Garden of Dreams

by Patricia Rice

  “No, you don’t have a selfish bone in your body, Nina. You know your aunt’s here, in these gardens, if she’s anywhere at all. You’d be happier staying here, puttering in her roses. But instead, you’ll go to the funeral home and help others with their grief. That’s your nature. That’s life.”

  Tears leaked from Nina’s eyes, and she hastily brushed them away. ‘Thank you. I haven’t thanked you enough for everything you’ve done. I don’t know what I would have done without you and Jackie. Why don’t you take him down to Nashville or someplace fun for a few days, enjoy yourselves, instead of getting embroiled in all this? I can handle it now.”

  He halted on the path behind her. “We’ll do that later. We’ll keep out of your way these next few days. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Nina heard him limp away. She didn’t think he’d been limping earlier. She wondered if she’d said something to hurt him. She couldn’t imagine what. After all, he was only a tenant. He wouldn’t be here long enough ever to qualify as a friend.

  Chapter 24

  The sun pouring through the high umbrella of the pin oaks scorched JD’s back as he wielded the ax one more time and splintered the log into pieces. He knew he courted heat stroke, but the tension inside him needed violent physical release. Chopping wood seemed the safest activity.

  He glanced over the yard to where Jackie hacked desultorily at the underbrush. Everyone had gone to the funeral service hours ago. He hadn’t seen any reason for Jackie to attend. He’d planned on accompanying Nina, had even dressed for the occasion, but at the last minute, she’d told him it wasn’t necessary. He hadn’t known Hattie. Why should he go?

  JD still didn’t know why that brush-off had hurt. He didn’t like attending funerals. But for some idiot reason he’d thought Nina would appreciate his company. Stupid of him.

  He slammed the ax into another log. The month was almost shot. Maybe he should think about taking Jackie to Myrtle Beach after all. He didn’t need the distraction of Nina and her gardens and her big, anguished eyes. Maybe he should go in and call Jimmy, see how business was coming along. He hadn’t heard anything but the brief e-mail saying he’d arrived safely in L.A.

  That thought led to the question about the still-unidentified body. The sheriff had said autopsies were performed in Louisville and took a long time, but there had been no reports of any missing persons. He didn’t like leaving Nina with that question hanging.

  He hadn’t seen the Mercedes around lately either. Maybe it was all in his head. Paranoia erupted easily at times of stress.

  “Hey, Dad, look!” Jackie stopped his idle weed-whacking and pointed in the direction of Hattie’s Hill. “There’s a truck full of pipes pulling in over there.”

  JD shaded his eyes with his hand and watched the flatbed pull off the road and onto the field. No one had apparently used that field in decades. The barbed-wire fence was almost completely buried under honeysuckle and wild roses. Whatever gate had once blocked the entrance had fallen off long ago. Only the mound over the roadside drainage ditch gave any indication that a drive once existed. Someone had recently bushhogged the tall grass, but no other work had been done to grade the entrance. The flatbed tilted slightly and halted just inside the fence.

  Putting down the ax, JD examined the truck’s contents. He’d never watched the construction of one of those enormous steel- and-cable contraptions with which the cell phone people littered the countryside, but he’d wager that was just the sort of material they’d use. A uniformed man stepped down from the truck cab, confirming his suspicions.

  “Those dirty, lousy, good-for-nothing...” Jaw tightening, JD glanced around, searching for the swiftest means of halting this invasion. His gaze alighted on the bulldozer Tom had left behind. He’d been spoiling for a fight. The phone company had just offered the opportunity.

  “Jackie, go in and call the sheriff. Tell him the cell phone people are trespassing. Then start calling everyone you know and have them call everyone they know. Tell them to send people out here as soon as they get home from the funeral. Those damned thieves think they’ll start while Nina’s at the cemetery. I’ll be damned if I’ll let them.”

  Jackie watched as another flatbed halted on the road, this one laden with heavy equipment. “I don’t know, Dad. It’s gonna take time before anyone gets here. How will we stop them?”

