Drawn from Life by Sarah P. Blanchard

Drawn from Life by Sarah P. Blanchard

Author:Sarah P. Blanchard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sarah Blanchard


Twenty-Three

The restoration of the garden was a marvel. One phone call from Felicia mobilized an army of volunteers that included her orthodontist husband, his six-foot-tall son, and a ten-year-old grand-niece in braces and Marley hair. Plus all of her art gallery volunteers, most of the high school football team, and several Boy Scouts.

Emma uploaded the videos to the sheriff department’s file server, then joined the work crew. They scrubbed and replaced, or flipped over, all of the paint-smeared flagstones. Removed the smashed birdbath and a cracked concrete bench, pruned damaged shrubs, and spread yards of dark brown mulch donated by the local garden center. On the crimson-stained trunk of a weeping cherry tree, one of Felicia’s plein aire painters used a fine camel hair brush to apply custom-mixed paint in shades of umber and gray. Someone with a pickup dropped off dozens of potted chrysanthemums to disguise the trampled beds of lavender and coreopsis.

When Simon and his husband Robert arrived in their Sunday morning cycling gear, Felicia introduced them to a beefy high school halfback and put the trio in charge of setting up the new fountain she’d purchased.

“On sale,” she announced proudly as they unloaded four big stone slabs from the back of her Suburban. “They gave me an even bigger discount when I explained what happened. Isn’t it fantastic? It’s solar-powered, no plumbing or wires. A total upgrade from that cheesy little birdbath. We always wanted a water feature, right?”

“Where’s Chaz?” Jonah asked. “We need to get those gates out of sight.”

“I hope he’s sleeping,” Felicia said. “He worked last night at Aldi’s, remember? Today’s his day off. Don’t bother him, my son Sean can help.”

They hid the twisted iron gates behind the chicken coop. Jonah made temporary repairs to the gate posts by facing the splintered wood with one-by-six trim boards, then sanded the edges and stained everything in dark walnut.

Emma’s task was to help Harry with sculpture repairs. Which meant keeping him supplied with water and keeping everyone else at arms’ length. She’d heard Felicia’s stern warning to the younger volunteers: “That’s one annoyed artist and he’s got a foul mouth. Stay scarce.”

Harry had brought a wheelbarrow full of equipment and a side load of anger that had him muttering epithets and slamming his tools down into the new mulch. Emma was planning to stay back out of view, but once he’d pulled on gloves and goggles he asked her to sit nearby. He told her he worked better with an audience.

“Basically, once I’ve got the fucking paint off I’ll use the same fucking tools to fix it that I used to create it. The contours will be different—she’ll be a little trimmer, see?—because I’ve got to take down the surface in so many places. But the goddamn asshole who did this will not have the satisfaction of fucking up my work.”

He began by applying liquid stripper with a toothbrush to remove the paint, wiping it off with rags soaked in mineral spirits. Next, he wet-sanded the planes and crevices by hand with successively finer grit papers.



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