Chapter One

ALL ABOUT EVIE

Man has his will—but woman has her way.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

When she was young—and she seemed always to be young—Evelyn Whitebloom was convinced her father's garden covered the whole earth. If there were boundaries, she couldn't see them. Only endless garden plots carved into a thick carpet of fescue so green that on a windwhipped day in Savannah, when the humidity lifted like a thick curtain, the intense hue of the lawn stung her pale blue eyes to the point of tears.

    It was the only time she cried, and even then it wasn't truly weeping. Whatever for? Her life was too heavenly for anything but the brightest of smiles.

    Her first memories were of walking with her father through row after row of mulberry trees covered with purplish black fruit. In no time she would be nose-to-chin purple, which delighted her father immensely. Although their home was one of the most venerable in the Historic District, where the wide expanse of Forsyth Park served as their front lawn, it was here in the garden, surrounded by her father's floral handiwork, that Evelyn spent most of her waking hours.

    The Garden—he said it as if it were on the Register and needed capitalizing—was her father's pride and joy, eclipsed only by his love for his daughter. He demonstrated his love in infinite ways, not the least of which was his concern for her welfare.

    "You may do this and this but not that," he often commanded. Evelyn teased her father that he treated her with such ca