In the Light of the Garden: A Novel

by Heather Burch

  Ellen’s grip loosened, but only marginally. The words stung. There was a thread of truth there; she knew there had to be from the way each phrase cut jagged slashes in her heart.

  “You have to find happiness in who you are, Mom. Not in what money can provide you.”

  Blackness crept over her, a cloak destined to swallow her. Was it true? Her mind rushed to defend. No. She shook her head. “No, Charity. Everything I did, I did for us. I was so young when I got pregnant with you, and all I ever wanted was to have a good life for you.”

  Charity’s hands shot up. “Stop it. Just stop it, Mother. It’s always been about what was best for Ellen Marie Baxter. For heaven’s sake, I care more about what happens to Daisy than you ever cared about me. And she’s not even my daughter. Not even my family at all.”

  “You don’t think of me as family?” Daisy’s voice drifted into the parlor from where she stood at the doorway.

  Oh no. Charity turned to go to Daisy, whose face was streaked like she’d been crying, but Ellen stepped in front of her.

  “You’re not family,” Ellen said. “However, you seem to be quite important to her. In all her life, Charity never could resist strays.”

  Charity shoved her mother out of the way. “Daisy, that’s not true. What I said—”

  Behind them, Ellen spoke. “What she said was that she cares more about you than she does me, and I’m her own mother.”

  Charity angled for a moment to face Ellen. “Do you ever stop?”

  Ellen’s shoulder tipped.

  Charity gripped Daisy’s arms. They were cold to the touch, she must have been outside. “Daisy, I do care. What you heard me say . . . it’s not what I meant.”

  Daisy jerked a nod.

  Charity scanned her eyes. There was a detached deadness in them. Something she hadn’t seen for so many weeks.

  “I’m tired.” Daisy gently tugged from Charity’s grasp. “I’m going to bed.”

  “Honey, have you been crying?” Charity reached up, but Daisy recoiled.

  “I’m fine,” Daisy said. “We can talk about it tomorrow.”

  She was walking away and had made it to the foyer when Charity marched over to her and grabbed her in a bear hug. Daisy remained stiff. Charity dropped a kiss on the side of Daisy’s head. “You promise we will?”

  “Sure. I swear.” She disappeared up the stairs, and Charity noticed there was still a handful of party-goers working their way to the front door.

  Charity returned to the parlor and turned her anger on her mother. “How could you? You know what that child’s been through.”

  Ellen inspected her fingernails. “She’s tough.”

  Charity shook her head. “I’m not giving you a dime, Mother. I know Gramps left you a trust that is enough for a single woman to live on, plus the family home in Atlanta. You have a place to live and money. If you want more, you’ll have to sue me for it.”

  Charity left her mother in the parlor and went out to see the last of the party-goers home. She should have known this would happen. Life was messy and not confronting issues only made them fester. But the money hadn’t been an issue until her mother’s rich doctor threw her out.

  Dalton came out of the kitchen just as the two sisters, Paulette and Agnes—if Charity had their names right—were slipping on fur shawls. The shawls made the two overdressed, even for the ball.

  “You OK?” Dalton’s hand landed on the small of her back. His touch was warming, and it brought the first stream of peace.

  She closed her eyes and drank him in. “Yes. Problem with Mom and with Daisy.” She leaned closer to him. “Can anything else go wrong tonight?”

  He offered a half smile that said more than words, and it melted a piece of her heart. It was a wink to an inside joke. It was a secret kept safe and locked away between two people who shared more than common space. For some reason, she found it inexplicably difficult not to reach up with her fingertips and capture that smile. To touch his cheek. To allow him to continue touching her soul where his thumb made tiny circles at the base of her spine.

  Without warning, Dalton leaned closer, and closer still, until his lips brushed over hers. Lightning zinged into her stomach, and heat rushed to her cheeks. She tried to draw a breath, but there was nothing there, no oxygen, no air. Just Dalton. Green eyes, soft lips, warm skin. His chest rose and fell, hers caved. A scent like maple filled the space between them. Calming, sweet. Home.

