As she connected a red hose, she spied Deacon helping Paris set stakes for her tomatoes and beans. She said something and he laughed, that rich low chuckle carrying easily, and Elsa flushed, thinking of the way she’d been awash with lust as she fried the chicken, fully expecting she’d have him in her bed before long.
Screwing the hose in tight, she turned the water on and stalked away, finding the end to drag into her plot.
He’d given the chicken away. Directing the water into the rows between the plants, she glanced over her shoulder. He had straightened and was looking at her without so much as a twinkle. After a moment, he raised a hand in greeting. Elsa returned it and put her attention back on the watering.
A little while later, he drove away in his blue truck, without even stopping by to say hello.
Chapter Twenty-Three
When Tamsin got off work at two, it was raining, which somewhat complicated her plan to break into her house to steal the earrings and quilts. She didn’t want to park in the driveway; she had planned to use the alley, then carry the quilts out the back door. Few people in the neighborhood would be home in the middle of a weekday afternoon, but it was better to be careful.
However, the alley was clay, and muddy, and she didn’t want to track a bunch of mud through the house or risk ruining the quilts.
As she turned onto her street, she tried to decide where to park, and realized that her heart was racing with either nerves or excitement or both. She pulled over halfway down the block, behind the house, and peered at the street through the swish of the windshield wipers. Rain, swipe, clear, rain, swipe, clear. She didn’t have an umbrella. It wouldn’t hurt her to get wet, but she didn’t want the quilts to get damp. Surely there were still trash bags in the kitchen.
No one was around. It took two professional incomes to buy a house in this neighborhood. Unless you happened to be a crooked hedge-fund manager, of course. Her blue Subaru was so ordinary it was practically invisible. Leaving it unlocked, she stepped out into the rain and dashed down the sidewalk toward her house. The mailman was coming up the street, so she ducked into the backyard quickly, entering her sacred space, closing the white picket gate behind her.
Oh, her garden! She stopped, stricken. The peonies had not been staked, and had fallen over, dying on the grass that was too long and going to seed. Dandelions starred the lawn, bright yellow and ridiculously healthy, and she had a vision of Scott attacking the plants with a spade, as if they were his worst enemy. It had always made her laugh, how virulently he hated the weeds, as if it were personal, as if they bloomed just to thwart him.
Surely no one would care if she came in and removed the peonies, the striped irises, the perennials upon which she had lavished a fortune in time and money? She could replant them at the church or at Elsa’s house. Somewhere she could still see them sometimes.
Rain dripped down her face. Another day. She headed for the window she’d left cracked and stood on the gas meter to reach it, trying to ease it up. The window moved without effort, but even standing on the meter, the reach was much higher than she’d expected. Grabbing on to the window ledge, she tried to pull herself up, but after a couple of minutes, she realized it was never going to happen. It was just too far to pull herself.
She jumped down. Her hair was dripping, and her shirt was stuck to her body, but she was here now, and by damn, those quilts belonged to her. Heavy padlocks covered the front and back doors, which were flanked with signs that screamed warnings from the feds saying the house was part of an investigation and trespassers would be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
The full extent of the law. What would that mean in this case? Surely it wouldn’t be much more than a ticket or a fine or something. Not that she had the money to pay a fine, of course.
Flinging her hair out of her eyes, she rounded the house and ducked behind a bank of lilacs that grew higher than her head. They offered a fence in the summertime, and cast green shadows into the dining room. Alexa had played magic castle along the house here, pretending an entrance into another world was hidden within the bushes.
A wooden door lay against the earth, an old coal slide. Tamsin yanked it by the ring, and it creaked open, the old wood protesting the movement. Spiders scurried away, leaving their long white webs floating in the air, and Tamsin shuddered, nearly dropping the door. She personally had never gone through this entrance, for just this reason. Spiders.
Could she do it now?
It wasn’t just spiders, it was black widows. Shy, giant spiders that had a virulent bite. She had never been bitten, nor had anyone she knew, and you didn’t die of it, anyway, just got really sick, and that wouldn’t even happen to her because she would know what was wrong—
Ugh. Staring down the concrete stairs, she saw that there were leaves and dust piled up, but no actual spiders on the stairs themselves. Rain soaked her ever more thoroughly, and she shivered in both dread and cold. Turning around, she broke off a branch full of leaves from the lilac bush and brushed away as many webs as she could see, then held it out in front of her like a sword, moving it back and forth as she rushed down the stairs before she could chicken out.
The basement was gloomy, but enough light shone through the door and the old glass windows with their chicken wire that she could make her way to the steps leading into the main house. Boxes and cast-off furniture sat in shadowy sorrow, but she ignored them all and ran up the stairs.
The door opened into the kitchen. It smelled stale, like something had rotted in the drains. Tamsin stopped at the bread box, slid open the secret drawer, and there were the earrings. Bezel-cut diamonds in a platinum setting, each diamond at least a karat and a half. Maybe two. Enormous. Beautiful. Expensive. How had she forgotten about them?
The truth was, because she’d others at the time. Many of them.
