In the Light of the Garden: A Novel

by Heather Burch

  In the end, she remembered that certain things had to be taken on faith. Like the hope she held that her mother could be a better person if she had the right motivation. Like the fact that Uncle Harold was harboring secrets, and in time, he’d share them with her. One thing Charity knew was the weight of secrets. But after Harold collapsed when she’d admitted the truth about her gram’s death, Charity decided to trust that he would come to her when he was ready.

  The house was quiet, like a mother who’d just tucked in her sleepy child. Daisy had turned in early. The girl had only been there a few weeks but seemed to be catching up on a year’s worth of sleep. Then again, Daisy wasn’t fond of Dalton, and she’d made a speedy exit when Charity told her he was coming over that night. She’d been steering clear of him since that first day when Charity had her bring her stuff—what little she had—from the attic and move it into a room on the second floor. Charity didn’t believe Daisy actually disliked Dalton, but he’d been the one to catch her. She held a distrust that radiated from her body language whenever he entered the room. That lack of trust vibrated from Daisy’s eyes, the blue in them turning to steel and narrowing whenever Dalton came near her.

  Daisy would come around. Charity was certain of it. She was a frightened young girl who might have a good reason not to trust men. Soon enough, the two of them would be friends.

  Harold and Dalton were already friends. From the first night they’d met in her kitchen, the two had quickly bonded. Charity’s life was feeling fuller with Daisy and Harold staying there. She hoped it would remain like this. But sadly, she knew that the one constant life promised was change.

  Uncle Harold had turned in for the night, too, and Charity was glad she’d be alone with Dalton for this conversation. This was something she needed to do. It was time to talk about what happened under the weeping tree when she was eleven. Because maybe, just maybe, she had it all wrong.

  He arrived, and they made tea, then sat down in the parlor.

  She wrung her hands as she told him her story about the weeping tree. From the funeral to the garden ax to feeling like the tree had stolen part of her soul, all of it poured out of her.

  “I noticed some pockmarks on the trunk.”

  “Difficult to chop a tree with an ax the size of a steak knife.”

  It was warm in the parlor. She’d moved the settee so that it sat beneath the window, where sunlight could land on her in the day, and a dark blanket of heavy curtains could frame her at night. She’d grown to love both the parlor and the library in the passing weeks as she’d found so many treasures in each. First Gram’s recipe box, then a stash of Gramps’s cinnamon sticks. He was forever chewing on them from the day he’d decided to quit tobacco. She’d also found the tobacco stash hidden behind a dog-eared edition of Poe.

  Dalton sat beside her, his elbow propped on the arm of the settee. “That had to be really scary and confusing for a child.”

  She shrugged. “The tree took my grandmother because I didn’t trim the branches. Then it stole a part of my heart.” That’s what she’d believed for all these years.

  He leaned toward her. “It didn’t steal part of your heart; it just took your guilt away.”

  “It was mine to carry.”

  “So, you resurrected it on your own.”

  “What?” Charity’s hands dropped to her lap.

  “The tree took your guilt, but over time, you replaced it with new guilt about your grandmother’s death.”

  Of course she had. “Like I said, it was my burden to carry. I didn’t want it to go away—”

  “Because it kept you company.”

  Her mouth dropped open. He was right. Guilt was her companion, her closest friend. It was the only thing that understood.

  Dalton lightly placed a hand over hers. “Charity, I get it.” His voice was whisper soft as if he knew the dangers of waking the demons in the room. “Believe me, I get it.”

  No. He didn’t . . .

  Dalton drew a breath. “When Melinda and Kissy were murdered—”

  The world faded. Suddenly, there was no oxygen to fill her lungs. He hadn’t said—

  Then, he said it again. “When they were murdered, I was gone. Out of town. I could have come on home, and it wouldn’t have happened.”

  She couldn’t breathe. Spots appeared and disappeared before her eyes. But something deep within clawed through the haze. Her hand reached out and grabbed his. “Dalton, I had no idea.”

