The Garden of Happy Endings

by Barbara O'Neal

  “Mom?” Alarm lit the word. “Mom? What’s going on? Where’s Dad? He gave me a bunch of money when he left, but I thought it was just one of those things he does, you know, but I—”

  “He gave you money?”

  “Mom, where is he? Where’s Dad?”

  She finally had to say it. “I don’t know, Alexa. I haven’t spoken to him since before he was in Madrid. He’s disappeared.” She bent closer to herself, curling around the phone as if she could protect her daughter. “He’s wanted for a Ponzi scheme. They seized the house and everything in it, but I got as much as I could out of your room. Anything that I thought would matter to you, scrapbooks and things like that. We brought it all—”

  “My things? What are you talking about?”

  “He’s wanted for racketeering. I didn’t want to ruin your last month in Spain.”

  “This is crazy. Dad isn’t a criminal.”

  “I know. It doesn’t make any sense to me, either, but he is wanted. They closed his office, and our accounts are frozen, and the house—”

  “Our house?” She gave a bitter little laugh. “What’s it worth? A million, maybe? Not even that much, probably, in Pueblo. It’s not like it’s some penthouse overlooking Manhattan.”

  The buttery color of light pouring through the windows onto hardwood floors, the garden she had nurtured, her tower room, all welled up and punched Tamsin with a sense of acute loss. “Maybe not,” she said quietly, “but it was my work of art.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Mom, I didn’t mean that. I’m just not—this is so overwhelming, I can’t even think. Where are you living?”

  “I’m staying with Elsa in the house in the Grove.”

  “That teeny little rental?”

  Tamsin looked around at the fabric spread over the floor and couch, the trees waving gracefully beyond the window. “It’s not so bad. Elsa has been good to me.”

  The phone was so quiet, Tamsin thought she’d dropped the call until Alexa said, airlessly, “I have to go. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  “Alexa, don’t! I’m going to worry about you.”

  “There’s nothing to worry about, Mother. I’ll be home in a few weeks anyway. I just thought …”

  “What, honey?”

  “Nothing. This is just … horrible. I can’t even get my head around it, that he might be a criminal, that everything he ever said might be a lie, that—” She groaned. “This is impossible.”

  “Sweetheart, don’t make it worse than it is. Give yourself some time.”

  “I have to go. I’ll call you tomorrow, I promise.”

  “I love you!” Tamsin said, but the connection was lost before the words went through.

  Alone in her flat, Alexa looked down at the sapphire on her finger. It wasn’t as big and flashy as Duchess Kate’s (but who would want the engagement ring of someone who had been so cursed, anyway?) but it was big enough that she turned it into her palm when she was out.

  When her father had come to Madrid, he’d been in an almost hectic mood, but that was not all that odd. She’d taken him to eat pulpo and see the bar where Hemingway had written. He’d been very demonstrative, more than was usual.

  Now it made sense. Usually she was proud of him, his urbane carriage, his funny asides. He was very witty and charming, and people always liked him. That night he seemed like he was on drugs or something, his cheeks flushed and his jokes a little forced. At the end of the evening, he walked her back home and pressed a thick manila envelope into her hands. “A present,” he said. “Don’t tell your mother. It will be our little secret.”

  He often did that, gave her extra cash or a bauble. He liked gambling, the thrill of it, and enjoyed slipping her some little something when he won big. She clutched it to her chest as he hugged her, feeling the particular softness of a wad of cash. “Be good, sweetheart,” he said, and walked into the night, whistling.

  Once inside, she opened the padded envelope to find two thousand dollars, all in hundred dollar American bills.

  Over the years, she noticed that when he gave her something, he almost always gave her mother something, too. A new coat or a quick trip somewhere, Mexico or Hawaii or once Tahiti. He liked beaches and sunshine. Her mother just liked to travel. Anywhere, at the drop of a hat. Sometimes, Alexa thought her mom was a little jealous about her year in Spain.

  Then there had been the flat. She looked around it now with a sense of airless disaster. The agents hadn’t asked about it, perhaps assuming it was a rental.