  “Don’t worry about that. You just get on that telephone.”

  JD had never driven a bulldozer before, but he’d driven about everything else at one time or another. He had an affinity for machines. He figured he could at least move it forward. The devil inside him anticipated the battle with glee.

  ***

  After the graveside services, Nina returned to the funeral home to pick up some of the potted plants people had sent. Knowing Hattie’s love for growing plants, friends had sent everything from giant scheffleras to blooming gardenias instead of the more traditional cut flowers. The bouquets had gone to the gravesite, but the potted plants would go home with her. They’d make a memorial more fitting than the cold stone monument she’d ordered.

  With the seat down, she could crowd most of the plants into the hatchback. A truck would pick up the bigger ones. If she worried over the plants enough, she wouldn’t think about Hattie’s frail body in that miserable wooden coffin buried under six feet of soil. They should have been like Native Americans, the kind who buried their dead in trees, closer to God. That made a lot more sense than planting people in the ground.

  Tears streaking down her cheeks, Nina drove carefully down the back roads toward home. Her mother had been at the service, piously applying a lace hanky to her lovely nose. She didn’t know where Helen had gone afterward. The idea of living with that hypocrite until the estate was settled curdled her stomach, but she wouldn’t give up Hattie’s dream.

  Her fingers clenched the steering wheel so hard she almost had to pry them loose as she rounded the bend and saw the traffic lining the road ahead. She braked the Camry and stared.

  Pickups, battered Chevys and Fords, and tractors lined Hattie’s Lane and the driveway to the house. Had they all come expecting some kind of reception after the service? That was crazy. Surely not. She’d never said any such thing. She knew it was the practice elsewhere, but not around here.

  Her gaze drifted over the fields to the collection of heavy equipment the men had left behind the other day. She appreciated their eagerness for the garden, but surely they hadn’t come directly from the funeral to scrape off her fields. Still, there seemed to be an inordinate amount of activity around Hattie’s Hill.

  Parking the Camry behind a rusty station wagon, Nina rolled down the windows so the plants would have some air, then climbed out.

  A bulldozer sat defiantly in front of Hattie’s precious rose garden, the one that had begun their dreams of boxwood hedges, graceful arbors, and gravel paths. Their dreams had grown, but the rose garden on top of the only hill in the county was all the concrete evidence they had that they could carry them out. It was Hattie’s pride and joy. And a bulldozer sat in front of it—parked facing away from the garden and toward the road, flanked by a bushhog and a combine. Had someone taken up equipment sales in her yard?

  The crowd of people milling about almost verified that theory, except many of them still wore their suits and skirts from the funeral. As she squeezed between a Jeep and a semi cab parked on the far side of the road, Nina saw the scene more clearly.

  A flatbed full of long pipes was parked right inside her fence. Another flatbed with digging equipment blocked the gate entirely. The small logo emblazoned on both vehicles had a familiarity that twisted in Nina’s gut. The cell phone people.

  She wanted to turn and run.

  She had no strength for a battle today. She’d just laid her aunt Hattie to rest, for pity’s sake! Couldn’t they leave a soul alone on a day like this?

  Of course not. They assumed the property belonged to Helen, and she’d obviously made some deal for the right-of- way.
They probably hoped to move now, in the confusion of Hattie’s death, and eliminate the legal complications.

  Furious tears stinging her eyes, Nina strode up the hill and toward the crowd of people gathered between the two lines of vehicles. She wished for her shotgun. Her throat was clogged, and she couldn’t think straight. She just wanted them all to go away and leave her alone. A shotgun would accomplish that faster than words.

  Then she saw JD. Like a knight in shining armor, he rode the bulldozer as if it were his mighty steed, standing straight and tall in the stirrups, swinging his battle-ax and leading his troops. The sun glinted off the thick ebony of his ponytail and the bronzed breadth of his bare back as he waved a rolled-up paper like a sword. She couldn’t hear his words from this distance, but they held his enemy in thrall. The cable men in their white shirts with their little blue embroidered nametags stared at him in consternation.