  When he moved a few millimeters away from her, the world spun back into view. There were the remnants of party sounds around them, hushed tones, the tinkling of the last few glasses as the cleanup crew worked its way around the room, Dalton breathing.

  Dalton swallowed and raked a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”

  Was he really apologizing? For what? Shoving her down a roller coaster hill without warning? For branding her mouth with his own, something she’d surely think about long after the last guest left, and the last wine glass was emptied. “I’m glad you did it.” There. It was out in the open, no backpedaling now. Her face creaked into a smile.

  But his expression saddened, the green in his eyes liquefying. “I shouldn’t have. It won’t happen again.”

  And just like that, her Cinderella moment faded away. Near the front door, the two sisters—bathed in fur—peered at them with great interest. Charity cleared her throat and stiffened, though Dalton continued to stand beside her.

  With him at her side, Charity said good-bye to Jeanna and Emily Rudd and then watched as they stepped out into the cool evening, where the breeze off the bay grabbed the hems of their gowns. Next in line were the two sisters. They were the last. Charity thanked them for coming and prayed that saying good-bye to Dalton next wouldn’t be laden with awkwardness.

  Agnes took her hand and shook it. Her crepe skin moved beneath Charity’s touch. “And where is your uncle Harold? I’d love to say good-bye to him.” The woman looked past Charity as if searching, but the room was empty.

  “I guess he’s gone up to bed.” Charity hadn’t seen him since the last song, when he’d spun a laughing Louise around the room. Her heart warmed, thinking of the happiness her uncle had found with Louise.

  “Eleven forty-five. Past our bedtime as well,” Paulette added. “By the way, dear. We just wanted to let you know it’s marvelously big of you to allow Harold to be here.”

  Charity cast a glance at Dalton. He lifted and dropped his shoulders in an I don’t know gesture.

  “After what happened and all—”

  The first threads of panic entered Charity’s system by way of her ears. Sometimes, poison came in tiny bottles with skull-and-crossbones markings; sometimes it came in uncontrolled tongues. She didn’t know what the sisters had to say, but already, she knew they were champing at the bit to get it out. “What happened?”

  “The affair, dear.” Agnes didn’t bother to lower her voice.

  Charity tried to draw a breath. “Affair?”

  “Harold and your grandmother. Goodness, it must have been twenty years ago.” Agnes turned to Paulette. “How long ago did Marilyn die?”

  Dalton’s hand stiffened against her back. His free one reached to open the front door; obviously he thought it best to get rid of these women before more damage was done, but Charity stopped him. “Do you mean when Gram and Harold were young? Kids?” She knew they didn’t. The words twenty years ago and when did Marilyn die had been used. Fear raced through her, numbness infusing her joints.

  Agnes leaned forward, hands resting on the fox carcass she wore as if perhaps she’d hunted the thing herself and then ripped its throat out with her teeth. “Kids? Heavens no. It was quite the island scandal, I must say. Everyone here loved George. How she could have done that was beyond all of us.” Her brows rose. “But I guess in the end, she couldn’t live with it, either.”

  Charity’s heart pounded in her chest, but it was a cavern, and her blood pumped through it only with great effort.

&
nbsp; Paulette placed a thin hand to her breastbone. “Poor dear. George was never the same after.”

  Agnes turned to her sister. “Well, you wouldn’t be. Watching your spouse leap off a balcony to her death.”

  Charity gasped. Gramps was there? He saw her? How had that bit of information been kept from her? Surely Emily Rudd knew. Charity’s mind returned to that summer so long ago when she’d come to visit. She knew something, something awful, had happened that summer when she was eleven. Gram hadn’t been herself, though whenever Charity asked her, she’d don a smile and tell her everything was just fine. She’d been distant with Gramps, too. All the summers before, Charity would fall asleep hearing the murmurs of her grandparents in the kitchen below. But not that year. Often, Gram would go up to bed even before Charity. And Charity fell asleep each night with only the silence of the house and the sound of the Gulf slipping through her open window.