  Her heart beating too hard, she absorbed the sight of it. The floor-to-ceiling drapes floated on a breeze. She’d hung inexpensive posters on the walls for the time being, imagining a day when she would be able to furnish the flat properly, her own little pied-à-terre.

  She loved it—something about it made her feel secure and powerful, owning a flat in a foreign city, a city she loved and felt comfortable in. It would also be her retreat if the demands of high society life became overwhelming. Hers. A center that was solid.

  Now, turning her ring around and around on her finger, she knew she would have to go home to her mother. She could not marry Carlos. It had been hard enough to win acceptance with his family (his mother) as an American. As the American daughter of a criminal on the lam from charges like this, she would be a pariah in Spanish society.

  The fairy tale was over, as she must have always known it would be. A count did not fall in love with an ordinary girl and sweep her off her feet and then they lived happily ever after. It just didn’t happen.

  And now it wouldn’t.

  Squaring her shoulders, more her mother’s daughter than she knew, she began to make a mental list of what would have to be done. The last thing was the ring. Which she would wear until the very last second.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Almost every morning, Elsa walked Charlie over to the garden so they could be there as the sun rose. It gave the day a special zest to spend the first hour admiring the little sprouts of life. She liked the frilly starts of peas and the unfurling corn poking up out of the dark earth, and the pretty shape of squash seedlings, looking so sturdy and stalwart, as if nothing could kill them. Her potatoes had sent sprouts into the sunlight, and it was much better than growing a potato in a jar on a windowsill, which she had done a lot as a child.

  This Friday morning at the end of April was dark, the clouds low and pregnant. Elsa hummed under her breath and plucked bindweed from between the rows, and thinned tomatoes, even though it pained her to kill healthy tiny little plants. Charlie raced up and down the main aisle, tossing a plastic half-gallon orange juice container up in the air, then chasing it down.

  Deacon ambled over, as he often did. He, too, came early, before the workday started for him. There were others, too. Now and then, she saw Joseph, flute or drum in hand, singing good spirits into the space, and there was an older woman who came once or twice a week.

  “Good morning,” Deacon said, and handed her a paper cup. “Tea, two sugars, and milk, not cream.”

  “Thank you.” She tugged off the cotton gloves she wore and tucked them in her back pocket. Since the night he’d kissed her after dinner, there had been nothing else, only the friendship growing between them, as sturdy as the squashes at her feet. She tried not to mind that it wasn’t more. Lifting her chin toward Charlie, she asked, “What do you think he’s doing with that? Is he imagining it’s prey?”

  “Dogs like to work. He’s a retriever, so if you were a hunter, he would go racing into the woods and bring back whatever you’d shot—your bird or squirrel or whatever.”

  “Squirrel?”

  He shrugged. “Lots of people eat squirrels. Plentiful, and meaty enough.”

  “I guess they do. Arrogant of me to judge.”

  “Maybe a little.” He rested his coffee cup lightly on the stake holding up the fence. “People do what they have to.”

  “Did you eat squirrel as a child?”

  “No. Lots of neighbors did, but my father had hi
s own work to do. He didn’t have time to hunt for anything.”

  “Right, your daddy the preacher man.”

  His expression didn’t lighten much at the teasing. “Yeah.”

  “Sorry, I hit a nerve.”

  He shook his head. Rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “No, it’s not you. I heard from one of my sisters that he’s doing poorly. He’s got Alzheimer’s and congestive heart failure and diabetes and God knows what else.”

  Instinctively, she touched his arm. “Deacon, I’m so sorry. Are you going to go home and see him?”

  “No. He disowned me long ago.”

  “I see.” Elsa waited, feeling the tangle of emotions coming from him, grief and anger and resignation. “No hope of reconciliation?”

  “Trust me,” he said, “no. And it wouldn’t be that helpful, anyway. I’m not mad at him for dying. I’m mad at him for being such a bastard to his children and his wife.”