  “I do understand how you feel. How you felt that day. Melinda and Kissy walked into a convenience store during a robbery. The robbers panicked, opened fire. It wouldn’t have happened if I’d been home. She wouldn’t have even been in that part of town.”

  Charity lifted his hand to her cheek.

  “I was on the phone with her before she stopped at the store. She’d gone across town to pick up a computer from my mom’s house. I was supposed to have gotten it a week before but kept forgetting.”

  “Oh, Dalton.” She pressed his hand against her cheek as if the motion could lift some of the pain.

  “A retired policeman with a firearm slipped into the store and shot the two thieves before they could escape.”

  Still holding his hand, Charity clamped her fingers more tightly on his, to let him know he wasn’t alone.

  “The police chief in Jacksonville was a friend of mine. He knew where I was. He had the local police come to notify me. They arrived at my hotel room at eleven twenty-six. My brother, Warren, arrived two hours later to bring me home.”

  “Here I am going on about a legend and a tree when you’ve been facing this. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what else to say, and those words fall pitifully short.”

  He withdrew his hand from hers, and she thought he’d stand and move away from her. Instead, he used the same hand to trail her cheek. “Loss is loss. Whether we’re eleven or thirty-five. The pain is still the same. And it’s debilitating if we allow it to consume us. But if we let forgiveness work . . .”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know how you’ve been able to forgive what they did.”

  “I had to forgive myself, Charity. For not being there. For not protecting them. If we don’t forgive ourselves, we’re ruined, and we’re no good to anyone.”

  She tried to take that in, tried to absorb it.

  Dalton gave her a weak smile and reached to pick up his teacup. “Unforgiveness is an anchor. It will tie you to the pain with a chain too thick to break. It will wind around your neck and drown you in the very water you need to navigate. I don’t understand how the tree took my despair, but it did. It interceded for me, cried tears that eroded the unforgiveness in my heart. For you, it took your guilt.” He took a sip.

  Charity thought back to that day so long ago. For the first time ever, she could think of the memory and not have hate in her gut. “I remember a branch falling to the ground after I stepped out. I’d hoped the whole tree would collapse one branch at a time.”

  “A branch fell off after I’d been under the tree, too.”

  “What does that mean?” Charity squeezed her upper arms; she was suddenly cold.

  “I don’t know. Maybe it gives life but has to give up something in return.”

  She nodded and ignored the part of her brain that reminded her this was a tree for heaven’s sake.

  “I want to tend the tree, Charity. Will you let me do that?”

  A tree with the power to take someone’s deepest pain and turn it into something good. If Dalton was right—and somewhere in her heart she knew he was—the tree was a gift. Yes, she had no choice but to let him tend the tree. “OK.”

  “I understand why you were afraid of it.”

  “I understand why you have faith in it.”

  They sat in silence for a few long moments while the house cradled them in their new revelation. Dalton leaned back. “It’s quiet. Since Daisy and Harold came, seems like there’s always noise in the house.”

  Charity nodded and reached for her cup but
knew the tea had already gone cold.

  A half smile tilted his cheek. “You love it, don’t you?”

  She nodded again.

  Dalton placed his tea on the side table. “But Charity, things probably aren’t going to stay like this. You know that, right?”

  “I don’t see why not.” She drew her bottom lip between her teeth and bit down.

  “Daisy has been here for three weeks and you haven’t even tried to find out where she came from or if anyone is looking for her.”

  Irritation skated over Charity’s flesh. “She’s eighteen. She doesn’t have to answer to anyone.”

  Dalton leaned toward her, the chandelier light above dancing in his soft, green eyes. “So she says. What if she’s lying? You’d be harboring a runaway. That’s something the law takes seriously.”

  But Daisy wasn’t lying. At least, Charity didn’t think she was. But who was she kidding? She had her doubts about how much truth was in Daisy’s admissions about her name and actual age. Not that it mattered that much to Charity. She understood what it meant to have a parent who was unbearable. If that was Daisy’s case, she’d take on the law if she had to.

