“What’s your name?” Charity asked the girl as Dalton led her to a kitchen stool and deposited her there. Charity faced him. “Can you bring the throw from the couch? Also, Dalton, put some hot cocoa on the stove.”
His mouth dropped open. “Shall we dig out the fine china and wrap it up for her?”
Charity gave him a flat stare. “If she was here to rob me, it would have been a bust. The door to that upstairs attic is locked from the other side, and I’m pretty certain all that’s up there are boxes of junk. It was always the junk drawer of the house. Even when I was little.”
The girl’s eyes widened. “You grew up here?”
Charity nodded. “In the summers. This is my grandparents’ place. Well, now my place.”
“Cool,” the girl said.
From the stove, “Oh, for Pete’s sake.”
Charity chose to ignore Dalton. “Will you tell me your name?”
“Daisy . . . Smith.”
Charity nodded but wasn’t convinced. Quite convenient to have such a common last name.
Daisy rolled her eyes and tugged at the shoulder of her thin T-shirt. There, tattooed just below her collarbone was the name Daisy encircled by a daisy and its stem.
Charity smiled. “OK, Daisy. Will you be honest with me?”
If I can, Daisy’s eyes said.
“Were you robbing me?”
“No.”
“Was this the first time you’ve broken into my attic?”
Daisy dropped her gaze. “No.”
Charity bolted upright so quickly, it caused Daisy to throw her hands in front of her face, ninja style.
Charity clapped her hands together. “I knew it! You’re my ghost.”
Slowly, Dalton turned from the stove. The spatula was in his hand and hot cocoa dripped onto the floor. “She’s what?”
“You sneak up there sometimes, don’t you?” Charity’s heart pounded, and rather than feeling like an upset home owner, she felt slightly tugged into this girl’s world of mystery and intrigue where teens will do anything to escape their little brothers. “Is it like a hideout? You come here to get away from everyone?”
Again, the eyes dropped. “Sort of.”
“Have you ever taken anything from there that wasn’t yours?”
The girl’s young face became troubled, and one shoulder tipped. “I uh . . . I don’t know. I kind of feel like it’s all mine.”
That’s when the world shifted under Charity’s feet. Her heart dropped, her eyes widened. “Oh dear God.” A hand covered her mouth. She should have known. The dirty sandals, the long hair uneven on the edges, the hollow area below her eyes. “You’ve been living there.”
The next day, Dalton opened his cottage door to find a bright morning sun shining down on the green grass in his front yard. Maybe he needed to learn to mind his own business. He’d been a jerk to Charity last night after she’d insisted that the girl, Daisy, stay at her house. He’d spent the first half of the night tossing and turning and listening for any unusual sounds from the big house next door. Now, standing on his front porch, everything looked fine. He’d told Charity to keep her bedroom door locked and to sleep with a knife under her pillow. She’d practically laughed at him. He had to admit, mornings brought light, and light chased away the darkness, and OK, so fine. He’d probably overreacted. Still, he’d keep an eye on the girl who was undoubtedly a runaway. He knew the cost of not being careful.
He inhaled the morning air and turned his attention to his own musings. This was the kind of day a man could spend on a boat. The Barlows had a deep-sea fishing boat they wanted to sell. He’d taken it out on a few occasions, and if he was going to live here, live here for good, he’d up and buy it from them.
But he wasn’t going to live here for good, he reminded himself. This was just a stop-off on his way back home, figuratively speaking. There was a business and an impatient brother waiting for him, all in Jacksonville.
He took a step into the perfect tropical morning with the sea breeze sneaking around the sides of the cottage and seagulls darting overhead, making their way to the shoreline on the opposite side of his house. One more step, and his foot tapped against something sitting on the front porch. His gaze trailed down and landed on a box. A flash of heat swept up over his head and bolted down his spine as if its very intent was to rip away the calm island morning and replace it with something else. He didn’t have to look at the return address to know that the box had been sent by his brother-in-law and that it contained items belonging to his wife and daughter.