  Elsa took a sip of tea, listening, watching his face. He was the kind of man who’d learned to keep his feelings behind a mask, but his mouth gave things away. “Abusive?”

  He looked out, into the past. “That’s what they call it now, I reckon. Back then, it was just discipline. He used a switch on us, never his hands.” His mouth twitched slightly, right at the corner. A freshening breeze blew hair over his forehead. “But mostly, it was his job to tell us what sinners we were, and try to beat it out of us.” He shook his head. “My mama could never please him. She died trying, and left my poor sister there with the wreck of him. I should go, take some of the burden from her, but all I’d want to do is wrap my hands around his neck and twist it like a chicken.”

  She waited as he winced at his own words, but she also heard the truth in them. Gently, with some humor, she said, “Best to leave it alone, then.”

  His smile flashed. “Anybody you want to kill?”

  “Oh, I don’t think so.” She inclined her head, thinking of family members. “My mother is a little clueless, but also ancient. My father is gone. I like my sister.” Her imagination gave her a snapshot of Kiki’s body.

  He said, “You thought of somebody.”

  “A young girl in my congregation in Seattle was tortured and murdered. She was only fourteen. Charlie and I were part of the search party that was looking for her, and we found her. Body, I mean. Her body.” The vision of Kiki’s blue skin ran in front of Elsa’s eyes, joined by her laughing eyes the day of the harvest festival, the emptiness of those eyes staring at the heavens. She took a breath, then met Deacon’s gaze.

  “I would kill the man who did it, slowly. Torturously. Fair is fair.” She said it without apology, her voice solid. “Just one more thing I have to come to terms with before I can go back to the congregation.”

  He studied her face, his eyes a startling color even in the dark morning. “Do you? Have to get over that?”

  “Maybe.” She took a breath. “Unity teaches Divine Order, that everything, always, is in perfect harmony. Not feeling it right now.”

  He nodded. “Maybe you could start with forgiving yourself.”

  Her head jerked up.

  “You’re kinda hard on yourself, Sister Elsa. You’re having a crisis of faith. Just be there with it.”

  “Do you believe in God, Deacon?”

  He took a breath, looked at the sky, the plants. “I believe in something. Something good. Not sure what it’s called, but I’ve had things happen I can’t explain any other way except to believe there’s something out there looking out for me.”

  She scowled. “Yeah, I hear people say that all the time. That grace and prayers saved them. All that. Joaquin has seen an angel. Twice!” She shook her head. “But where was God and grace and intervention when that fourteen-year-old girl was being tortured?” She raised her eyebrows. “Fourteen, Deacon.” Her voice broke with fury. “Couldn’t somebody have walked by? Couldn’t God have sent a raven to peck out his eyes, that bastard?”

  He put his coffee back on the fence post and opened his arms, wiggling his fingers to call her to him. Elsa moved into the circle, her cheek against his chest, his arms a solid comfort. For a long moment, he didn’t say anything at all. It was such a relief to let go, to stand there and let somebody hold her.

  “Maybe God tried,” he said quietly, into her ear. “Maybe somebody was thinking about a walk and just decided not to take one, just for today. Maybe somebody was supposed to give that man some love before he got so twisted and lost that he could do such an evil thing.”

  She closed her eyes. “I know. I think about that, too. What happened to him to make him become the person who could do that? It had to be terrible.” She clung to Deacon, her arms locked around his waist. “I still can’t forgive it.”

  “Takes time.” His voice rumbled in her ear through his chest, magnified and deep.

  In her church, they hugged so much it was almost a joke, but she liked it. Loved it, loved the flow of energy between humans, the love. He smelled of coffee and laundry detergent and outside. He rubbed her back in a slow circle, right between the shoulder blades. “Oh, I have missed hugs like this,” she said into his shirt.

  “No hurry, sister,” he said.

  But there was that moment of shift, when the embrace slipped ever so slightly from platonic and comforting to something more. Elsa stepped back, her hands on his arms. “Thank you.”

  He nodded. “I didn’t mean to stir up a can of worms.”

  “You didn’t. The worms are always there, waiting to spill out.” She winced. “Ew.”

