The First Gardener

by Denise Hildreth Jones

  He walked forward and gave her a kiss. “I promise I won’t be long. You’ll still be watching the Food Network by the time I get back.” Though he knew she wouldn’t. She could fall asleep more quickly than anyone he knew.

  “Yeah, yeah.” She left the bathroom and disappeared into the closet.

  He headed down the hallway toward the stairwell. She was right. The longer he had been here in the governor’s mansion, the more consuming he had let the job become. Now time together was a rare commodity for them. They even had tour groups walking through their home on a regular basis. Virtually their only haven was inside the four walls of their bedroom. And Mackenzie did grant him a lot of grace. He shouldn’t have said that. But the tug of his responsibilities could be so strong.

  He turned the light on in his office and immediately caught sight of a huge stack of papers on his desk. The tug gripped his chest. He stood in the doorway for a moment, trying to resist. But the pressure wouldn’t leave. He really needed to make some headway on that stack.

  He clicked the light off, tiptoed upstairs again, and opened their bedroom door. The light of the television filled the bed and illuminated Mack’s sleeping face.

  He walked to her side, leaned down, and kissed her cheek. “Sorry, babe,” he whispered.

  It would be one o’clock before he came back to bed.

  Chapter 10

  Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium was already considered the mother church of country music when a Californian evangelist named Charles Fuller held a revival there in 1953. After each night’s service he would walk back to his hotel, and on these nightly walks he’d come across the homeless men of Nashville. Most people called them bums back then. Some asked for money, others for a handout. And with each request, another piece of Dr. Fuller’s heart went out to them. When the final offering had been taken up for his revival meetings, he returned all of it to the people of Nashville, asking only that they use it to take care of the homeless men of the city.

  That was the beginning of the Nashville Rescue Mission—an organization that had occupied a special place in Mackenzie’s heart from her first visit as a little girl. By the time she got to high school, she was a regular volunteer. She’d chosen her social work major in college on the basis of her work there and had become one of its most vocal advocates while working for the state. And though she’d quit her social work job after Maddie came along, she’d never quit coming to the mission. She just brought Maddie with her.

  “Baby girl, wait on Mommy.”

  Maddie had jumped out with her two Dollar General bags the minute their car stopped outside the mission’s newly renovated Family Life Center on Rosa Parks Boulevard.

  “I know; it’s not always safe.” Maddie’s words came out with that exasperated tone as if she had heard this warning a hundred times.

  “Yes, that’s exactly right. Let me get your critters.” Mackenzie reached into the trunk and pulled out a sack of stuffed animals. After spending a recent day playing with kids at the shelter, Maddie had decided she wanted to donate some of her toys.

  Mackenzie closed the trunk, and Maddie’s feet danced their way to the front door. The metal doors of the celery-green stucco building opened, and Maddie pranced through the metal detector, throwing her hand up to the glass window as if she did this every day. Mackenzie signed them in, then proceeded through the metal detector herself. They walked together into a green-painted hall filled with vibrant activity.

  “Hello, Maddie,” one of the young workers called out.

  Maddie held up her bags. “I gotcha something, Vanessa.”

  “You got me something for my goody room?” Vanessa’s smooth brown hand patted Maddie’s shoulder.

  “Yep, coloring books and crayons.” She dug her hand through one bag as if she were on a treasure hunt, then looked up quickly. “And stuffed animals too!”

  “Oh my goodness, you have outdone yourself.” Vanessa held out her hand. “Do you want me to take it and put it in the Bright Spaces room?”

  Mackenzie watched indecision play across her daughter’s face. She had enjoyed buying the art materials and picking out which toys to bring, but she wasn’t ready to hand them over. Vanessa noticed too. “I know. How about me and you take it to the room, and you can decide where we should put it.”