  “Listen, somewhere out there, she has parents. If she truly is eighteen, then they have no power to make her go home if she doesn’t want to. She has parents, Charity. Don’t they at least deserve to know she’s alive?”

  That’s when it hit her, Dalton’s desire to contact the parents. He’d lost a child. He’d suffered the torture that Daisy’s family might be going through. Charity had only seen things from the child’s perspective; Dalton was seeing it from a father’s. What if he was right? Reluctantly, she agreed. “OK. I’ll try to get some information from her and see what I can do.”

  “Thanks.” He drew her into a hug. Something she hadn’t expected but at the same time was delighted by because now she and Dalton shared something far greater than the pain that had driven them both here to the island. They shared hope, fresh and blooming, as green and lush as the garden Dalton had resurrected, as surprising as the weeping tree that anchored the edge of her yard and watched over them all.

  “So, I used your laptop and Googled weeping willow legends, and I found nothing about trimming the branches and someone dying,” Daisy said and popped a potato chip into her mouth.

  They’d just cleaned up from breakfast, and already Daisy was dipping into the potato chip bag. Teenagers.

  Charity scrubbed the sink with a scouring pad.

  “I searched everywhere.” Daisy crunched another chip. “I’m talking a lengthy search.”

  Charity sighed. Last night at dinner, the whole story had unfolded for Uncle Harold and Daisy while they all ate steak and potatoes. It was a relief to know the details were finally out in the open. Like when you’re a child, and you’re terrified of lizards until someone hands you one, and you realize it has no power to hurt you.

  But she’d tired of the constant inquisition from Daisy and had sent her on an errand right after breakfast to gather all the hurricane preparedness items she could find throughout the house. Hurricane Erika—which had been Tropical Storm Erika until yesterday—was headed their direction.

  “So, who told you the legend?” Daisy was relentless in her quest. “Are you sure you didn’t make it up yourself?”

  Charity spun from the sink to look at her. “Make it up?”

  Daisy shrugged. “You were a kid, right? I’m just saying that I did an exhaustive search online and nada.”

  Charity frowned.

  Daisy reached into a box she’d carried down from the attic. A giant white candle was cradled in her hands. “Do we need these for the storm? There are several in here.”

  Charity came around the counter and took it from her. “Is that Gram’s hurricane box?” She remembered her grandmother filling a large box with items for a storm. Lighters, candles, lanterns, iodine, a first aid kit.

  “I guess so. So, where did you hear the willow tree legend about trimming the branches?”

  Charity rifled through the hurricane box. “My mother. She’s the one who told me the legend.” She thought back. “No, wait. It was Kendrick. Yes, Kendrick—who lied to me on a daily basis, but my mother jumped right into the story with him, so I never doubted it.”

  Daisy refastened the clip on the bag of potato chips. “Why would they do that?”

  “Sometimes they were mean.” Charity went back to the sink of vegetables waiting to be chopped and arranged in a salad.

  Daisy shook her head, sun-streaked hair flying around her shoulders. “Dude. That is messed up.”

  “Gramps had called and told her that when I visited that year, they were going to have some chores for me. When she mentioned the willow to me, I undoubtedly turned white as a ghost because it was so huge and kind of scary-looking. The hoax must have started right then and there.” Did her mother even remember that Charity’s fear of the tree stemmed from a lie she had perpetuated? Probably not; sometimes lying was as easy for Ellen as breathing. White lies, she called them. But there was nothing white about a white lie. They were black as soot and empty as an unused grave.

  “All this time, you were scared of nothing.”

  “Don’t go overboard with the sympathy,” Charity said.

  Daisy cocked her hip. “I’ve been on the street for a year. Sympathy is hard to come by. Sarcasm, though. If you need that, I’m your girl.”

  “Daisy, speaking of being on the street, don’t you think it’s time you told me where you came from? Is anyone looking for you?”

  Daisy busied herself by examining items in the hurricane box. “Doubtful,” she finally mumbled when Charity continued looking at her.