  Friends and neighbors, their weathered faces grim and unsmiling, sat atop every piece of equipment they could gather in a short amount of time. Those without machinery held pitchforks and rifles, forming a solid line between the cable trucks and Hattie’s roses. They didn’t have to say a word. Their postures said it all. The tower would be built over their dead bodies.

  Tears streaming so fast and thick that she could barely see, Nina stumbled over the rough ground. Though the sun shone hotly, she shivered inside, and her heart sobbed in tempo with the ragged gasps coming from her throat. The entire town had seen Hattie’s dream, rallied behind it, and raced to the rescue. It was like watching the sun rise after six months of darkness. She wanted to cry “glory, hallelujah,” and laugh and hug them all.

  The crowd parted to let her by. JD put down his ax when Nina climbed up on the dozer beside him. As she threw her arms around him, the crowd cheered and yelled. If he was the Music Man, this was the parade, and seventy-six trombones would start playing any moment now. She’d never felt so joyful in her entire life. JD’s strong arm held her so tight, she knew she would never falter or fall again.

  Shocked at this revelation, Nina hastily turned to her friends and neighbors. Teachers who taught beside her at school, kids who had been in her classes, all had gathered around, and she grinned as her heart swelled. Caught on the flood tide of courage this turnout displayed, she could do anything. Catching the eye of the music teacher, Nina threw aside caution and gave in to impulse.

  “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord....” Her voice trembled, but it carried. These people had just spent the morning singing hymns. They understood.

  The music teacher caught the refrain first, her lovely contralto picking up on the first breeze they’d felt in days and carrying throughout the crowd.

  “He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored....”

  More voices joined in: deep bass ones, high childish ones. The song spread across the field with the breeze, growing larger, louder, more defiant. Women hugged, then joined hands.

  Men laid down their weapons and wrapped their arms around the shoulders of their wives.

  “Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!” rang in such resounding chorus that surely even the clouds heard. A flock of quail squawked and soared to the heavens. Laughter broke out in the ranks as several of the cable men jumped nervously at the noisy flap of wings.

  The hallelujahs still rang loud and clear even as the phone trucks backed toward the road. Kids cheered and chased after them. The adults, tears of joy still streaking their cheeks, continued singing and hugging. They had won.

  For now.

  ***

  Sitting on the front porch steps, hugging herself, listening to the katydids and crickets sing, Nina held all that earlier joy inside, letting it fill the hollow places in her soul. Hattie had been there, she knew. Hattie had watched over them, egged them on, cherished the moment as much as Nina had. She hadn’t lost Hattie. She would always be with her, singing songs and eating chocolate ice cream, smelling the roses in her garden. God bless Hattie, she murmured.

  And God bless JD.

  She’d changed from her Sunday clothes into jeans, but she could still smell the heat of him as he’d hugged her. The male musk and sweat had permanently imprinted themselves on her brain, as had the memory of his possessive grip when he’d grinned so proudly at her. No one had ever made her feel that way. Hattie had occasionally patted her on the back and said “good work,” but no one had made her feel that she was someone special, someone who counted, someone who was worth fighting for.

  Nina wanted JD out here, sitting beside her, so she could explore her emotions more thoroughly. She knew they were dangerous, but she was feeling particularly brave tonight. Instead of keeping him at a distance as she’d done these last few days, maybe she could show JD how much she appreciated what he had done, how much she appreciated his friendship, how much she wanted that friendship to be something more.

  She smiled as JD finally opened the screen door and stepped outside. They’d scarcely had a chance to talk all day. After the phone people left, everyone had lingered for cake and soft drinks. People had come and gone, changing clothes and coming back, working in the fields, hanging wire across the entrance to Hattie’s Hill. JD had spent his time with the men, while Nina had spent most of hers in the kitchen with the women. That’s the way things were done here. She hadn’t minded. She’d rather enjoyed listening to the women sing JD’s praises.

