Susannah's Garden

by Debbie Macomber

  Susannah slowly shook her head. “She met Troy Nance yesterday and they’ve barely spent a minute apart since then.” Okay, that was an exaggeration, because Chrissie had helped Susannah for most of the day. She’d been to visit Vivian, as well. But when she was with Susannah, she’d talked nearly nonstop about how wonderful Troy was.

  Carolyn didn’t say anything but from her frown, Susannah deduced that her friend’s opinion of this young man was the same as hers.

  “What do you know about him?” she asked.

  Carolyn shrugged. “Not much. He worked at the mill, but he didn’t last long. We have a drug-testing program—because of all the heavy equipment—and once Troy heard about that, he stopped showing up.”

  Just as Susannah had feared, he seemed to be involved with drugs. Carolyn’s story implied as much.

  “I don’t understand what Chrissie sees in him,” she said. That was putting it mildly. “She recently broke up with her boyfriend from school and I suppose she’s still feeling hurt.”

  “Then Troy must be balm to her wounded ego.”

  This was Susannah’s take on the situation, too.

  Carolyn sipped her wine. “You’ve probably figured out that his mother is Sharon Nance. She’s been married two or three times over the years, but still goes by Nance.”

  Susannah did remember Sharon and while they’d never been friends, they’d been cordial. Sharon was hot-tempered as a teenager and had an unsavory reputation. At the age of thirteen, she’d bragged she was dating twenty-year-old men. By comparison, Susannah had lived an innocent existence. Sharon came from a single-parent home—a rarity in those days. Her mother had worked as a barmaid and now, so did Sharon.

  Susannah sighed heavily, disappointed in her daughter’s fascination with Troy. “I assumed that one date would clue Chrissie in to the fact that Troy is no prize.”

  “So she went out with him last night?”

  Susannah nodded and swallowed a sip of wine. “She was home early enough, before midnight, and claimed she’d had an amazing time—her word. But I don’t think she’d tell me if she hadn’t.”

  “Why not?” Carolyn reached for a slice of bread and then for the cheese.

  Discouraged, Susannah leaned back in her chair. She’d failed Chrissie in this situation and wasn’t proud of what she’d done, especially because she knew better. “I tried to warn Chrissie about Troy, but I might as well have saved my breath. It was a mistake to say anything because now she’s determined to prove how wrong I am.”

  “I don’t think Troy’s into hard drugs, if that’s what concerns you,” Carolyn said.

  That was reassuring. But Troy definitely looked like a recreational drug user, and leaving his job at the mill confirmed it. “I talked to my husband and he said we’ve done our best raising Chrissie and at almost twenty she’s capable of making her own decisions.”

  “And you agree?” Carolyn asked, skewering Susannah with a look. “Never having had children, I wouldn’t know.”

  “The thing is, I don’t, either,” Susannah muttered. It would’ve been so nice to spend these weeks with her daughter, just the two of them. They’d been getting along well, and the last thing she wanted now was to be at odds with Chrissie over a young man who’d be in and out of their lives within a few days.

  “What I’m finding so difficult is all of this,” Susannah said, gesturing around her. “I’m packing up my parents’ lives and discovering all these bits and pieces of my own life. For instance, Mom saved the first baby tooth I lost. I also came across a file she kept with all my school papers from first grade on. She saved everything, and I do mean everything.”

  Carolyn nodded. “I know what you mean. I didn’t pack up my mom and dad’s stuff, but I moved into their home. Everywhere I turned I was confronted by memories. It was a little eerie at first, you know?”

  Susannah did. Speaking of eerie… She leaned forward, wondering if she should say anything. “I didn’t mention this to Joe because I don’t want to alarm him. Someone’s been in the house recently.”

  Carolyn paused, her glass halfway to her mouth. “Someone’s broken into the house?”

  “No, that’s the crazy part. There’s been no obvious break-in and nothing of value is missing. Well, some old sports ribbons and baseball cards. A few other things.” She paused. “It’s happened more than once.”