  Charity’s constant stare must have worn her down. Daisy huffed and propped her hands on the corners of the box. “My name is actually Daisy Voss, not Smith. I’m from Vale, Colorado, and I highly doubt my mother is looking for me.”

  Charity dropped onto one of the bar stools and motioned for Daisy to take the one across from her. “You and your mom didn’t get along?”

  Daisy’s long blonde hair caught the light from above. She was too young and pretty to have lived such a hard life for the past year. “She was always moving different guys into the house. Couldn’t seem to keep a man for more than a few months. Then this last guy, Bud, stayed on. He’d been there for almost a year when I realized he was looking at me.”

  “Looking at you?” Charity hadn’t meant to repeat the words out loud; they were heavy and cold, and she didn’t like where this was headed.

  “Yeah, just looking at me, but it was the snakelike gleam in his eyes that freaked me out. Then one day my mom is pulling a double shift at the restaurant, and he starts rubbing my shoulders and talking about how beautiful I am.” Daisy’s eyes trailed to the window. “Next thing I know, he’s trying to kiss me.”

  “Oh, honey.” Charity understood what it was to feel unprotected in one’s own home. But not in this way. Charity’s mother had never allowed anyone—any male, whether he was Ellen’s friend or lover—to say anything sexually inappropriate to Charity. Ellen might not have been a great mother, but she’d had moral lines she didn’t allow anyone to cross. “Daisy, you must have been terrified.”

  She laughed without humor. “Mad was more like it. I told him to just wait until my mom got home. She was totally jealous of anyone even talking to him.”

  “What happened when she got home?”

  “I told her. She just couldn’t wrap her head around it. She told me I must have made a mistake. That I’d misinterpreted his friendliness. ”

  “And so you left?” Charity said.

  “Yep. I was gone before the next morning. It was fall, and I knew I couldn’t stay north through the winter so I sold my laptop, my cell phone, all my electronics, which I’d collected when my mom was dating a guy who”—Daisy made air quotes—“worked in an electronic store. I figured all the stuff was stolen, but nothing I could do about that.”

  Charity’s heart ached for h
er. This was a far different situation from the one Dalton had suggested. “What about before Bud? Were things good between you and your mom?” Maybe Charity was grasping at straws, but she knew the debilitating power of losing what little family one had.

  “Before Bud, she’d always been a good mom. I mean, not perfect, but good.”

  So there was hope for a reconciliation. If, of course, Bud was out of the picture. After all, she didn’t want to see Daisy end up like her. A thirty-one-year-old still searching for approval that might never come.

  Daisy ran a hand through her hair. “I bought a bus ticket and made it to Georgia. Then worked my way down here. I’ve been on the island for four months. Longest I’ve stayed anywhere since leaving Vale.”

  “If you want to call your mother—”

  “I don’t.”

  “There are legal things to consider. If you’re eighteen, then no harm can come from calling her. I really believe it will help you move on, Daisy.”

  Daisy’s gaze narrowed. “I told you I was eighteen.”

  “Daisy—”

  “I said I don’t want to talk to her. I’m not going home.” Daisy’s words were flat. “Look, I know that loser Bud has probably already moved on. But I’m not sure I can forgive her.”

  What if Daisy’s mom had come to her senses and woke up to find her daughter gone? What if Dalton was right and Daisy’s mother was crying herself to sleep every night wondering if her child was alive or dead? For all they knew, she might have thrown Bud out after having time to consider the situation. The problem was, they didn’t know. Miscommunication was a deadly force. “You’re an adult now. You don’t have to go home. She couldn’t make you. But maybe you could let her know you’re OK.”

  “Like she deserves that.” Daisy chewed her bottom lip. “Someday, I’ll let her know. But I’m not in any hurry. If she misses me, good. She should have believed me.”

  “You’re right. She should have.”

  “You know what?” Daisy popped up off the bar stool. “I’m done talking about this right now. You never answered me about the candles.”