  At supper he had seemed oddly quiet, and afterward, he had disappeared into his room, and she’d heard the clickety-clack of his computer keyboard. She’d thought once he finished his program, he had given up the computer, but she supposed he kept in touch with Jimmy and whoever worked with him back in California. She really should ask him more about the company he worked for, but the time had never seemed appropriate. Maybe she should ask now.

  He didn’t sit down.

  Puzzled, Nina crooked her neck and looked up at him. “Is something wrong?”

  A chill ran through her at the realization that her words echoed the ones he’d uttered the night Hattie died.

  “I have to go. I’ve booked flights for me and Jackie from Nashville tonight.” He hesitated, then lowered himself to the step beside her. He didn’t look at her. “I’m sorry, Nina. It’s important, or I wouldn’t leave like this.”

  The chill became something else, something colder that chased the joy away. She stared at his hawk-nosed profile. He couldn’t go now, not when she’d just discovered how he made her feel, before he could teach her more. That was selfish of her. Concerned, she concentrated on JD. “Can you tell me? Can I help? You’ve done so much for me…”

  JD shook his head, and Nina noticed the band around his ponytail had come undone. She had the urge to run her fingers through his hair and smooth it back. She supposed California employers didn’t care if their employees looked like hoodlums.

  “It’s nothing you can do. Jimmy’s having a problem with the copyright. I’m sending Jackie home to his mother. Maybe everything will work out, and we can come back for a few weeks before the summer ends.”

  No, he wouldn’t. Nina could feel it in her bones. No one ever came back here once they left. This was Nowheresville; she knew that.

  All Nina’s newly discovered bravery fled, but she forced herself to touch his arm, hoping JD would look at her. He didn’t. “Will you stay in touch? I can’t begin to thank you for what you did today. There’re so many things I want to say…”

  And so many things she couldn’t say if he left her like this. Her heart ached with the burden of words longing to escape. If she said them, would he stay? Or run as fast as he could the other way? Experience had taught her the latter, and, biting her lip, she let caution prevail.

  The bleakness behind his eyes shattered her soul. “You don’t have to say anything, Nina. I enjoyed it. I wish I could stay. I’d say you made me feel at home, but I’ve never really had a home, so I probably don’t know what I’m talking about. I’ll leave my card on the desk in case you ne
ed me for anything. The papers on the garden are all filed, and the lawyers know more than I do. I’ll probably be busy for a while, but I’d like to hear how things work out. If you get in a bind, give me a call.”

  Such cool, polite words. Nina removed her hand and blinked back the tears. He was right, of course. They led completely different lives. She’d known this would happen sooner or later. She’d just counted on it being much, much later. But he was telling her the project was all hers now. They would never explore whatever had been between them. In the real world as she knew it, they would write occasionally, exchange Christmas cards, and it would never be like this again.

  For the first time in her life she’d met a man she could talk to, but he had better things to do than talk to her. That made sense, she supposed.

  Summoning what little courage remained, she tugged his sleeve. “Kiss me before you go?”

  She tasted the regret as soon as his lips touched hers.

  Chapter 25

  “Look, Jackie, I’ll make this up to you first chance I get.” They stood outside the Phoenix rental agency waiting for their car. “I promise. But if I don’t do this now, I’ll let a whole lot of people down besides you. Do you understand?”

  Jackie gave him one of those sullen, resentful looks only a teenager could make, but he nodded grudgingly. JD had an urge to brush the mop of long hair back from his son’s face, but he couldn’t treat Jackie like a little kid. It would have been nice if he could have babied him once in a while, but he’d forfeited that right sixteen years ago. That knowledge would remain an ache inside him for the rest of his life, but looking backward was pointless. The issues they faced now were adult ones.

  “What about Miss Toon? Are we gonna see her again? I promised Laddie I’d show him the fishing hole we found.”