It took her a long time to go back to church. She blamed God for what happened. She blamed the Charlotte- Mecklenburg Police Department for not knowing how dangerous the situation was. She was furious and totally lost.
Then she walked out into the yard they’d both loved one morning and decided to start the garden shop they’d always talked about. It took every penny she could borrow and scrape together, including John’s entire pension, to get the shop going. But once it was there, she realized it was the balm her soul needed. When she was there, she was with John.
But Darmus and Luther hadn’t come to any place like that after Rebecca died. They still both grieved for her. Darmus kept going with his classes at UNC-Charlotte where he taught botany, and his Feed America group continued to grow. Luther developed cancer.
Now Darmus was on the verge of losing his brother, too. She didn’t want to know how that would affect him.
On impulse, she took out her cell phone and called Darmus. She reached his voice mail. Despite the fact that he was a very public figure, Darmus was still a very private man. There were many times when he went for weeks without checking his messages or answering his phone to get away from everything. Sometimes it was very frustrating.
He was probably in the Community Garden. It was part of the Feed America plan, and the first garden for the masses the city of Charlotte ever had. Feed America was trying to put a large garden in every city from Richmond to New Delhi. Darmus’s principle was that no one should ever go hungry on the planet. She liked the concept, but putting it into practice had been mind numbing for him.
Peggy and her students from Queens University had helped him with the garden. They were there almost every day, planting and tilling. In all, they’d planted an acre of squash, corn, potatoes, strawberries, and peppers. They planted apple trees and blueberry bushes. All of the seed and equipment had been donated to the project from area garden suppliers. All the work had been done by volunteer groups from garden clubs, students, Scouts, and other individuals.
It had been a few days since she’d seen Darmus there, but he was usually at the garden early in the morning, and she’d been going later in the day. She decided to surprise him with some of the tubers she was bringing back. He loved native plants that had been in the region since before 1900. He’d be pleased and surprised to find some already planted in his garden when he came home.
Then she could swing by her garden shop, the Potting Shed, work for a few hours, post exam scores at the university, and finally go back to the Potting Shed and close up for the night. The pace of
She was in the process of deciding if she should give up her position at Queens University. She’d only gone back after John’s death because she was heavily in debt and wasn’t sure if the Potting Shed could support itself.
But the little shop was thriving and needing more and more of her time. She had a wonderful group of students working for her, but it was getting harder to do a good job at everything. She was spread too thin, and even though she was afraid to take the plunge, she knew she was going to have to give something up to remain sane.
She’d pretty well decided it was going to be teaching. She was terrified, but there was no other answer. She could still do her group lectures about toxic plants, and the Charlotte Police Department had recently offered her an on-call position as a forensic botanist. Neither one of those would take up as much time as teaching several classes a day, but they would provide extra money.
But part of her hated to give up teaching. Darmus had certainly given her a hard time about it. To him, there was no greater application of learning than to teach. The idea that she would choose a garden shop over her professorship drove him crazy.
But Peggy knew he didn’t understand why the Potting Shed was so important to her. He’d only been married once, and that was for a very short time. She couldn’t explain how the pain of John’s death went away when she was puttering around the shop. And not everyone could be totally dedicated to the betterment of the human race like Darmus. His whole life had been consumed by his mission.
She always wondered what it would have been like if his early marriage hadn’t fallen apart. He’d married her best friend, Rosie, in college. Darmus was happy then. But the marriage fell apart quickly. After it was over, Darmus became obsessed with saving the world. Would he have been as willing to give up his life for his cause if he’d actually
There would never be an answer to that question. Fate had taken him down a different path. She turned her little red truck into Darmus’s driveway. He had a small, pleasant house with a magnificent garden on the north side of Charlotte, near the University of North Carolina at Charlotte where he’d taught for twenty years.
People came from all over the state to study what he grew there. Sometimes he had cabbages the size of basketballs and sweet potatoes the size of potbellied pigs. It was a remarkable accomplishment and a wonderful teaching facility. Darmus never did anything small or anything that couldn’t be used for teaching.
She was surprised to see his Honda FCX, a small, limited-production hydrogen-fuel-cell car, parked in his driveway, but she was happy to find him home. This way he could help plant the tubers, and they could have a good talk.
She wasn’t sure if she was going to tell him about Luther. She’d have to see how he was that day. She might be better off keeping quiet about it for now. He’d had his good and bad days for the last few months. He was distracted and agitated as he tried to make sense of Rebecca’s death and struggled under the mounting pressure to keep Feed America growing.
She’d envied him his green car for a long time before she finally managed to get her little truck converted to electric power. She’d worked on a 1942 Rolls-Royce that had been in her husband’s family, but it was impractical to use. She had to settle for the truck. It was good for the shop and easier to get around in. Insurance and spare parts for the Rolls were astronomical!
Peggy tried to honk the horn to see if Darmus was home. It didn’t make a sound. For some reason, she was having trouble getting it to work. She got out of the truck slowly, stretching out the kink in her back as she did.
Darmus had crippling arthritis in his hands and feet. She didn’t know how he got so much accomplished yet never complained about being in pain. She knew there were times he had to be suffering. He’d actually had to quit teaching for a while because the arthritis was so debilitating. Then he found some wonder herb that allowed him to go back to work. It was the happiest day of his life.
