Breaking Up With Barrett, The English Brothers #1

Chapter 6

Emily's mother was awake when they arrived at noon for the start of visiting hours. As her test results came back throughout the afternoon, it turned out that she didn't need a neurologist, after all, but a cardiologist. Susannah had developed stable Angina, which had caused her to faint. But with rest and proper medication, she should be able to keep it under control, and the doctors had reassured her that her life could go back to normal. She still had a fairly nasty contusion on her forehead from face-planting on the English's stairs, so the doctors had suggested one more night in the hospital.

By the time Emily and her father returned to Haverford, it was almost five o'clock. Even though her father had offered to take her for a BLT at the Haverford Diner, she wanted him to have a home-cooked meal tonight after the anxiety of the last two days, so they stopped at the grocery store on the way home. Emily picked up ground meat and breadcrumbs for meatballs, tomato sauce, spaghetti and everything she needed for a garden salad. Her father popped a loaf of garlic bread in the cart, and Emily grinned at him, relieved when he grinned back.

"I haven't even asked you about your studies, Emmy," said her father as they drove home.

"They're going really well."

"Awfully expensive, PhD at U Penn."

"Don't worry," she said, knowing he felt bad that he wasn't able to help more. But Emily felt lucky. Mr. and Mrs. English had kindly covered the cost of her undergraduate work, so the cost of her PhD would be a fraction of what she would have owed. And yes, she might be eighty before she paid off her student loans, but damn it, there'd be a PhD beside her name when she did. "I'm student teaching and tutoring, plus I pick up, um, odd jobs here and there. Anyway, it's worth it, Dad."

"Never thought I'd have such a brilliant daughter. You're the first Edwards to go to grad school, Emily Faith, and you'll certainly be the first who has the right to call herself a doctor."

"Hey Dad," she said, cocking her head to the side as she asked the familiar question. "Why'd you decide to become a gardener?"

"That old story?" He sighed, but started telling it again because he knew she loved it as much as any bedtime story. "Well, as you know, I grew up here at Haverford Park, just like you. Watched my granddad and my father both tend the grounds, and I guess I knew every inch of this place like the back of my hand by the time I graduated Penn State at twenty-one with a degree in Horticulture Science. But like most twenty-one year-old fools, I decided to turn my back on Haverford Park and make my own way.

"I graduated college, thanked Mr. and Mrs. English very much for the free ride, packed everything I owned in a duffel bag, took the money I'd saved from gardening every summer and flew to London. I spent three months backpacking around Europe—"

"Until you met Mama in a garden in Giverny."

"She was sitting there in a peasant blouse with a long skirt and her wavy blonde hair in a bun held back with an extra paintbrush. I sat down on a bench beside her and without even looking at me, she said she wished she knew someone who could cut back the forsythia that was ruining the view she was trying to paint."

"So you went to the store and came back an hour later with a pair of shears."

He grinned. "Scissors. Barber scissors, Emmy. They were all I could find. I cut that yellow bush into a thing of beauty with barber scissors, and when I returned to Philly that Winter, she was my bride."

"And you came home to Haverford Park."

"Yes, I did. My old Dad was aging by that time, so I started taking over little by little until it all belonged to me."