  “Are you spooked?” Carolyn asked.

  “Yes, and it’s driving me crazy. Who would do that and why?”

  “Any idea?”

  Susannah just shook her head.

  Carolyn nibbled on her bread and cheese. “Do you think the spirit of your father is still here?”

  “No.” The thought appalled Susannah. “That’s not it at all. This is…different.” Susannah grew quiet in an effort to put her feelings into words. “Thursday night after meeting with you and the others, I came back here and the moment I stepped inside the house, I knew someone had been here.”

  “Wasn’t that when you found Chrissie had arrived?”

  “Yes, but I still think it’s more than that. True, Chrissie was there—but I sensed someone else had come in, too. And I’m pretty sure it happened again, maybe even today. That makes three times I know of. This afternoon, I saw that some of my father’s papers were missing. I’d just started going through his files and I’d left some stuff on his desk. Then it turned up missing. Gone.”

  “You’re sure you didn’t toss it?”

  “I’m positive. I know it was there and then it wasn’t.”

  “I believe you.”

  Her friend was silent after that. “Anything on your mind these days?” Susannah asked.

  Carolyn’s gaze flew to hers, and her face immediately reddened.

  “Carolyn?”

  She blushed even more profusely, but didn’t respond.

  “Tell me.”

  She finally began, “There’s this guy….”

  Susannah should’ve known it had to do with a man. “What guy?”

  “I’m embarrassed to say anything. His name’s Dave. He’s with Kettle Falls Landscaping and he maintains my yard and the area outside my office. I can’t stop thinking about him. At work I catch myself staring out the window, hoping for a glimpse of him.”

  “What’s the problem? Is he married?”

  She shook her head. “No, he says he’s never been married. I think…I think he might have a criminal record.”

  “Surely there’s some way you can get that information.”

  “I already looked on the Internet,” Carolyn said, then blushed again. “I couldn’t find a thing.”

  “Do you suppose he’s using an alias?”

  “I don’t know.” She shifted as if uncomfortable.

  “What makes you think he’s been in prison?” Susannah asked gently.

  “Nothing, other than the fact that he’s so private and much too beautiful never to have married or had a family.”

  Susannah smiled at her friend’s use of the word beautiful. She didn’t consider men in those terms, but apparently Carolyn did.

  “Yesterday afternoon as he left my house, I saw him glance at me—he didn’t know I could see him. Ridiculous as it sounds, I got this happy, excited feeling because he was thinking about me. I’m not sure if that’s true, but I felt it.” She brought one hand to her mouth. “I’m too old to have these kinds of feelings.”

  “As long as you’re breathing, you’re not too old. It’s wonderful that you’ve met a man who makes you feel alive.”

  “That’s not all he makes me feel.” Two red spots brightened her cheeks. She sighed. “It’s not a good idea to get involved with him.”

  “Why not?” Susannah protested. She knew Carolyn, and her friend didn’t give her heart away lightly. “You deserve happiness. It’s hard enough to find without erecting unnecessary roadblocks.”

  Still, Carolyn looked uncertain. “I don’t know what to do.”

  Susannah could understand her dilemma. “Why do an
ything? Just let it happen.”

  After a moment, a slow smile spread across Carolyn’s face. “Maybe I will,” she whispered. “Maybe I will.”

  CHAPTER 17

  Sunday morning, Susannah, Chrissie and Vivian attended the second service at Colville Christian Church, where Susannah had gone from early childhood. Several people greeted Susannah and Chrissie and offered Vivian warm hugs.

  During the sermon, her mother held her Bible in her lap. She appeared to be following intently, running her finger down a page in the Book of John. Pastor Nichols was preaching from the second chapter of James, but Susannah didn’t have the heart to correct her.

  Chrissie fidgeted throughout the service. As soon as the organist played the closing benediction, she hurried toward the door. She was waiting impatiently by the car when Susannah and her mother got to the parking lot.

