In the Light of the Garden: A Novel

by Heather Burch

  Ellen rolled her eyes. “Don’t be foolish. You’d be as lost out there as the girl, and then they’d have to rescue you.”

  Charity stopped and turned to her mother, who was probably right. Her thoughts went to Daisy. “It’s my fault she’s out there.”

  Ellen stood and cocked both her head and her hip in that way that only she could. The motion conveyed more than words, assuring its receiver that whatever words were to follow could surely reduce a person to powder. “No, Charity Monroe, it’s not your fault. She left. What kind of idiot runs out in a hurricane?”

  What kind of idiot heads into one to ask her daughter to go on a family vacation to babysit? But Charity swallowed the comparison. A battle of wits was impossible to win when her mother was involved. “I broke her trust, Mom. I told her I wouldn’t call her mother, but that’s what I did.”

  Ellen waved the cigarette in the air. “Of course you did. She’s a stranger, Charity. Not your problem.”

  Charity’s hands fisted at her sides. “That’s not why I called.”

  “Whatever. She’s a runaway. There’s no telling what kind of trouble could be following her. Of course, I don’t want anything bad to happen to her, but honestly, Charity, what do you even know about this girl?”

  How could anyone be so flippant about another human being? “I know she needs me.”

  Ellen placed the cigarette on a small table beside the settee. She crossed the room and placed her hands on Charity’s folded arms.

  Charity’s eyes widened. Her mother rarely touched her.

  There, on Ellen’s forehead, a frown appeared. A worry frown. “Give it thirty more minutes; then head out into the fray, all right?”

  Could she watch the clock for another thirty minutes? It was a lot to ask.

  “Please,” her mother said, the tiny lines around her eyes crinkling with the slightest hint of a smile.

  Charity’s heart melted. She’d try to rope the moon if her mother asked, even if she knew it was futile. It had bothered her for years that she’d do anything and everything to please her mother, to get the tiniest hint of approval from the woman who was so beautiful but so cold. But babysitting on a cruise ship had been the reminder she’d needed. She had the power to tell her mother no. Strength and self-reliance surged inside, and Charity opened her mouth to say she’d be back when they found Daisy, but her mother surprised her yet again.

  “I know you feel helpless, not being out there looking for her. But when they return, they’re going to be cold, soaking wet, and hungry. Let’s do what needs to be done here, Charity. When we’re done, if you insist on going out, I won’t try to stop you.”

  Let’s do what needs to be done here? Charity knew she must be frowning but couldn’t help herself. Who was this woman? Her mother closed a slender hand around Charity’s arm and pulled her toward the kitchen.

  “Good to see your face, girl.” Harold smiled at the frail, shivering wisp of a girl huddled in the corner of the shed, the light of the flashlight glaring in his eyes. “This ain’t the best place to ride out a full-blown hurricane. You ready to head back?”

  “There . . . there was a cat. She had babies, and I’d been feeding her scraps.”

  Harold scratched his head and glanced around the small, dark space. “There’s no momma cat here during a storm like this. She’d have sensed it coming and moved her kittens somewhere safe.”

  Daisy removed the light from his eyes, but dark spots remained. He took a step inside the shed. “Now, I expect, you’ve had a bit of time to sit here and think about why Charity was calling your momma. I expect you know how much Charity cares about you, or she wouldn’t have moved you right into her house. I expect you’ve thought about how she’s grown more and more fond of you and that that could be the reason she tried to reach out to your mom. She’s not looking to get rid of you. She don’t need an excuse to do that. All she has to do is open the front door and say good-bye.”

  Daisy dropped her gaze to the shed floor. It was half-covered with sand where decades of wind had forced a layer of the salty stuff between the rotting boards. A strong gust of wind slammed the shed, causing boards and roofing to creak. Harold looked overhead. A crack appeared near where Daisy sat. He motioned for her. “Come on. This place won’t survive what’s comin’.”

  Daisy stood and started to make her way over the floor strewn with boat parts and pieces of wood. She was almost to Harold when the roof caved in.

  CHAPTER 13

  Water Rising

  “It’s not the same,” Dalton told himself as he paused on the front porch before entering Charity’s house. The situation with Daisy couldn’t be more different from the situation Kissy had been in. Still, the similarities haunted his mind. Kissy had been a helpless victim. So was Daisy. Kissy had trusted others to protect her. So had Daisy. And now Daisy was lost somewhere in the violence of a hurricane, and though Dalton certainly didn’t feel about her the way he’d felt about his baby girl, the thought of losing her practically strangled him. It was an irrational response, yes. But it was also one he had no hope of controlling. To make the situation worse, he had the distinct feeling that Harold was also in trouble.