Dalton took several deep breaths, hoping for some form of equilibrium. His hands were trembling when he reached down and gathered the box in his arms.
Once inside, Dalton placed it on the table and grabbed the nearest kitchen knife. His heart beat wildly, and he knew he needed to slow its rhythm before going further, but the motion seemed impossible. He slit the edges of tape and folded back the sides of the box.
When his eyes fell on Kissy’s favorite blanket, the same heart stopped. There, in the box, as if swaddling the other objects, rested his baby girl’s pink-and-blue blanket. He’d planned to bury it with her but hadn’t been able to find the soft, fuzzy thing, though he’d torn the house apart looking. That had been the first time he’d broken down, really broken down. That night, as if he’d let his little girl down, he’d curled up on the floor of her room and cried himself to sleep. It was the first and only opportunity he’d gotten to do that. Early the next morning, his parents had arrived with the same bewildered look he’d had since getting the news. Once his folks were there—Melinda had been like their own daughter—all his energy had gone into making sure his mom, with her heart condition, and his dad, with his eighteen years of sobriety, were OK.
Slowly, Dalton reached into the box, his fingers closing around the cool cloth. The motion caused a whoosh of boxed air to surge up to him. It still smelled like her. Fresh and summer and little girl. One corner was tattered from Kissy dragging the blanket around. Its edges frayed. He held it against his cheek as the tidal wave of memories came. Already he understood why it took his brother-in-law so long to get these items to him.
Cheeks wet with tears, Dalton folded back the side of the box that had reclosed itself as if it knew things of this nature must be revealed in layers. Light flooded the box, and his eyes couldn’t decide where to land—the contents a mishmash of things they’d left behind on their last trip to visit Melinda’s brother and family, only two weeks before she and Kissy died. There was a hat Melinda had purchased at a fruit stand resting beside a folded cloth shopping bag. One of Kissy’s dolls and a coin purse of Melinda’s. He withdrew the hat and held it against his chest. Melinda always kept a hat nearby while doing garden work—which was a lot of the time. On this visit, she’d planted a rose garden for their sister-in-law. Dalton had wanted to help, but she’d told him it was a project for the girls and for him and her brother to stay out of their way. It was the last project she’d completed. Dalton squeezed his eyes shut as if the motion would force the agony from his aching body. His soul was empty. His heart, shattered.
How the pain could still be so raw, so fresh, he didn’t understand. It was like opening a door that had been closed and being propelled inside a room where the walls seeped with sorrow. In that moment, the hurt was as fresh and real as the day he’d buried them. How was that possible? Wasn’t time supposed to heal? Some days he did all right. But out of the blue, something could take him right back to that moment, the moment he knew he’d live the rest of his life without his wife and child, and there was no warning, no premonition that he’d be emotionally wrecked all over again. Sorrow had more power than it should.
The last item he withdrew from the box was a tiny pair of hiking boots. Melinda had bought them for Kissy when they were going to walk a trail leading to a waterfall. Floridians rarely owned hiking boots, but in northern Georgia, rocky climbs were common for outdoor types like Melinda’s brother and sister-in-law. They’d all w
orn jeans and sweatshirts and hiked the mountain trail. He remembered looking over at Melinda when she’d stepped into the sunshine where the surging waterfall lit her profile. He’d fallen in love with her all over again that day. Her mouth open and the mountain wind working its fingers through her hair. She’d laughed when he slipped on a rock and almost landed in the water. If he closed his eyes tight enough, he could still hear her voice, the laughter like bells. But with time, the sound was growing faint. Would it one day be gone? Perhaps that was the price you paid for healing.
He swiped his eyes and lifted the boots from the box. Scuffed toes, red cord laces. A tiny sound escaped his mouth as he reached inside one of the boots to find a wadded pink lace sock in the toe. He pulled it from the boot, wrinkled. It still had the imprint of his daughter’s foot. Dalton pulled a few more breaths, but they were shaky, broken, and he knew if he didn’t step away he might die right there. He set the boots on his table and took a step back, hands scrubbing at his face as if he could erase the emotions. He’d placed one of the boots too close to the edge, and gravity dragged it forward. In slow motion he watched the boot tumble end over end, the red laces streaks of crimson trying to catch up. It landed and left small clumps of dried mud in a splatter pattern on his kitchen floor. He knelt, eyes focused on the dirt. Some of the pieces still held the shape of the tread on the bottom of the boots.