  Susannah drove her mother back to Altamira, and led Vivian into the dining room for lunch. The fact that her mother was joining the other residents for meals was progress. Until Saturday, Vivian had insisted on eating in her room. Susannah wasn’t sure what had convinced her mother to reconsider but she suspected it had something to do with the fees charged to deliver meals.

  Once they were back in the car, Chrissie glanced anxiously at Susannah. “You wouldn’t mind if I took the rest of the day off, would you?”

  Before Susannah could say anything, her daughter added, “Troy and a bunch of his friends are going to Lake Roosevelt to ride Jet Skis. He invited me along.”

  “Ah…”

  “It’s Sunday. You weren’t planning on packing today, were you?”

  As a matter of fact, Susannah had decided she could use a day off. Their morning had gotten off to a late start with church. Her mother would probably rest for most of the afternoon.

  Susannah hoped to spend time with Vivian later to discuss some of the decisions that had to be made. Vivian’s mental capabilities were clearly diminished, but Susannah felt the need to talk everything over with her, although it usually turned out to be a token effort.

  “You don’t mind, do you, Mom?” Chrissie pressed.

  “I suppose that would be all right.” She didn’t bother to disguise her displeasure that Chrissie was seeing Troy Nance again.

  “You don’t like Troy, do you? You don’t even know him, but you’ve already judged him.”

  “Chrissie…”

  “I’m almost twenty years old, for heaven’s sake! I’m going to the lake this afternoon, whether you like it or not. Troy’s picking me up in twenty minutes.”

  Chrissie’s mind was already made up and Susannah wondered why her daughter had bothered to ask in the first place. The struggle between approval and independence seemed to be a difficult one for her.

  Sure enough, a few minutes later Troy drove up to the house. He climbed out of his truck as Chrissie dashed out the front door and down the front steps to join him.

  Susannah stood at the living room window, her mouth pursed with disapproval. She watched Troy grab Chrissie around the waist, then drag her to his side as if staking claim to her sleek, young body. Troy’s older pickup truck was scratched and dented, but the sound system seemed to be top of the line. It was loud enough to rattle the living room windows.

  The couple disappeared, leaving a trail of exhaust in their wake. Her instincts told her he was trouble. Where that trouble would lead her daughter, Susannah was afraid to guess.

  With Chrissie gone, the house seemed unnaturally quiet. Susannah figured she had maybe two hours during which to work or relax before returning to Altamira. She roamed around the house, looking for an unchallenging task, something that would help pass the time. She would’ve called Joe, but he and Brian had gone salmon fishing for the weekend. Joe said he felt it was important that he bond with his son, in the same way Chrissie and Susannah were doing.

  Some bond. Despite Susannah’s best efforts, most of her and Chrissie’s conversations since Friday afternoon had revolved around Troy. And most of that was Chrissie defending him.

  Walking down the hallway, Susannah paused in the doorway to her father’s office. The old mahogany desk with the filing cabinet in one corner still needed to be cleared out. Her father had been dead for seven months now and other than the drawer she’d emptied, that desk was exactly as she’d seen it the day of his funeral.

  Susannah sighed wearily. There seemed to be no better time to tackle his desk than now. She sank down in the chair where her father had routinely sat to pay bills. Opening the top drawer, she scooped up the first group of file folders. They turned out to be for the various utilities, in alphabetical order, followed by a file for the bank. It was filled with mortgage statements.

  The house had been paid off long ago, but every statement could be easily located had anyone asked. She couldn’t imagine where he’d kept the last forty years of cancelled checks and knew without a doubt that she’d stumble on them sooner or later. When she did, they’d be categorized by day, month and year.

  The desk would take her about two hours, she estimated, prepared to assume the task. With the shredder, a Christmas gift from her and Joe several years earlier, to one side, she sorted through each file.

  There seemed no good reason to hold on to all this paperwork. She flipped through the folders, giving them a cursory inspection, then shredded the contents. It was when she reached the last files in the top drawer that she discovered one marked Colville Natural Gas.

  That gave her pause, since her parents’ house wasn’t heated by natural gas.