  “Anyway, dear.” Agnes blinked, a smile as wide as an animal trap on her face. “We think you’re a very big person to allow Harold to be here at all after what he’s cost you. Oh dear, look at the time. Almost midnight.”

  The sisters left. Dalton faced Charity.

  Harold. Harold was here, and she’d let him permeate her life and her world. She’d known he was harboring a secret, but this? This? All these years she’d blamed herself and the weeping tree for her gram’s death. And all these years he’d known who was really to blame. “It’s his fault.” The words were breathy. It was all she could get out with the emotions swirling through her system.

  “Charity,” Dalton said, placing a hand on her arm. “We don’t know what really happened.”

  She huffed. “Don’t we? My grandfather hadn’t spoken to his brother for twenty years. Then when he dies, suddenly Harold shows up?” Her stomach soured. The hors d’oeuvres she’d eaten over the course of the night roiled in her gut. She was going to vomit. “I’ve been so stupid.”

  Dalton led her toward the parlor just as Harold appeared at the base of the stairs.

  Harold smiled and hooked a thumb behind him. “I’m headed out and running late. Been talking to Daisy. I have to go meet Louise, but will ya’ll keep an eye on the girl? She doesn’t seem OK.”

  Charity clamped her teeth together to keep from screaming at him. She tried to concentrate on her breathing lest she pass out, but things around her were going dark. “You had an affair with my grandmother.”

  The blood drained from his face, eyes opening like a frightened child’s. If she wasn’t so angry, she’d almost feel bad. Charity took a murderous step toward him. “You cost me everything.”

  Dalton tried to grab her arm, but she jerked away. “You came here and moved in, knowing, knowing that you caused her death.”

  His body started to tremble. Eyes, scared and filled with ghosts, closed. “I’m—I’m sorry.”

  “Because of you, she cheated on my grandfather and killed herself.”

  The old man straightened his spine and took two steps toward her. “She didn’t. Don’t you say that. She’d never do that!” Harold was practically yelling by the time the last word left his mouth. When he stumbled forward, balance lost in the pain, Dalton reached out and gripped him by the shoulder. Harold’s weight fell against him as if there were no power left to stay erect. He whimpered, “She’d never do that. She fell. She fell off the balcony landing.”

  “Or she jumped, Harold.” Charity didn’t want to think that. In her heart, she knew it just couldn’t be. Yet, right now, she wanted to hurt him. She wanted to take everything away from him because he’d taken everything away from her. Why did she always love the wrong people? Anguish flickered over her flesh, creating its own cocoon, its own armor, the kind of shield she’d fought her entire life to avoid. With it came emotional barricades that kept one from truly feeling, truly loving. With it came the ability to see the true harshness of life for what it was. A weapon set to destroy you.

  Harold shook his head. “It’s not like you think. We didn’t plan—”

  Charity held a hand up. “Don’t. I want you gone. I want you out of my home and away from me.” She’d once looked at him and seen her gramps. But not now. Her gramps was gone, and she needed to be strong enough to realize that, strong enough to say good-bye.

  Harold’s lip quivered, and he pressed his mouth into a straight line to keep from breaking down again. She didn’t care.

  Dalton shored him up, and wasn’t it just like a man to take another’s side! Of course, if he hadn’t, Harold might have ended up a heap on her marble floor. Dalton’s eyes pleaded. “Charity, let’s sort things out tomorrow. It’s late.”

  She hugged herself, staving off the cold. “No. I want him gone tonight.”

  Dalton turned to face Harold. “You can stay with me tonight. Let’s go upstairs and grab a few things.” He kept his hands firmly on Harold, who seemed almost incapable of putting one foot before the other.

  Charity turned around to find her mother leaned against the parlor doorjamb, her arms crossed over her chest, her hip cocked. A hint of a smile on her face. “And I’m the one who has always hurt you? You need to pay more attention to the company you keep, Charity Monroe. You’re not the best judge of character.”