He started to clean up the mess, but tears got in his way. Oxygen couldn’t seem to reach his brain. Dalton grew light-headed. He swayed. His hand fisted, filled with clumps of dirt. With more force than he thought he possessed, he hammered his fist into the floor. Pain instantly shot up from his digits to his wrist and into his forearm.
He’d spent his life planting things in the dirt. With Melinda at his side, they’d dug thousands of holes and placed multitudes of plants, flowers, shrubs. They’d planted life. Never had he expected he’d place his wife and child in the ground. Where there was no life for them, where the nutrient-rich soil would erode away at them rather than help them grow. Unable to stand the pressure in the room any longer, Dalton rushed out the back door. He had no destination, but he knew he had to leave, or the sorrow was going to grow arms and legs and a mouth and swallow him whole. Through blurry eyes, he saw green swaying to the left of him. A giant sanctuary of moving limbs. A cadence like the rustling of strips of satin on the wind murmured against his ears. The muffled crackling grew with each breath of sea air. The willow tree. Feathery leaves reached toward him. Without slowing, he angled toward it as if the tree had beckoned him. His feet moved in a dream, one step after another until he was there, at the edge of the towering giant. With the sun on his back, Dalton parted the branches and stepped inside.
CHAPTER 9
Weeping
It was eerily quiet under the willow tree. Even the sound of the beach beyond was muffled to a whisper. Air left his lungs slowly as the wind tickled against the swaying branches, creating a sort of lullaby that made him want to lie down, made him want to sleep. Knees locked, he stood firm, but in the muted quiet and sighing of the branches, Dalton found himself swaying from side to side, moving with the tree, like a man caught in the waves, swept by each rise and fall of the ocean. Something tugged on his hand. He glanced down to see one of Kissy’s boots dangling from his fingers, caught by one of the red laces. He cradled the boot. “I’m so sorry, Kissy.” His voice was barely audible, broken words filled with too much breath. “Daddy couldn’t protect you from everything.”
Dalton dropped to his knees and wept.
He didn’t know how long he’d been there when he felt the first gentle droplets of rain. Beyond the veil of the tree, he couldn’t hear the storm, but fat drops landed on him, first on his head, then his shoulders and neck. It was cool. It was cleansing, and though he hadn’t opened his eyes yet, he stayed there and let the water fall. Within a couple of minutes, his hair was drenched, so he tilted his face back and let the water land where tears had been only moments before. There’d always been something cleansing about the rain. He drew in the rich, fresh scent of moistened earth and let it replace the scent of memory he’d been clinging to since opening the box. His shoulders were soaked, and Kissy’s boot sat on the ground somewhere nearby. With each passing moment, his heart calmed, his soul transforming into a pliable clay from the hard, crusty clump it had been. He felt like one of Charity’s pottery pieces, an earthen vessel being molded, altered, and made into something useful. Masterful hands working with steady movements readying to place him in a kiln.
A chill ran the length of his body—invasive, growing talons and clawing its way through him. Dalton’s eyes flew open. But there was no threat, just giant globs of water too thick to see through. In the gray haze around him, his eyes landed on Kissy’s boot. Rain filled the opening, and the laces stretched out as if they’d been placed. He started to reach for the boot, but something stopped him. Where his skin had started to shiver, a warmth rushed over him like he’d opened the oven on Thanksgiving Day, and all the heat had surged out. The gooseflesh disappeared. The droplets changed from giant beads to tiny ones, fragmented by an invisible screen. Dalton had never in his life experienced such a fast shift in weather temperature, and though it begged his mind to question, he couldn’t muster the energy. Something was happening. Something deep within him, and it was more important than an impending tornado—which was the only thing he could imagine able to cause such quick temperature changes. That’s when he realized the warmth wasn’t coming from outside; it felt like it was coming from him. From the inside out, he was heating the space around him.
