Jacob? That you?"

"Yeah, Ma."

I hadn't been gone that long. Two semesters. But the hallway felt smaller, the ceiling lower, like the house had shrunk while I was away getting educated. I dropped my keys on the side table, the one with the wobbly leg my father never fixed, and walked through to the kitchen.

She was at the counter, hands covered in flour, and she looked at me the way mothers do. Up and down. Checking for damage.

"You're thin."

"I'm the same weight."

"You're thin." She wiped her hands on her apron and pulled me into a hug that smelled like vanilla and yeast. "Tony and Lisa are having a barbecue. I told them you might stop by."

My stomach did something complicated at the name. Lisa. Our neighbor since I was twelve. The woman who used to wave at me from her garden while I mowed the lawn, her sundress catching the wind, her hair the color of dark honey. She'd been thirty-five then. Now I was twenty and she was forty-three and I hadn't thought about her in months.

Or weeks. Or days.

"Maybe later," I said.

"Go now. They're expecting you."

---

The garden was in full bloom when I walked through the gap in the hedge that separated our properties. Tomatoes climbing their cages, basil going wild, sunflowers taller than Tony, who stood at the grill with tongs in one hand and a beer in the other. He spotted me first.

"Jakey boy!" He set down the beer and crossed the lawn with arms wide. Tony was fifty, built like a former linebacker who'd gone soft in the middle, with a laugh that carried across three properties. He hugged me hard enough to crack something. "Look at you. College man. They feeding you up there?"

"Not enough, apparently."

"Lisa! Get out here! Jake's home!"

The screen door of their house opened and she stepped out.

Time does things to people. Sometimes it takes, sometimes it gives. Lisa had been pretty when I was a kid, the kind of pretty that made me nervous to make eye contact. At forty-three she'd grown into something else. Her dark hair was shorter now, cut to her jaw, and there were lines at the corners of her eyes that hadn't been there before. But her body, Christ. She wore a thin cotton dress, the kind that ties at the shoulders, and it moved when she walked. Hips that had always been generous, a waist that curved in, breasts that pushed against the fabric with each step.

She smiled when she saw me. Not the polite smile of a neighbor. Something warmer.

"Jacob." She said my full name like it mattered. "You got taller."

"I stopped growing at seventeen."

"Did you?" She walked toward me and I caught her scent before she reached me. Coconut and something else, something underneath that made my mouth go dry. She hugged me, and her body pressed against mine for a moment too long to be casual. Her hand lingered on my back. "It's good to see you."

"You too, Lisa."

Tony was already back at the grill, flipping burgers, oblivious. That was Tony. A good guy. Loud and generous and completely unaware of the way his wife's eyes stayed on me a beat longer than they should.

---

We ate at the picnic table under the oak tree, the three of us plus a couple of neighbors who showed up later with a bottle of wine and stories about their grandchildren. I drank a beer and tried not to stare at Lisa's mouth. The way she wrapped her lips around her fork. The way she laughed at Tony's jokes with her head tilted back, throat exposed, the curve of her collarbone catching the late afternoon sun.

"So what are you studying?" Tony asked, mouth half full.

"English."

"English." He said it like it was a foreign concept. "What're you gonna do with that?"

"Teach, probably."

"Good man. Good man." He raised his beer. "To teachers."

We all drank. Lisa's eyes found mine over the rim of her glass and held. I looked away first.

The neighbors left when the sun started dropping behind the trees. Tony went inside to use the bathroom and never came back out, which meant he'd found the recliner and the baseball game. Lisa and I were alone in the garden, the air cooling, the crickets starting up.

"Walk with me," she said.

It wasn't a question.

We walked to the back of the property where Tony kept his workshop, a shed he'd built himself that smelled like sawdust and motor oil. Behind it, a path led to the creek that ran along the edge of both our properties. I hadn't been down here in years. The water was low, moving slow, catching the last of the light.

"How's your mother?" Lisa asked.

"Same. Worried about my weight."

"She loves you."

"I know."

She stopped walking. I stopped too. We were standing close enough that I could see the individual hairs on her forearms, the tiny scar on her elbow from when she'd fallen off her bike as a teenager. She'd told me that story once, years ago, when I was fifteen and she was helping me with a school project at her kitchen table. I'd remembered it. I remembered everything she'd ever told me.

"Jacob." She said my name like she was testing it. "Do you remember the summer you turned eighteen?"

My heart was doing something wrong in my chest. "Yeah."

"You were mowing the lawn. It was hot. You took your shirt off."

I remembered. I remembered her watching from the kitchen window. I remembered the way she'd looked at me when I caught her, not embarrassed, not apologetic. Just looking.

"I remember," I said.

"I think about that summer sometimes." She turned to face me, and the fading light caught her eyes, dark and steady. "More than sometimes."

The creek gurgled. A bird called somewhere in the trees. I could hear Tony's television through the open windows of the house, faint and far away.

"Lisa."

"Don't." She stepped closer. Her hand came up and rested flat against my chest, over my heart, which was pounding hard enough that she must have felt it. "Don't tell me it's wrong. I know it's wrong. I've known it's wrong for eight years."

"Eight years?"

"I was thirty-five when you moved in next door." She laughed, soft and humorless. "You were twelve. I watched you grow up. I watched you become this." Her hand moved, just slightly, fingers curling into the fabric of my shirt. "And I told myself it was nothing. A crush. A phase. But it didn't go away, Jacob. It got worse."

I should have stepped back. Should have said something about Tony, about my mother, about the fact that I was standing in the dark with a married woman twice my age and the only thing I wanted was to kiss her. But I didn't step back. I didn't say anything.

"You're shaking," she said.

"I know."

"Are you scared?"

"No." I swallowed. "Yes. I don't know."

She smiled, and it was different from the smiles she'd given me all evening. Sadder. Hungrier. "I'm not going to do anything tonight. I want you to know that. I'm not going to kiss you. I'm not going to touch you again. I just wanted you to know."

"Know what?"

"That I've been waiting. That I'll keep waiting. For as long as it takes."

She dropped her hand and stepped back, and the space between us felt like a wound. The crickets were loud now, and somewhere in the house Tony laughed at something on TV.

"I should go home," I said.

"Yes."

I turned and walked back up the path, through the gap in the hedge, into my mother's kitchen where the light was bright and the air smelled like lemon polish. I stood at the sink and drank a glass of water and tried to remember how to breathe.

Through the window, I could see Lisa's silhouette in her kitchen. She was washing dishes. Tony appeared behind her, wrapped his arms around her waist, kissed her neck. She leaned into him, smiled at him, and I watched her hand come up to pat his cheek.

Then she looked out the window. At me.

And she didn't look away.