  Maddie nodded as if that was the best idea she had heard all day. Mackenzie watched as she and Vanessa headed toward the room where children could play during the day when their mothers were in the dayroom, or at night, while their mothers were making arrangements for a warm place to rest their heads. The Family Life Center served women and children. The men’s shelter was at the Rescue Mission headquarters two miles south. This was the primary reason the shelter had called her earlier about the family who had been evicted—because they didn’t want to have to separate a family.

  Today, for the most part, things were pretty quiet. It was a beautiful August day, so very few women were settled in the dayroom, where many retreated on cold or rainy days in winter or on especially hot summer ones. During daytime hours, women were allowed only in that room, in one of the classrooms, or in the cafeteria to work. They had to vacate the beds in the mornings and couldn’t return until four o’clock, when dinner was served. And they had to attend evening chapel if they wanted a bed, because though the mission fed people, clothed them, and gave them a place to sleep, its primary purpose was to lead them to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

  “Hey, you got here quicker than I thought.” Mackenzie’s best friend Anna breezed through the metal detector, her long blonde hair swinging. Her pink T-shirt was creased by the weight of the taupe leather purse slung across her shoulder.

  “Yeah,” Mackenzie said, “we came straight from school.”

  “So how’s the first week going?”

  Mackenzie made a face. “For Maddie, wonderful. For Mommy—well, I’m surviving.”

  Anna put an arm around her. “I’m proud of you.”

  “What, because I haven’t forced the teacher to let me sit in the classroom all day?”

  Anna’s round blue eyes sparkled as she laughed. “For that, yes, and for being a big girl. I cried all week. Gray said you’ve only cried for two days.”

  “It’s only been two days.”

  Her friend gave her a wink.

  They were interrupted by Maddie’s feet pounding down the hall. “Nana!” she yelled as she launched herself at Anna. She hadn’t been able to pronounce Anna’s name when she was little, so Nana had stuck.

  Anna knelt down and wrapped Maddie in her arms. “Are you ready to go feed some hungry people?” Anna asked.

  “Yep. I brought ’em some toys and colors, and now I’m ready to go deliver their trays.”

  The three of them walked toward the elevator, and Maddie pushed the button to take them to the second-floor cafeteria, the hub of the center’s activity. Almost six hundred meals were served there daily. And the current economic climate meant need for such help was growing.

  In 2009, for the first time in the mission’s history, more men were in the mission’s life-recovery programs because of losing jobs and homes than because of drug or alcohol abuse. Women came to the mission for many of the same reasons, plus the fact that domestic violence increased in difficult times. No hungry person was ever turned away. And for those willing to walk through the life-recovery programs, the mission had a 70 percent success rate in getting them back on their feet and living independently.

  That was a statistic Mackenzie loved to roll out when she recruited volunteers for the mission—and she was a passionate recruiter. In fact, some of her oldest friends were volunteers. She had convinced them to volunteer with her every Tuesday night, and they brought their children to help. From four to five thirty, they would offer each woman and child a meal to feed the body and a smile or a word or a touch that would hopefully feed the soul. Maddie and other young volunteers delivered trays to the women, especially those who had little ones. At last count there we
re fifty children staying at the shelter.

  The smells of dinner were thick inside the cafeteria, which was crowded with round white tables and school cafeteria–type metal chairs with royal-blue backs and seats. Maddie ran to the stockroom and returned with plastic caps for their heads and plastic aprons. Once dressed for the evening, they went to work.

  “Cleo, you look beautiful,” Mackenzie said as she scooped some mashed potatoes for a young woman.

  “Thank you, Miz Mackenzie.” Cleo looked out through the stringy red hair that fell over her eyes.

  “Maddie is going to want to play with your little one for a while tonight before we leave. Is that all right?”

  Cleo kept her head down, but she smiled softly. “It’s fine.”

  “Wonderful! I can’t have her here long because she just started kindergarten. But I know she won’t want to rush home.”

  Cleo moved down the line with a quick nod of her head.