He tried to focus on the world beyond the tree. Just for a moment, he needed to see the real world because everything about this was strange. Wonderful but strange. Like he’d stepped into a fairy tale. Like the real world waited just beyond the veil of willow branches. Without planning to stand, Dalton was suddenly on his feet. He took two steps and reached out to hold the branches aside. There, beyond the willow, the sun shone gloriously on the beach. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky.
Dalton dropped the branches and looked up at the towering tree above him. Arches and curves created a perfect sanctuary over his head, and there, the rain continued to fall.
Sometimes it’s in the most unsettling moments that the mind has the clearest thoughts. Dalton held a hand out and watched as the drops landed on his palm. He lifted the hand to his mouth and tasted. Saline.
“The tree is weeping.” The words left his mouth simply. No fear in them, no curiosity. As if deep in his heart he somehow knew, somehow understood that of course the tree would weep for him. After all, he’d lost his whole world. The tears slowed, and now the sun was able to shine dappled light through the willow’s branches. The heat from the sun was warm and powerful. His hand fell to his chest, where a new fluttering sensation stole his attention. His shoulders rose and fell. The weight of despair was gone. Not pushed aside, not hidden in a room in his heart, gone.
It hadn’t been the pain and sorrow of losing his wife and child that had nearly made life unbearable. It had been the despair. The despair never left, never gave him rest, and it had never been far from the surface of his soul.
His hand ran from the pit of his belly up to his chest and back. The despair was gone. Dalton picked up the boot, and tears from the tree sloshed inside as he walked to the edge of the willow. “Thank you,” he said.
But the tree didn’t answer. It stood steadfast, gently moving in the coastal breeze. When Dalton stepped from under the tree, he realized that his clothes were still wet, but the tears were gone from the boot. The sun heated his skin, and his soul felt lighter. It was a glorious freedom he hadn’t even known existed or could exist after losing Melinda and Kissy. Their names brought the memories. And the memories usually brought the despair, but not now. Now, though the pain of their loss was still there, he could think of them with the tiniest seed of hope.
He took a couple of steps away, then turned to the tree. “Thank you,” he said again. D
alton heard a snapping sound and then a muffled scraping. He ran around the side of the tree, where branches moved apart because of the breeze. He got to the spot just as one of the tree’s branches landed with a thud. “No, no, no,” he whispered. His gaze went from the fallen branch to the climbing vines he hadn’t noticed before. They threatened to choke the life from the tree. His eyes took in the overloaded branches and the weeds spreading out from the trunk, all stealing the nutrients from the willow. “No.” His free hand went to one of the long branches, and he stroked it like one would a horse’s neck. “Don’t worry. I’ll save you. I swear.”
Charity had slept well knowing that her ghost was a teen runaway now resting in one of her upstairs bedrooms. Charity had just made coffee when Uncle Harold arrived. She watched from her front porch as he pulled into her driveway. Early June offered a balmy atmosphere, but the breeze off the gulf replaced the mugginess with salty sea air. She smiled and waved. This time, he’d brought two suitcases and his own car.
She carried Harold’s things to his room and returned to find him in the kitchen. “Will you stay longer this visit?” Hope filled each word.
“I suspect.” He turned from her and poured the coffee. “If you’ll have me.”
There was more to that comment, she knew. Maybe it had to do with her gramps and Harold’s falling-out. It seemed a sensitive subject that closed him off and pinched the corners of his eyes. The last thing Charity wanted to do was cause him more pain. Besides, the letter from her gramps forgave whatever happened between them. If it was good enough for Gramps, it was good enough for her.
“Let’s have Dalton over for dinner,” Charity said.
“I can go to town in a bit and pick up some fixin’s. How would that be?” Harold sat at the kitchen island across from her.
Charity nodded. “There’s a girl staying with me. Very sweet but . . . kind of . . . standoffish.”
In the Light of the Garden: A Novel Page 14