Her hands shook as she admired them, thinking how much her life had changed since the day he’d given them to her. With a sudden, fierce wave of pain, she thought of Scott leaning out the window, thought of making love to him and then eating together later in bed, laughing when Scott spilled wine onto the pillows.
Had it all been a lie?
She looked at the diamonds in her palm, the sheer enormity of them. They had to be worth thirty or forty thousand dollars. Less on resale, of course.
She thought of the strange expression that had crossed his face that day, just that slight shadow that had made her worry.
He had known.
If he had left her money or property or anything that could be construed as part of the joint estate, Tamsin might have been implicated in the scam. But he’d wanted her to have something. These earrings were an offering.
With a lump in her throat, she removed the opals she’d been wearing since the seize and placed them on the counter. She slipped the diamonds in her ears, and felt tears stream down her face. She wished he had not done this. She wished she could talk to him. She was angry about what he’d done, and confused about her future, and furious on behalf of her daughter, but she had also loved him. She had been so afraid over the past few months that everything she’d believed to be true about her marriage was a lie. Now she knew it was not. Scott had loved her. He had protected her. Tried to provide for her—
And with a blast of insight that almost knocked her sideways, she knew where there was more. Grabbing a couple of trash bags from the pantry, she ran upstairs to her tower room.
The loss hit her again in the solar plexus. She’d always loved to work in here when it was raining, the panes of the windows running with gray, the lightning flashing all around. She could get lost for hours and hours in this room.
Pushing past the pinch of longing, she yanked open a deep narrow closet that she’d rarely used. It was creepy. But in the back was a secret door, left over from Victorian times. Tamsin had thought it quaint, but of course, there were sometimes spiders in there. No way she’d wanted to reach her hand inside.
Now, when she slid the little door s
ideways, there was a thick envelope. Heart pounding in her ears, she wrestled it out sideways. Her name was on the front, in Scott’s hand. She opened it.
A thick wad of bills was inside, along with a single white sheet of paper.
Dear Tamsin,
I’m sorry. I love you. It just got out of control. Scott
The bills were hundreds, and there were a lot of them. A stack as thick as a hardcover novel. Stunned, she flipped through them, hands shaking in fear and anger and relief.
God! What to do with it? Where to hide it?
Awash with a sense of urgency, she yanked open the closet where her quilts were stored carefully, between layers of tissue paper. She took several of them out and shoved them into the bags, then wrapped the money in a square of fabric still lying on the desk. She tucked it into a bag. Layered another quilt on top.
No. She took out the money and peeled three bills off the stack and tucked them into her jeans, then dashed down the stairs. Her feet clattered on the wooden steps, and skittered over the polished floor at the top of the cellar stairs. She dove through the cellar, and back out into the rain, down the alley to her car. Urgently, she shoved the money under the front seat, locked the doors, and looking around at the empty street, rushed back into the house, her heart pounding. She realized when she was back in the tower room that she’d gone through the creepy spidery basement twice, and her hands were shaking violently.
Breathe.
Planting her hands on her hips, she took in several long slow breaths, and felt herself calm down.
Sweating now, and feeling scared, she decided it was time to cut her losses. She started taking more quilts from the shelves and layering them into the two trash bags she’d brought upstairs with her. They were bulging by the time she finished, and she realized she couldn’t even lift them. Sweat dripped into her eyes as she ran back down the stairs, all three flights, grabbed two more bags, and tried to run back up. Ha.
She walked back up, then painstakingly divided the contents of two bags into four. The weight was manageable now, and she hauled two down the stairs, leaving them by the basement steps, then ran up and grabbed the final two. With one last look over her shoulder at the room she had loved so much, she began to drag the bags downstairs. Her breath was becoming ragged now.
Almost there, she told herself.
Just as she reached the landing on the second floor, she heard the front door burst open. She had enough time to glance out the window and see the flashing lights before two uniformed policemen appeared in front of her, guns aimed at her chest.
“Drop the bags and put your hands up,” one said. He looked about thirteen, and that somehow made her want to laugh.
She said, “This is my hou—”
“Hands up!” he shouted, wiggling his gun.
Tamsin obeyed. “These are my quilts,” she said as the other officer rushed up the stairs. The first one took her right wrist in his hand and slapped a handcuff around it. Then he grabbed her other hand and pulled it around her back and slapped the cuff onto that one, too.
“Ow!” Tamsin protested. “You don’t have to yank my shoulder out of joint.”
“You are under arrest for breaking and entering,” the baby said. “You have the right to remain silent—”
It dawned on her, finally, that she was being arrested. “Wait!” she cried, pulling free. “You don’t understand. This is my house.”
“Ma’am, this house has been seized by federal authorities. Everything in it belongs to the courts.” He took her arm, firmly. “I would advise you to stop talking now.”
Tamsin caught sight of the bags. “They’re mine,” she said, and let herself be led down the front steps and back into the rain. “Can I get my purse, my phone? They’re in the car down there.”
“No, ma’am.”
When Tamsin called, Elsa was on the sunporch, shelling peas. All day she’d been feeling a sense of unease, of things gathering in the distance. Sitting with the bowl of peas in her lap, she tried to tap into whatever that darkness was. She cracked the pods and slid the peas from their casings with a fingernail, pop pop pop, taking pleasure in the rhythm, the color of the peas, their fresh green smell.
