The Garden: Part Three (special preview)

The first time I met her, I had been working as her father’s lab assistant. I remember seeing this flash of red hair before I saw the vixen like qualities of her face. She looked at me with those sharp green eyes and I was eviscerated by just a glance. She saw through me, saw I was just some doormat her father used. She had been the first to tell me I was better.

I never expected a girl like her to even bat an eyelash at me. I already had a girlfriend I liked, but Esther stole my attention easily. From what I had been told by her father, Esther was a bad seed. She had been in and out of trouble her whole life. Her parents had sent her to reform school after reform school, but her will had always won out in the end. Her father would say she was an extremely intelligent girl but she was plagued with the need for more.

I didn’t know what that was like, all I knew was that, occasionally, Esther would play assistant for her father from time to time, although she knew he only did it to keep her occupied. She would sit at the front desk to his office, doing nothing yet everything at the same time. I once saw her painting her nails and, for some reason, it was the most beautiful scene to me. She looked at me and smiled, and asked me to blow on her nails to make them dry.

She started claiming my attention more and more after that. When her father wasn’t in the lab, she would beckon me to her. We not so much as dated in the beginning as she did fuck my brains out. She was wild and passionate, and I was just the happy fellow she chose. I never expected it to last, I figured she would grow bored with me eventually. I figured I would just marry my girlfriend and have the memory of Esther to comfort me on boring nights. But one day, she showed up at my place, we made dinner, kissed and, when I took her to bed, it was slow and heated. We didn’t need to rush, we took our time, we made love. I knew I loved her, but I think it was going to take her time to accept she loved me. She wasn’t used to such a thing, but I was willing to wait for my wild child. I left my girlfriend to be with Esther.

Anytime she came to stay with me during our courtship, she was always in the nude. I had the sense that this is how Jane felt while studying Tarzan. This primal, earthly being who had no shame or qualms about their life, strutting around happily in front of their prim and proper lover. She loved to sunbathe, but more than that she loved the small garden she had started in my apartment. She had a small trove of potted plants, a box on the windowsill. There was nothing she loved more than her plants.

“Thurston,” she cooed to me one night after we made love. “Should we ever get a home together, will you let me have a garden?”

“What sort of question is that?” I chuckled. I was pliable and lazy from our sweaty efforts. She always knew to strike when I was in this state. She would have me make promises, and I would always willingly agree.

“I don’t need anything else, Thurston.” Her fingers slipped through my chest hair and the long painted nails scraped down my skin. “Just you and a garden. I don’t need a diamond ring. I don’t need children.” She kissed my shoulder and neck. “I want a big one too.”

“I know you like things big,” I teased.

She giggled, kissing my skin more and more, her lips parting ever so slightly until they were open and she was biting me. “All I have ever wanted was a huge garden, one I could lose myself in.”

“We’ll have to find a yard rather than a house,” I chuckled.

“That’s fine.” Esther looked at me with sweetness in her eyes. After all, she’d just won her way. “We can live in a tent.”

We soon got married, nothing special, mind you, just a quick affair at the courthouse. Her parents and my parents never approved, so we eloped. I had always wanted a big wedding, but Esther said the wedding wasn’t the important part, just the marriage. We took my savings and began house hunting. Esther’s stipulations remained that a massive yard was the key to her happy home. Considering that marrying Esther terminated my employment with her father, I was stuck job hunting while Esther hunted for a house.

Eventually, one day, Esther came home victorious. She told me she found a place with a massive backyard, but the house would need extensive repairs. I agreed to see it, but before I knew it, I was on a boat. It took us to an island surrounded by fog and a huge stone lighthouse that seemed to hover in the mist. 

The town on the island was small. It was mainly a fishing community but was slowly transforming into a tourist spot. I figured there was a small house somewhere in the town itself that Esther was taking me to, but no. We took a car up a steep hill then through a long dark cave.

I saw a mansion on the cliffside, but I thought that surely there must be something else nearby. To my shock, we pulled up in front of the mansion. It was dilapidated and abandoned. No one was sure what happened to the original owners. It had become a sort of urban legend for the locals. Some say the owners were murdered and buried all over the grounds. Others said they had drowned at sea. 

Esther was enamored with the place, though, not the mansion, but the backyard that stretched on and on forever. It turned into forest then led into the backside of town, but if we bought it, it would all be ours. I had no idea how we would afford such a place. If the property wasn’t expensive, the house would be just to repair.