Finding Midnight Read Free Page B

an old bat,” Tori said. “I mean, the
dogmobile is not a glamorous ride but it’s not like she keeps up
the place.”
    “I know, right? But in all fairness, it is
her house and I don’t mind, especially if this other gate is closer
to the cottage and I don’t have to walk through the graveyard every
night when I come home.”
    “But that’s the best part about your place,”
Tori exclaimed.
    Summer rolled her eyes as she picked up her
leftover wrappers, napkin and paper bag and then they started back
towards the clinic.

 
     
    Chapter 3
     
    With the days stretching longer as the
summer solstice approached, Summer found she had more daylight to
play with and took full advantage to start in on her obligation to
Ms. Midnight.
    Summer pulled the better part of the weeds
that had taken over the garden strangling the herbs and flowers.
Given her affinity for all things herbal, she was able to discern
the weeds from the plants, and with the omission of the dense
tentacles of wayward creepers and stems, a pattern started to
emerge beneath the chaos of plants. A pathway of crushed slate in
blue-gray lay under a crushed gray-white granite path in some
places and over in others, like two ribbons forming a Celtic knot,
defining specific areas of the garden. A square within a circle
joined together by the interlacing, never-ending ribbon of pathways
to form four marquis shapes that pointed to the four points of a
compass.
    The garden measured fifteen feet by fifteen
feet (roughly) and approximately twenty-one feet diagonally. Summer
drew out the pattern on a piece of paper, trying to keep it to
half-inch scale equaling one foot so it fit nicely on a regular
sheet of graph paper.
    The plants she found under the weeds she
carefully examined, clipping any existing dried flowers and
depositing them into handmade transparent vellum envelopes with a
sticky note. She also tied a different colored piece of ribbon or
yarn to the plant she took the sample from and put a small piece of
it in the envelope. On a sticky note she wrote any distinguishing
characteristics of the plant or what she thought it might be. After
one week she had so many notes, envelopes, and sticky notes, she
had to buy a binder to hold it all.
    This became a nightly ritual—coming home
from work, working in the garden and then sitting in an old beat-up
lounge chair she found in the potting shed, researching and making
tons of notes from botanical books she borrowed from the library,
the gardening magazines that littered Paws and Whiskers’s lobby and
bookmarking sites on the internet. Once she discovered what plants
she had, she’d note them in her binder. To Summer it was
relaxing—like putting a jigsaw puzzle together and deciphering some
kind of mystery.
    However, with relaxing came the
disturbing—peering out the second-story window of the deteriorating
old mansion—old Ms. Midnight. She’d leer at Summer and watch every
move she made in the garden. Her short silver hair glowing in the
orange light of the evening made her look much like a
jack-o-lantern. A raised eyebrow over one bugged eye and her other
squinty eye made her look perpetually displeased. It didn’t help
that her arms were always crossed under a shawl or wrap and her
thin lips were incessantly two taut lines of unhappiness.
    The first couple of nights it bothered
Summer to have the unhappy looking Ms. Midnight overseeing
everything she did. She tried to wave hello to her, even waved her
down inviting her outside to talk with her, but the woman’s
vexation was steadfast. She seldom even moved; only her facial
expression changed from disgruntlement to annoyance, then back
again.
    Summer wondered if Ms. Midnight might be
related to the Reverend Mother at the orphanage—they had a similar
kinship for disapproving faces—Summer laughed as she thought of the
likeness of the two women.
    Summer learned to ignore the “evil eye” of
Ms. Midnight and, to some extent, took comfort in the