  Sensing that she wouldn’t like what she found, she opened it to examine the contents. The first sheet appeared to be a letter of some kind, dated January 1973. Susannah’s gaze slid to the bottom of the page. She gasped.

  She quickly scanned the text, and her outrage exploded when she realized what she was reading. She vaulted to her feet.

  Her father had paid Allan Presley to leave Washington State—with Jake. In exchange for five thousand dollars cash, Mr. Presley had agreed to move a minimum of five hundred miles from Colville. Allan Presley had accepted this cash with the understanding that he and Jake would not only leave Colville, but never return.

  Even with the evidence in her hands she couldn’t accept that her father would commit such an act of betrayal. She knew Jake’s father needed money. As young as she’d been at the time, Susannah remembered Jake’s concerns about his father’s financial problems. Knowing Allan’s hand-to-mouth existence and his weakness for the bottle, her father had offered him money. He’d paid the Presleys to get Jake out of Susannah’s life. Because his father had agreed to this blackmail—and that was precisely what it was—Jake had honored his father’s word. Although he loved her—and Susannah believed that with all her heart—he’d walked away.

  Susannah crushed the sheet of paper in her fist as she fought to control her emotions. She’d known. A part of her had always known it would be something like this. Her father had been desperate to keep Jake out of her life, desperate enough to send her to Europe. Desperate enough to manipulate Jake’s life, Allan Presley’s life and that of his only daughter. It was maddening. No, it was more than that—it was wrong.

  Unable to keep this to herself a minute longer, Susannah grabbed her purse and headed out of the house, taking the signed contract with her. She’d smoothed out the crumpled paper, which was now neatly folded in her purse.

  Her irritation had settled down but her stomach continued to roil as she found a parking space in front of Altamira. She hoped her mother had managed to rest, because Susannah needed answers and she needed them now. This letter wasn’t the only thing she’d uncovered. There’d been some odd withdrawals from his bank account, too.

  To her surprise, Vivian’s door was open when she arrived. She walked in to see another woman visiting her mother.

  “Susannah,” Vivian said, her eyes smiling with happiness. “Look who’s come to see me.”

  “Hello,” Susannah said, entering the small apartment. Who
ever this woman was, she didn’t recognize her. She could only hope it wasn’t another “friend” like Eve. “I’m Susannah Nelson, Vivian’s daughter.”

  “Sally Mansfield,” the woman said. She was about the same age as her mother, but seemed more…alert. More aware.

  “I’m a friend of your mother’s cousin Judy from California. Lloyd and I were passing through the area twelve or thirteen years ago in our motor home and we went to see your parents. We’d had such a good visit with them when they drove out to California several years earlier.”

  “That was the year…” Whatever was on Vivian’s mind didn’t quite make it to her tongue.

  “You had a grandson born that year,” Sally prompted.

  “Yes, yes, the year Brian was born. Remember? Dad and I took a road trip to California that summer.”

  Susannah did recall a summer excursion, but she’d been busy at the time, with a toddler underfoot and a new baby. Her parents so rarely traveled that whenever they did, it was memorable.

  “At any rate, Lloyd and I liked this area so much when we visited that we sold everything in California and moved to Washington. We bought property about twenty miles west of here.” Her mouth turned down for a moment. “I’m afraid we got so involved with our place and our traveling that we just sort of…lost touch with your parents.”

  “Oh.”

  “Lloyd died five years ago and I’ve been alone ever since. I moved into Altamira two years back. I was absolutely delighted to learn that your mother’s living here now.”

  “I think the world of Sally,” Vivian said, grinning shyly at the other woman. “I can’t tell you how pleased I am that we’ve met up again.”

  “No more pleased than I am.” Sally gently squeezed Vivian’s hand. “I hope you’re coming down to the fireplace room for the ice-cream social this evening.”

  Vivian nodded eagerly. “I wouldn’t miss it.”

  This was exactly what Susannah had prayed would happen. She’d wanted her mother to find a friend so she wouldn’t feel isolated. Here was Sally, and already Susannah noticed a crack in her mother’s defenses.