  Dalton made his way into the house just as Charity and her mother were settling into the kitchen. He needed another flashlight, extra batteries, and a change of clothes. His jeans had gotten snagged on a tree branch and ripped. He stayed no more than five minutes, took the thermos of coffee offered by Ellen, and headed back out. On the porch he told Charity, “The storm’s right over us. I’ll check back every fifteen minutes or so in case either of them returns. Tell Harold to do the same. I’m going north now. I’ve covered all the area south unless she made it to town. If she did, she’ll be fine. There are two shelters set up there. But I have a feeling she’s north. With any luck, Harold has found her.”

  Before Dalton left, he bent and kissed Charity on the cheek. “Stay here.”

  Her gaze dropped. He leaned closer and reached to squeeze her arms. “Charity, promise me.”

  The smallest hint of a defiant frown pinched her brows. She was beautiful, standing there on her front porch and readying to run out into a hurricane to search for a girl he’d wanted to turn over to the police only a short while ago. Cold swept up his back and over his shoulders. It was a warning, a premonition of something on the horizon, something awful.

  Finally, she relented. “I promise. I won’t leave.”

  Relief flooded him.

  “But you promise me you’ll come back.”

  “I will.” He grinned to lighten the mood. “I’m fairly certain the garden will need me tomorrow.”

  She swallowed. “The garden needs you all the time. More than it cares to admit.”

  Dalton winked and headed out into the storm.

  Charity went into the house and found her mother bent over the fridge.

  “It’s not a chef’s kitchen, but you’ve got enough to make a great pot of stew,” Ellen said.

  Her mother? Making stew? As if she’d heard Charity’s thoughts, Ellen began talking. “Leonard is a workaholic. Always at the office. His practice has grown since we married, but I’d expected more time with him. We didn’t need more money. Why wouldn’t he want to be home?”

  Ellen turned around, arms loaded with a variety of veggies from the refrigerator. She used her hip to close the door and spread the ingredients on the counter beside the stove. There was something warm and comforting about the kitchen and the way her mother washed vegetables under the running water of the sink, then lined them up on the counter. Sharp knife beside her, she chunked a pot roast Charity was going to attempt to cook for dinner one night into an iron skillet. She browned the meat, filling the kitchen with a delicious scent of garlic, meat, and onion.

  “He liked for me to be home throughout the day.” Ellen waved the knife in the air. “Oh, I would have been fine meeting the girls at the country club for a round of golf or shopping or even lunch and the spa. Most of them have a weekly ro
utine that keeps them quite busy during the long hours of the day. But when I suggested to Leonard I find ways to busy myself—since he worked so much—he became angry. Apparently that’s just what his wife—the girls’ mother—had done before running off to the Caribbean with her Zumba instructor.”

  Charity sat down at the kitchen counter when her mother handed her a bunch of freshly washed carrots and said, “Bite-size pieces.” Charity went right to work.

  “So, you learned to cook? Don’t you guys have a housekeeper who does the cooking for you?” She was certain her mother had mentioned a woman who took care of the house and meals.

  “We had an older woman named Vivien, but Leonard let her go. He put me in charge of hiring the replacement. Sonia. She is French, a few years older than me, good skin. She watched me meander around the house for months before suggesting I join her for a chat in the kitchen while she cooked dinner.”

  “You two hit it off?” Charity tried to get a picture of her mother standing in the kitchen with the hired help. It was as strange as Ellen cooking while Charity sat chopping carrots.

  Ellen smiled over her shoulder. “She’d led this incredible life. Poor but happy. Adventurous. She’d even spent a year on a yacht with a sheik.”

  “As his cook?”

  “As his lover,” Ellen corrected.

  Charity could feel the heat rising to her face. “Oh dear.”

  “Bring the carrots.” They dumped them into the pot of boiling broth. “Make another pot of coffee, Charity.”

  She did and tried to keep her focus on her mother’s words rather than on the war raging beyond the windows. It was dark out, with only the single uncovered kitchen window to give a glimpse to the world beyond. “Look how high the water is,” she said to her mom, pointing to the half-swallowed yard.

  “Will it come into the house?”

  Charity shrugged. Honestly, she didn’t know. Dalton and Harold had placed sandbags around the exterior doors in the low areas. “I hope not.”

  “Well, at least we’ll have good food and good coffee.” Ellen blinked and turned away from the window as if doing so would make it all disappear.

  Charity tried to smile. “Tell me more about Sonia.”

  You’ve lived a long life.