  For the next hour and a half, women filtered through the cafeteria. Mackenzie made conversation while she dished out the mashed potatoes. Maddie kept busy delivering trays and talking to babies. When the last woman had been served, they helped a little with cleanup, then turned in their hats and aprons and prepared to leave.

  They ran into their friend Harrison Wheeler at the elevator as they were leaving. “Maddie, how cute do you look tonight?”

  “Harry!” Maddie’s hands shot up.

  The young man shifted his bulky duffel bag and gave her a fist bump. “I bet you were a big help in the dining room tonight.”

  “I put out twenty trays.”

  “Twenty trays? Oh my goodness, that is amazing. I should bring you back in the kitchen to cook next time. Whoops, here’s our elevator.”

  Harrison had been volunteering in the center’s kitchen for about a year now. His mother had gone through a life-recovery program a few years back and now worked in the mission’s corporate office. Her son was serving the place that had saved his mother’s life.

  On the ride down, Mackenzie heard a noise coming from Harrison’s duffel bag. Maddie obviously heard it too because she popped her head around Harrison. Her little nose crinkled as she tried to peer right through the duffel’s mesh sides. “What’s in your bag?”

  He shifted the bag to another shoulder and held it close to his side. “Nothing.” They all heard the sound again.

  The door to the elevator opened, and Maddie followed Harrison out, reaching for the bag. He grabbed her hand. “Wait. I’ll get in trouble if you open that bag.”

  He hurried out the door and into the parking lot. Maddie burst out the door behind him and Mackenzie followed close behind. From the sounds coming from the bag, Mackenzie was pretty sure what was in there. And she knew it was not anything she wanted or Maddie needed.

  “Maddie, if Harrison has asked you not to open his bag, you need to leave it alone.”

  Maddie turned her perplexed face to her mother. “Mommy . . .”

  “Don’t whine, Maddie.”

  “But why would Harry bring something in here to get him in trouble?”

  She gave Harrison the look.

  “Well,” he said, “I couldn’t keep it at home, or I would have gotten in trouble with my landlady.”

  “You got all kinds of troubles,” Maddie surmised.

  Harrison laughed. He looked around the parking lot, then back at Maddie, and curled his finger at her. They followed him to his car, where he raised the trunk, setting the duffel bag on the edge. Then he pulled the zipper back, and two little furry heads popped out.

  “Puppies!” Maddie clapped her hands, and her feet started to dance wildly. “Mommy, puppies!”

  Mackenzie sighed. She’d been waging the puppy battle for the last year. She didn’t think Maddie needed a puppy until she could take care of it herself.

  “Harry, can I have one? You got two!”

  Harrison looked nervously at Mackenzie, who was shaking her head emphatically. “Uh, I’m thinking I probably need to keep both of them. I actually got one for my girlfriend because she’s been dying to get a dog, and the other one is for my sister.”

  Maddie knelt down and picked up the one that had already halfway clawed its way out of the bag. “But what if you went and got another one for your sister?” She nuzzled into its fur and started giggling when it kissed her nose. “Look, Mommy. It loves me already.”

  “You’re easy to love, baby. But those are Harrison’s puppies, so we can’t take them.”

  “Well, I would—”

  “We can’t take them.”

  The other puppy finally jumped out of the bag and walked over to sniff Maddie’s nose. “It loves me too, Mommy!” Maddie scooped it up as well.

  Mackenzie slowly moved toward Harrison’s trunk. She couldn’t help it. The little things were so dang cute. “What kind are they?”

  One jumped from Maddie’s arms into the trunk and walked toward Mackenzie. She reluctantly scooped it up, inhaling its sweet puppy breath. Puppy breath was the aroma that made even smart people lose their scruples.

  “They’re shih tzus. My girlfriend thinks they’re the cutest dogs she’s ever seen. Sweet, too. They love everybody.”

  Maddie spoke up. “But me mostest.”

  “Oh yes, absolutely. You mostest.”

