After making coffee and listening as the water ran in the powder room near the kitchen, Charity took two mugs from the cupboard. Her fingers glided over the smooth pottery—perfection, forged by Gramps. Her work was never so smooth, so exact. She was heavy-handed, at best. Not the clay-whisperer her gramps had been.
Uncle Harold met her in the kitchen and sat at the butcher-block island. Neither of them drank the coffee. “The old home place looks good, Charity, You’ve taken care of it.”
She shook her head. “I’ve only been here a little over a week. Gramps was the one.”
Harold’s gaze dropped to the mug. “How long has he been gone?” The words caught in his throat, and Charity cleared hers as if that might help.
“A little over four weeks.”
Harold shook his head, aging blue eyes meeting hers. “No. That can’t be.” His look was faraway, eyes darting back and forth over the crown molding anchoring the ceiling to the wall behind her. He brushed a hand over his face and withdrew the letter from his pants pocket.
Curiosity caused Charity to tip forward in an attempt to read the envelope. She couldn’t from her distance.
Harold tapped the letter. “It’s impossible, Charity. The letter only reached my mailbox a week ago, and the postdate is from a few days before that. I dug it out this morning.”
“And you believe it’s from Gramps?” Her hands tightened around the mug. “What’s in the letter, Uncle Harold?”
Harold slid the envelope closer, a sad, protective motion to cling to what was already lost. “He wanted to reconcile.”
Charity remembered hearing that there had been a feud between Gramps and Harold all those years ago. But a letter sent from her gramps after he’d passed? No, that was impossible. And surely Harold hadn’t meant reconcile from the fight way back then. “How long has it been since you were here?”
He looked away, focusing his attention on the floor as if it were the only place he had a right to look. “Twenty years.”
Gramps and Harold hadn’t spoken for that long? What on earth had brought such a close relationship to that? Then again, she’d watched her mother quarrel with a friend, a neighbor, and dramatically say she’d never speak to the woman again. And she hadn’t. It was as if she’d cut the woman away from the fabric of her existence. But Gramps wasn’t like her mother. At least she didn’t think so.
“What happened, Uncle Harold?”
He shook his head, stress playing against the wrinkles of his face, causing them to deepen. “I made a mistake, Charity. A terrible mistake, and George never forgave me for it. At least not until I got the letter.” There was so much sorrow on his shoulders, Charity decided to put the pieces together on her own and not question him further. She recalled Harold being there when she was eleven. He had been going into business as a dance instructor, and she remembered her gramps giving him lots of advice about business and money.
“I didn’t deserve forgiveness. It happened the year your grandma died. He . . . was never the same after that.”
“So you spoke to him? But you two didn’t reconcile?”
Harold shook his head. “I tried to speak to him, especially in the first few years. He wouldn’t answer my calls at first; then he got where he’d answer, but I could hear it in his voice. My calling only hurt him more. About six years ago, I quit calling at all. Figured it was best.”
She knew her gramps hadn’t been the same after Gram died. He’d even stopped asking her to come visit for the summers. “He didn’t talk much to me on the phone, either. It always seemed like a chore for him. Mom and I moved to New York, so it was more difficult to see Gramps. I missed him, but what I really missed was how he’d been before Gram died. And that made me feel guilty.”
He patted her hand. “You were a child. But you always were one to carry more responsibility than you should. Your momma? She doing OK?”
“She’s fine.” Charity rolled her shoulders in an attempt to loosen the tight muscles. “Back then I’d hoped we’d move closer to Gramps, not farther away. Sometimes I wonder if she moved us to New York to get back at him.”
Harold frowned. “Why would she do that?”
“She wanted him to turn all his finances over to her.” The words tasted vile in her mouth, but she’d long ago stopped making excuses for her mother.
“What? Why would she do that?”
Charity shrugged. “She said Gramps was in shock, that he needed help. He refused to turn anything over to her, and we packed and left.”