  Her mother was a master at taking potshots. Charity had long ago learned to ignore them. As a kid, she’d watched a nature special on TV about a type of animal that will pick on the weakest in the pack, sometimes actually taking bites out of their flesh. If that’s how some animals were, then that’s how some people were. At a young age, she’d decided her mom was like those animals. It wasn’t her fault, really. It was just how she was made, and she couldn’t help it. Charity knew she’d just once again made excuses for bad mothering. But right now the fight was gone from Charity. She wouldn’t spar with her mother anymore. She was just opening her mouth to say so, when she heard the commotion upstairs.

  CHAPTER 18

  The Railing

  Dalton came running to the railing. “She’s gone. Daisy’s gone.”

  Charity rushed up the steps and entered the room where Daisy was staying. The space looked mostly the same, except the backpack that hung by the door—always filled with a few of Daisy’s clothes—was missing. Charity threw the closet door open to find hangers on the floor, some hanging empty and at strange angles, as if the things hanging on them had been grabbed in a hurry.

  Charity slung the top drawer open and scrounged around until she found the recipe box. “She kept her money in here.”

  Dalton paced the floor. “Where would she go?”

  “She’s a runaway. She could go anywhere.” It was Ellen, standing at the door of Daisy’s room.

  “We’d have seen her leave.” Then Charity realized. Her heart lurched into her throat as she ran across the hall and into her own room. There on the wall where she kept the attic door key, the nail was empty. “She must have left through the attic.”

  Just like she knew she would, Charity found the attic door unlocked, the key still resting in its keyhole. She was the first onto the attic stairs, her mind filled with a barrage of emotions too great to manage. She couldn’t explain why—in this of all moments—her thoughts went to her gram. The fear, the pain. The shame. Charity looked down at her own feet, but saw her gram’s, covered as they always were in white lace-up shoes instead of the stilettos Charity wore at the party. Her legs clad in Gram’s seersucker capris—her staple.

  She could hear Dalton behind her, and Harold behind him, both yelling at her to slow down as she ran full force up the narrow attic stairs. But she realized it wasn’t Harold’s voice. It was her gramps, and he was pleading, begging her to stop! Slow down!

  Both attic doors were open, the one leading into the room and the one leading out to the small landing. Charity pushed away the thought that she’d look over the landing down down down three stories below and see Daisy’s lifeless body lying there, broken and bleeding.

  Or worse. She’d see her gram, the life forced out of her by the s
udden stop at the end of her . . . of her . . .

  Charity flew through the room and crossed the final threshold. It’s said that just before people die, they may sense the strangest things. Charity felt the sudden moonlight on her skin, the smell of freshly churned ocean, and the taste of its salt landing on her mouth. She heard the whispers of water fairies as they danced on waves and the calming rustle of the leaves on the weeping tree.

  She was aware of someone lashing out, nails dragging down the exposed flesh of her spine above her velvet gown. She was aware that just before the hand grazed her, she was plummeting forward, her foot having caught on the weather stripping of the attic’s exterior door. Her ankle twisted. All the air left her lungs in a great oomph. Something slammed into her ribs, causing her to fold forward. The hand behind her dug into the side of her flesh, the meaty part of her skin between her ribs and hip. Below, there was only ground. She was hanging, suspended. Caught between heaven and earth. Life and death.

  The grip tightened and suddenly, she was flung backward, hitting a brick wall and then the floor. Another oomph. This one, from Dalton who cradled her against him. He was the brick wall. As she looked up to the railing above her, she knew what had happened. Both this night and all those many moons ago. Her gram really had fallen. Her grandfather had chased her up the stairs, and she’d wanted to escape, but not escape life. Escape him. She’d tripped on the doorjamb. And fallen through the railing. Just as Charity would have tonight if Dalton hadn’t reinforced it months ago and hadn’t grabbed her in a death grip moments ago.

  They were puddled on the floor, and he was trembling. Of course he would be. He’d lost a wife and child, and though his feelings for Charity didn’t run that deep, this was a close call.

  Her ribs ached, there were inflamed streaks on her back, and a crushing bruise would likely materialize tomorrow on her waist. But she was OK. “I’m sorry, Dalton.”