Rainshadow Road (Friday Harbor #2)(28)

As his hand hovered near the cane growth at the top of the plant, the leaves moved toward him visibly.

Sam’s affinity for growing things had revealed itself in childhood when he’d worked in a neighbor’s garden.

Fred and Mary Harbison had been an elderly childless couple that had lived in the neighborhood. When Sam was about ten, he had been playing with a boomerang he’d gotten as a birthday present, and it had gone through their living room window.

Fred had hobbled outside. His form had been as tall and gnarled as a Garry Oak tree, but there was an innate kindness in his stern, homely face. “Don’t run off,” he had said, as Sam had prepared to bolt. And Sam had stayed, staring at him with wary fascination.

“You can have your toy back,” Fred had informed him, “soon as you do some chores to help pay for that window. To start with, Mrs. Harbison needs some weeding done in her garden.”

Sam had instantly liked Mary, who was as short and round as her husband was tall and gangly. After she had shown him which sprouting green plants were weeds, and which were the flowers, Sam had set to work.

As he had knelt and pulled weeds and dug holes for bulbs and seedlings, he had felt as if the plants were communicating with him, telling him in their wordless way what they needed. Without even asking for permission, Sam had gotten a small spade from the Harbisons’ toolshed and had replanted primulas where they would get more sun, and had put the larkspur and Shasta daisy seedlings in different parts of the garden than Mary had told him to.

After that Sam had gone to the Harbisons’ house nearly every day after school, even after Fred had given back the boomerang. While Sam did his homework at their kitchen table, Mary always gave him a glass of cold milk and a stack of white salted crackers. She had let him pore through her books on gardening, and had provided whatever he told her the soil needed … kelp and seed meal, crushed eggshells, lime and dolomite, even fish heads left over from the market. As a result of Sam’s labors, the garden had burst with flowers and lavish colors, until people stopped their cars on the road to admire it.

“Why, Sam,” Mary had said in pleasure, her face soft and wrinkly-smiled in a way he had loved, “you have a green thumb.”

But Sam had known it was more than that. Somehow he and the garden had become attuned to each other. And he had become aware, as few people were, that the entire world was sentient and alive. He knew instinctively which seeds to plant when the moon waned, and which to plant when it rose. He knew without being told how much water and sun the plants needed, what to add to the soil, how to get rid of fungus with a soap-and-water spray, how to control the aphid population by planting marigolds.

Sam had started a vegetable garden for Mary in back of the house, and it had produced fat, flavorful produce and all kinds of herbs. He had intuited that the squash liked to be planted next to the cucumbers, and that the beans liked the celery but didn’t want to be near the onions, and at all costs never plant the cauliflower next to the tomatoes. As Sam tended the plants, bees never stung him and flies never bothered him, and the trees extended their branches as far as they could to keep him shaded.

It was Mary who had encouraged Sam to dream of owning a vineyard one day. “Wine isn’t about drinking,” she had told him. “Wine is about living and loving.”

Deep in thought, Sam went to the corner of the vineyard, to check on a vine unlike all the others. It was large and gnarled, alive but not flourishing. No fruit, only tightly closed buds. Despite Sam’s best efforts, he hadn’t yet discovered how to make it thrive. And there was no silent communication, no sense of what it needed … just blankness.

When Sam had first bought the property at Rainshadow Road and walked the perimeters, he had found the vine growing wild on an easement. It looked like the kind of European vinifera vine that had been brought to the New World by colonists … but it couldn’t have been. All the vinifera had been wiped out by unfamiliar insects, disease, and weather. The French had developed hybrids with native species that produced fruit without needing to be grafted onto disease-resistant rootstock. Maybe this vine was one of those antique hybrids. But it didn’t resemble anything Sam had encountered or read about before. So far no one else had been able to identify it, not even a specialist who’d been studying the photos and samples that Sam had sent.

“How can I help?” Sam murmured, passing his hand gently across the large, flat leaves. “What’s your secret?”

Usually he could feel the energy in the soil and roots, as well as the signals of what was needed; a change in temperature, humidity, light, or nutrients. But the vine remained silent, in trauma, impervious to Sam’s presence.

Leaving the vineyard, Sam headed to the kitchen to make lunch. He pulled a jug of milk and a wedge of cheese from the fridge. While he was in the middle of assembling grilled cheese sandwiches, the doorbell rang.

The visitor was Kevin Pearson, whom Sam hadn’t seen in a couple of years. They weren’t friends, but they had both grown up on the island, which had made it impossible to avoid each other. Kevin had always been good-looking and popular, a jock who had developed earlier than everyone else and had gotten the best girls.

Sam, by contrast, had had all the physical substance of a string bean, and had walked around with his nose in the latest issue of Popular Science or a Tolkien novel. He had grown up being his father’s least favorite son, the geeky middle one who preferred to study bivalves, mud shrimp, and polychaetes left behind in tidal pools at False Bay. He’d been competent at sports, but he had never enjoyed them the way Mark had, or approached them with the vicious energy that Alex had.