Harold reached over and patted Charity’s hand. “Your momma isn’t a bad person, she’s just—”
Charity could see him searching for words to soften the cold truth. “Self-centered? Narcissistic? Out for No. 1?”
His head dipped. “It’s not my place to say.”
“It’s OK, Harold. I know what she is. And I know—in her own way—she loved Gramps. She even loves me.”
He smiled, the years of hard-learned lessons highlighting his wrinkles. “People can’t give what they don’t have. But your momma loves you, I’m sure of it.”
“It’s nice to know someone understands.” A long exhale left Charity’s mouth. “For a family who loves so deeply, we sure have a way of messing things up.”
Harold chuckled. It was good to see him smile, to see his teeth rather than the worry and concern of a straight, colorless mouth. Like her gramps, his eyes twinkled when he grinned. An ache settled deep in her chest. Having Harold here was one of the best gifts she could have hoped for. It was also one of the most painful.
“So, you still don’t know what’s in the letter?” Dalton had dark dirt under his fingernails when he’d shown up at her house. He’d been as excited as a schoolboy with a get-out-early card. He’d rambled on and on about the plants he’d purchased, but Charity had split her time between thinking she really needed to brush up on her local flora and fauna and wondering if Harold was settling into his room or sneaking out. Her uncle had been exhausted after their conversation, and she’d told him to rest upstairs while she got something for dinner. But Dalton had arrived just as she was going to the market. It hadn’t taken him more than five minutes to realize something was wrong.
For whatever reason she couldn’t explain, she launched into the whole thing, even how good and strange it was to look at Harold and see glimpses of her gramps. Also, that he was carrying a mysterious letter presumably from her gramps.
She plopped onto a concrete bench in the backyard, where Dalton had placed his day’s findings. Already, the garden was taking shape. She purposely sat so that she couldn’t see the willow. “I have no idea what’s in the letter, except that Gramps wanted to reconcile.”
“Wow, and I thought my day had been strange.”
Charity leaned back, resting her hands flat on the warm concrete. Dalton sat on the ground a few feet away, still examining the plants he’d acquired on the mainland. “What do you mean?”
He was elbow high in a bush speckled with tiny purple flowers when he stopped digging to look up at her. His eyes took on the purple hue, causing them to seem unearthly. They were beautiful eyes, she realized.
Dalton rubbed a hand over his forehead, leaving a swipe of rich, dark earth along his hairline. “I got a call from my brother-in-law. He wants to send me a package here. He had some things at his house that belonged to Melinda and Kissy.”
Something in Charity’s stomach dropped. She’d once rode the fastest elevator in New York and had been forewarned that from the top floor going down, it feels as if everything inside you is falling. She felt that now as she mouthed the word, “Kissy?”
Dalton paled. Slowly his gaze went to the shoreline that was far off but adjacent to where he sat on his knees huddled over a flowering bush and where she faced him, perched on a concrete bench. The breeze played in the long strands of greenery housing the small purple flowers. “Kissy was my daughter.”
Charity’s heart dropped. She suddenly hated the word was.
“
She was with my wife when . . . when—”
The invisible punch to her stomach caused Charity to come off the bench. “I’m so sorry.” Before she could stop herself, Charity was on her knees, face-to-face with the man who’d suffered more than anyone should, yet who chose to resurrect a neighbor’s garden rather than wallow in his pain. “Dalton.” She reached right over the bush and touched his shoulder. He was warm beneath his shirt, though his heart was likely a frozen clump of dead coral. “I’m so, so sorry.” The thought swirled in her mind . . . losing not only one’s soul mate but also one’s child. Though she had no children of her own, she couldn’t imagine anything hurting more than that. She dropped her hand from him and stared down at her fingers—such a pitiful excuse for a condolence. When she felt the onset of tears, she blinked rapidly, small purple flowers dancing on the greenery. She bent at the waist and sniffed. “I like these,” she forced from a tight throat.
When her eyes met his, Dalton was smiling. It was faint, barely there, but a smile, no doubt. “They’re fragrant.”