  He laughed. His cellphone made a burbling noise, and he pulled it out of his pocket, glanced at the screen. “Yeah. There’s my signal. I’ve got to get to work.”

  “I’m having breakfast with Joaquin.” She widened her eyes. “And don’t say anything about the angels. I don’t know how much he tells people.”

  “No worries. He tells the story, or at least he told me. Once when he had the measles, and then again when he was on the camino.”

  Elsa looked at him for a long moment. “You must be close friends.”

  He ducked his head. Nodded. “That we are. I owe Father Jack quite a bit.”

  “I see.” She lifted her cup. “Well, thanks for the tea and the hug and the ear. Have a good day.”

  “You, too, Elsa.”

  She turned to head toward the rectory, and he called her back. She looked at him.

  “Would you like to join us, me and Calvin and Mario, for supper tomorrow night?”

  “Not Tiberius?”

  “He’s got plenty of male relatives. He doesn’t need a Big Brother.”

  For a moment, she hesitated, aware that there was more and more building here, and that she had other choices to make, other things to work out.

  “Careful now,” he added. “It’s not just any old supper. We’re going to the Passkey.”

  Elsa feigned a swoon. “Ah, the best grinder in the world. I haven’t had one in twenty years, I bet. I’ll be there. What time?”

  “Six-thirty. I’d pick you up, but between boys and dog, there isn’t a seat left.”

  She laughed. “I can drive myself.”

  “That’s fine.”

  Elsa watched through the rectory windows as clouds moved over the sky. They were fat clouds, dark with rain. Lightning arrowed out of them, cracking and thundering. Charlie stuck close to her, lying on her foot if he could get away with it, moving when she moved, his body quivering every so often. “Weird to have lightning so early in the day,” she commented, eyeing the sky from the table, where she sat with a mug of coffee clasped between her palms.

  Joaquin stood at the old gas stove. A cast-iron griddle, a Christmas gift from Elsa a few years back, drew heat from two burners. He brushed the surface generously with melted butter, and glanced at the sky as he turned to pick up a plate of sliced peaches, lightly spiced with mace and cinnamon and nutmeg. “It looks like Kansas during tornado season.” He’d lived there for a short stint as an undergrad. “Forecast i
s for serious rain.”

  As if to underscore the words, the first heavy drops splatted against the windows, as big as saucers. “I’m glad we don’t get tornados here.”

  “Yeah. Not my favorite weather.” He placed three slices of peaches in a circle, sprinkled them with brown sugar, and covered them with buckwheat pancake batter, a recipe he’d developed just for Elsa, who loved buckwheat as much as anything on the planet.

  She smiled at his concentration, the comma of his body arched over the grill, his precision in placing the peaches and pouring the exact circle of the batter that surrounded each one. His face was nearly perfect in profile—the high brow and angled cheekbones, his aggressive Mayan nose and full lips. So very handsome.

  And still too thin, she realized. His hands looked too big at the end of bony forearms, and his rear end had practically disappeared. “You’re still not eating enough, are you? How much are you running, my friend?”

  He finished the final pancake. “What? Running?” He put the bowl down and picked up a spatula. “I don’t know. Eight or nine miles.”

  “Every day?”

  With care, he used a kitchen towel to wipe away a spot of batter. “Yeah.”

  “That’s a lot.”

  He shrugged. “I have a lot on my mind.”

  “Do you want to talk it out?”

  He straightened and looked over his shoulder at her. “Not this morning, but thank you.”

  “You’re not eating enough to compensate for all those miles. Maybe you need to have dinner with me and Tamsin more often. How about Monday evening?”

  “Are you feeding all the unmarried men of the parish now?”

  She raised her eyebrows at the tone in his voice. Outside, the rain splatted and spit, and in the distance were the first waves of thunder. Charlie edged closer to her leg, and she shifted to put one foot on either side of him. “It’s all right, baby.” To Joaquin, she said, “I am a nice person that way. I will cook your favorites, too. What do you want? I’ll even cook paella.”