The unease stuck with her, though, a low-level hum. She looked off into the horizon as if it had an answer, but there was only the cool, life-giving rain. It had been an odd day, between Joaquin and Deacon and the lost hour in the courtyard with San Roque. Around her wrist lingered the marks of the rosary, pale red as if the little leaves had been scorched into her skin. The beads were in her pocket still. She should remember to put them away. She had no idea why she was carrying them around with her all the time. She wasn’t Catholic and hadn’t been for a long time.
Charlie snored at her feet, exhausted from his long day of play, and she rubbed a foot over his side. She’d tried to enlist Alexa in the shelling, but the girl had rolled her eyes. “No.”
But now she came outside. “My mom’s on the phone,” she said, holding out the sleek iPhone she used. “She said she tried calling you on yours, but you didn’t answer. She sounds kinda weird.”
Wiping her hands and taking the phone, Elsa said, “Hello?”
“I need to be bailed out of jail,” Tamsin said. “Don’t tell Alexa where I am. And don’t make a big fuss because I know she’s listening.”
“She’s in jail?” Alexa said, making a face.
“She heard you,” Elsa said. “What happened?”
“I went to the house to get some of my quilts.” She sighed. “It was stupid, okay? Just please come get me.”
“Right away, sis,” Elsa said. “Don’t worry.”
As she handed the phone back, Elsa probed the disquiet, wondering if the arrest was what she’d been sensing. But no, it was still there, dark and gathering weight. She rubbed her belly irritably. Why, she wondered, as she had wondered all of her life, give a warning without giving some direction along with it?
Even as a small girl, she’d had these washes of knowledge. A sense of death lurking, or danger. Once she’d shied away from a side street, later learning someone had been kidnapped from it that same day. Another time, she awoke screaming about a car accident and learned that afternoon a classmate had been in one very near that hour.
The advice she’d been given was to pray at those times, that her hunches were like a smoke alarm going off. The world needed prayers.
Because she had no other way to address the warnings, she now found herself taking the rosary out of her pocket and looping it around her wrist, a habit she’d picked up as a child. All through the drive to the police station, she mentally chanted the rosary, flicking the leaves through her fingers one at a time.
“Are you praying?” Alexa asked.
“Yes.”
“Do you think she’s in a lot of trouble?”
“No,” Elsa answered honestly, parking the car. “It feels like something is out of sync, but it’s not your mother.”
In the station, Tamsin was bedraggled, her hair tangled and knotted, as if it had been wet and then dried without being combed. She’d clearly been crying. “I’m so sorry,” she said as she walked out with them, her head bowed. She climbed into the front passenger seat.
“Why did you do that?” Alexa asked.
“I guess you really don’t need two criminal parents, huh?”
“It’s not that. It’s just kind of crazy. It’s not like you.”
“I wanted to get the quilts. They’re mine. I made them. I should be able to sell them so you can get back to Spain and work things out with Carlos.”
“Mom! Nothing is going to work out with us. He’s part of the royal family. He can’t marry the daughter of a criminal. I love him, okay? It’s just this very careful world he lives in, and they will never let him marry me. I needed to make it a clean break so that he—” She set her jaw, pressed her thumbs to her eyelids. “I don’t want to talk about this. I don’t want to cry anymore. It’s just done.”
Elsa to
uched her sister’s hand. “I think your daughter means that what you did was a grand gesture.”
“I do, Mom,” Alexa said, and she leaned forward to put her head on her mother’s shoulder. “Thanks for trying. Only, don’t have any illusions, okay? He’s lost to me now.”
“What about all those emails? I didn’t mean to read them. But you left your account open on the laptop, and I saw them. He loves you.”
“I didn’t tell him what happened. I felt so … ashamed.”
Elsa looked at her niece in the rearview mirror. There was something a little off about her tone. Something she was hiding. “Do you know anything? Like where your dad might be?”
“No!” The word was vehement. “If I did, believe me, I would track him down and make him pay for ruining our lives.”
“Revenge doesn’t solve anything,” Elsa said, stopping at a traffic light. In the mirror, Alexa was chewing on a thumbnail, worrying it. She might not know where her father was, but she was definitely hiding something.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Tamsin said. “I bet it would solve some things for me.”
Elsa glanced at her. “Are you finally angry? It’s about time.”
“Don’t,” Tamsin snapped. “Just don’t be the wise one. I’m sick of it.”
“Somebody has to do it,” Elsa snapped back. “Maybe I’m tired of it, too. You’re the older sister!”
“As if you’d ever listen to anything I might have to say!”
“I do listen to you!”
“No, you are the supercilious know everything, never in trouble, always with the same guy—”
“Who left me, remember!”
“Yeah, for God! You can’t really say, ‘No, sorry, God, I’m not doing that.’ ”
A light went red in front of her and Elsa stepped on the brake a little too hard. “Oh, yes, you can. You can walk away. I’ve done it, three times, and no bolt of lightning has knocked me down yet. I seem to be doing just fine!”
The Garden of Happy Endings Page 29