She nodded, breathing deeply and letting that scent enter her body. “Then plant them where I can smell them as I sit in the garden.” Floral sweetness mingled with all the other smells around them—the rich soil; the salty air, which always held the faint scent of fish; and Dalton. He was still looking at her, and for some, the moment might have seemed awkward, the two of them hovering over a bush and sniffing the world around them, but it wasn’t awkward. It was right. In Charity’s thirty-one years, she’d come to understand something. Some moments were golden; they were designed and orchestrated by an invisible hand, and they were meant to be more than moments. They were meant to be memories.
“You’ll find them most fragrant in the morning,” he whispered as if he understood her need to relish this span of time where he’d brought her flowers and inadvertently told her a precious secret, something she was sure he withheld from most strangers, that he’d said good-bye to his wife and child on the same day.
She knew she’d remember it always. How her heart shattered for Dalton. The touch of early-evening sun on her cheek, the feel of the thick grass around her, the streaks of sun in Dalton’s hair, the fact that on a floor above them, her uncle rested. It was as if Gramps kept giving her gifts. First the house, then the garden—the place Dalton was beautifying layer by layer—and now her uncle Harold. Maybe Dalton was a gift, too. Someone who understood pain. Someone who understood loss and regret. When she’d first arrived at Baxter House, she’d felt like she was trying to capture a reflection. Gramps was gone. She saw him everywhere and yet nowhere. He’d become the echo at the end of a cistern, a sound that reverberated back, though its source was long past. Now she felt like each and every new day had the potential of offering a little more lightning in a bottle. Gramps really was everywhere. Maybe she’d finally learned to look for him. She pointed to the gazebo that sat near the center of the garden and offered a perfect view of the Gulf. “There.”
Dalton followed her gaze.
Charity found herself smiling. “Right there is where I’ll sit and have my morning coffee.”
“Good, because that’s exactly where I’d planned to put these.” He went back to work, his hands digging into the dirt.
Charity returned to the concrete bench, satisfied to watch him. There was something calming about the way his fingertips roamed over the plants, touching, testing their soil, removing the dead flowers. She gasped when he ran a pocket knife around the inside of a black plastic container and lifted the entire plant, roots, dirt, and all out of the pot.
He stopped, the plant dangling in midair like the carnage from an ax murderer, bits of dirt—the plant’s life source—dropping onto the ground. “This one is going beside the house. I’ve already got the spot ready.”
She supposed she should close her mouth lest a seagull fly inside it. Was that how Gram had handled plants? She couldn’t recall. It seemed violent from the man who so lovingly stroked the leaves and flower petals.
“By the house,” he repeated, brows rising. “Is that OK?”
She nodded, closing her mouth. “Do you always just yank them out of the pot like that?”
He chuckled. “Pretty much. Sometimes you have to cut away some of the roots.” With that, he showed her the bottom of the black container where stringy white roots clung to the pot.
She nodded. “OK. I’ll leave you to it. I gotta run to the market and grab something for dinner.” She watched as he walked to the back of the house.
He was just placing the plant in a hole beside the corner of the sleeping porch when he looked back at her. “Dinner?”
“Well, I’d planned on grilled cheese and strawberries.”
He winced. “Not together, I hope.”
“No, but when I was in town yesterday, the farmer’s market had these beautiful fresh strawberries. They’re half the size of my fist.” Her mouth watered at the thought. “Anyway, I have company now, so . . .” Her shrug filled in the blanks.
“Listen.” He placed the plant in the hole and returned to her while dusting the earth from his hands. “I caught some snapper yesterday. It’s more than I can eat. Why don’t I bring some over for you two?”
A bumblebee buzzed past the side of his head, causing Dalton to duck, swat in a halfhearted manner, then grin when the bee settled on a flower bud at his feet. Why his gesture defeated Charity’s common sense, she couldn’t say. But it had. And before she could think twice, the image of Dalton at her dinner table overwhelmed her better judgment. “Only if you’ll join us.”