  Mackenzie laughed when the one she was holding all but stuck its tongue up her nose. And within a few minutes, she and Maddie and their new shih tzu Sophie were on their way home. Gray was going to kill her, but she didn’t care. And once he got a whiff of that puppy breath, he wouldn’t care either.

  Gray did care. He cared more than she had thought.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me, Mack. As if either of us has time for a puppy. Maddie can’t even pick up her clothes off the floor, much less take care of a dog. And you paid three hundred dollars for that thing?” he said as they walked toward their bedroom after tucking Maddie in bed.

  Mackenzie nuzzled her nose against Sophie’s soft fur. The puppy turned like a contortionist so it could lick her face. “Gray, you’re being ridiculous.” She laughed. “Here, let her kiss you.” She held Sophie out toward him. “You’ll fall in love with her, I promise.”

  He held up his hand. “I am not letting a dog lick me in the face. And we should have talked about this.”

  She pulled Sophie back against her. “Okay. Okay. We should have talked about this. But I couldn’t resist. She’s so cute. And she loves Maddie.”

  “I’m being serious, Mack. You should have talked to me. Puppies are a huge responsibility.”

  “Good grief. It’s just a dog, Gray. And I know a thing or two about responsibility.”

  He shook his head. “It’s just one more thing right now, Mack. One more thing on top of an out-of-control budget and all these issues with my dad and us trying to have another baby. It’s not right for you to just bring a dog home without talking to me.”

  She stalked past him and marched toward the bathroom, where she set Sophie down on the floor.

  “Did you even hear me, Mack?”

  She crossed over to the closet and pulled a pair of pajamas from one of her drawers. There would be no sexy nightgown tonight. “No. Honestly, I didn’t hear a word you just said because I have no desire to talk to you when you’re being perfectly unreasonable.”

  He stepped to the other side of the massive bank of drawers that separated their sides of the closet and leaned over it so his face would be close to hers. “I said, it’s one more thing. I’m buried in problems right now, Mack, and I don’t need a dog on top of it all.”

  She looked up into blue eyes that were more tired than angry. And this time she heard him. Really heard him. She laid the pajama pants on top of the cabinet and walked around it toward him. “This isn’t about a puppy, Gray. What happened today?”

  He shook his head. Her arms circled his waist. He let out a heavy sigh and his shoulders dropped. She knew the weight he had to carry outside these four walls, but she was grateful every time
he could let down his guard and be just Gray inside her arms.

  “They called from the nursing home again.”

  “Again?”

  “It’s just getting so much worse. He doesn’t know me anymore, Mack. My own father doesn’t even know my name.”

  There it was. She saw the hurt in his eyes and, for a moment, the humanity of this man whom even she sometimes thought superhuman. He could seemingly handle the world and then ask if anyone needed anything else. But he had his limits.

  She wrapped her arms tighter around him. “Think we could get my mom to forget our address?”

  He popped her on her arm, but a brief smile escaped. “Mack, I’m serious.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. But really, Gray, let me help you with him. I’ll meet with your dad’s doctors. I can take some of this off you if you’d let me.”

  “Thanks, babe. But I keep thinking I’ll go in there and it just might be the day he recognizes me, that one moment he remembers who I am. And I don’t know if I might go in one day and he’ll be gone. I don’t want to miss either of those moments.”

  “I hear you,” she said. “Just promise me you’ll let me know if I can help.”

  He wrapped his arms around her, then kissed her on the head. “I promise I—ow!”

  She looked down to see Sophie chewing on Gray’s foot. He gently shook her off. “How does something so little have such sharp teeth?”

  She giggled, then bent and scooped Sophie up. “Want to let her sleep with us?”

  His words came out quick and clear. “Absolutely not.”

  Chapter 11

  “I swear, Mack, if this thing pees on my shoes one more time, she’s going outside and Jeremiah can use her as a watering can!” Gray heard Mack giggling from the bathroom.