He stilled. Eyes the color of ivy in the sunshine considered her. “I wouldn’t want to impose.”
Ah. He thought it was a pity offer. In light of their discussion about his wife and daughter, she figured he was used to disingenuous offers of meals. The fact saddened her to the core because he really was a nice man, and nice men shouldn’t have to feel as though people only wanted them around for the purpose of making themselves feel better . . . like they’d done some gloriously charitable deed. She cocked a hip. “That’s silly, Dalton.”
Dalton held her gaze. “I’ll just drop the fish off in about an hour.”
But Charity wasn’t ready to give up on him. “My gram had an award-winning recipe for grilled snapper. Most delicious snapper you’ve ever tasted. I swear, it’ll ruin you.”
He remained silent.
“Please come.”
Dalton chewed the inside of his cheek, his hands firmly splayed on his hips. “OK. Shall I bring over some ears of corn for the grill as well?”
She nodded. “Three.”
A muscle in his cheek twitched. “Three it is.”
“And I promise not to burn anything.” She tapped her index finger to her chin. “I mean I promise to try to not burn anything.”
“See you in an hour.” Dalton walked home. As soon as he closed his door, Charity spun from her spot and headed inside, praying her gram’s recipe was somewhere in the kitchen.
Before she could tear apart the drawers on the hunt, there was a knock at the front door. She passed the hallway and gave the library a half glance. Maybe Gram had a recipe book on the shelf somewhere. Charity pulled the door open to find a roundish woman in a floral print dress and high heels. Her hair was piled on her head in a loose bun with strands of gray running in zigzags across it. A chubby hand reached up to wrangle the faded strawberry locks. Tangerine lips smiled, and when they did, Charity noticed that a swath of the orangey color had found its way to her two front teeth.
“Are you Charity Baxter?” A pumpkin-shaped face held eyes that seemed too small for the space. But they were kind eyes, dark in color, and if Charity wasn’t mistaken, hopeful.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Perfect.” The woman strode inside as if invited, and this caused Charity’s warning bells to toll. “Can I . . . can I help you?”
The woman turned to face her. “I’d like to place an order.” She leaned forward so close, Charity could smell
the faint hint of failing perfume and sweat. “A special order. My name is Gloria Parker.” Each word was spoken carefully. Deliberately.
When Charity didn’t answer, the woman glanced around the foyer. “This is George Baxter’s house?”
But she said it as if she already knew and was informing Charity of the fact. “Yes, ma’am.”
“And you do pottery pieces. Just as he did?”
Well, no. In fact, her work wasn’t nearly what his had been. “Yes. Pottery.” That was all she could declare without feeling like a fraud.
“I was under the impression you’d continue his work.”
Her gramps had done special orders on the island and even a few on the mainland for years. And yes, Charity wanted to, but she’d never expected her first client to show up without any solicitation.
“I’m interested in dinnerware.” The woman folded her hands in front of her. “Something simple, not too ornate. A lovely neutral color. I was thinking taupe with a heavy glaze.”
Dinnerware. Oh wow. This could be a fabulous way to launch her island pottery business. Would the woman want a setting for ten? Twelve? A full set? Including platters and salad bowls and perhaps even drinkware?
“You can do that, right?”
Charity realized she hadn’t answered. “Yes. Yes, of course. What size setting were you looking for?”
The woman’s thinly drawn brows dipped. “Not an entire setting. A plate.”
All the fun of inventing a unique set of dishes evaporated. “A single plate?” She tried not to sound disappointed, but her voice betrayed her.
“Yes, dear. It’s very important to me.” The brows—like miniature chopsticks drawn carefully above her eyes—rose until the woman’s face resembled a child’s. Someone who was standing at the window of a candy store but wasn’t strong enough to pull the door open and step inside. Her eyes went misty for a moment, and she stepped away from Charity to look out the front window where palm branches swayed in the breeze. The woman’s car, some type of large white sedan, sat in the driveway. “I’d hoped you could help me.”
In the Light of the Garden: A Novel Page 8