  Harold couldn’t explain why that thought ran through his head at the moment the ceiling collapsed, dumping lumber and gallons of water on them. It didn’t matter that he’d lived a long life. What mattered was getting Daisy out of there. She screamed when Harold tried to lift the water-logged boards off them. Ten seconds sooner, and she’d have made it out of the shed. Instead, her icy hand had just brushed his when the roof caved, and the walls followed, trapping them beneath hundreds of pounds of debris. Already, water covered the floor, and Harold wasn’t certain if it was from the deluge of rain or if the sea had risen that far. A boat motor held the roof a few inches above their heads, keeping it from crushing them, but Daisy’s leg was lodged between it and some other large piece of metal that he couldn’t identify.

  His own body was twisted, and his knee throbbed with pain. Cold water brushed up on them, and Harold knew they wouldn’t have much time to squirm out. “I’ll shove. You try to get your foot out from under that mess, OK?” She was a brave little thing. First, ducking when the roof caved, now fighting like a wildcat to get out. He was just close enough to grab her hand and tug, but with his body also trapped, he had no leverage, and her rain-slick flesh didn’t help. They worked and worked, trying to pry, counting to three and lifting, but the debris wouldn’t move. And the rain continued. And the water was rising.

  Daisy’s face was smeared with dirt, and seaweed hung in her hair. “The water is coming up, isn’t it?” Her voice cracked.

  “Maybe it’ll lift some of the wood, and we can scurry out.”

  “Maybe not.” It was a hopeless statement. One from a child who’d seen too much on the street for her young years.

  “I ain’t giving up yet, girlie. And neither should you.”

  “I’m too tired to move.” She lay her head back and rested it on the scattered pieces of wood behind her.

  Harold’s heart lurched when he realized the water was already halfway covering her body. “Well, we’ll just rest a bit; then we’ll start fighting again. OK?” He needed her to agree. This was rest, not surrender.

  She swiped at her eyes. “I miss my mom.” The whimpering sound broke Harold’s heart. He reached for her.

  “You’ll see her again, young lady. I promise. We’re gonna get out of this.” He hoped it wasn’t a lie. Everything in him wanted to fight, but if they had a chance at getting out, it would be when the water rose enough to lift the weight of the wood. That would also be about the time the girl’s head would be nearly underwater.

  “Can you just . . . I don’t know. Talk to me?” Her hand in his was cold and quaking.

  He pulled a breath. She was being as brave as she knew how. “I’ll tell you about anything. What do you want to know?”

  “I want to know about the car accident that caused Mrs. Cready’s limp and scars. But first, I want you to answer a question.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Were you in love with Charity’s grandma?”

  The words hit Harold with all the force of the hurricane around them. He opened his mouth, but no words formed.

  “I saw the pictures. You and her, and you looked pretty much in love to me.”

  The words took him back to another time. A time when Marilyn Cort lived next door and was his best friend. A time when his little brother George was still more interested in frog-catchin’ than girl-watchin’. “A long time ago, a girl my age moved in next door. It was a year after I’d had the mumps and spent a long time recovering. I’d discovered girls by way of a novel my mother had accidently left in my room while I’d been sick.”

  “Like a romance novel?”

  “It was written by a woman named Jane Austen.”

  “Sure. I’ve heard of her.” The boards groaned, settling into the rising water. Daisy tried to move but still remained trapped.

  “Well, reading that book made me see girls in a whole new light. So, when Marilyn Cort’s family moved in, I offered to show her around town. For months we were best friends, but one day she caught me reading that book and asked me to read some of it to her.”

  “Did you?”

  “I sure did. When I was done, I kissed her.”

  “But she married George. Where was he? Did he know you two were in love?”

  “No one knew we were in love. Except us. Our parents didn’t mind all the hours we spent together because we were just friends.” Harold kept one eye on the rising water.

  “But where was George?”

  “He was busy becoming a football star, basketball star. One day he was a kid, and the next he was a young man.”

  “But you were the one in love with Marilyn. Not him.”

  “Sometimes love ain’t enough. Marilyn had lost her baby sisters in a horrible boating accident. That’s why her family moved to my town. All she ever wanted was a big family. For the rest of that summer, she and I would take off for the creek, and I don’t mind telling you that with our parents oblivious to what was going on, we, well, we . . .”

  “Ooooohhhh.” Daisy nodded. “Yeah, kids still do that. Not much has changed there.”

  Harold tried to brush off the embarrassment that warmed his cheeks. “Well, it wasn’t until the end of summer that I realized there were consequences to what we were doing. Or there should have been. And that’s when I got worried that maybe I couldn’t give Marilyn that family she always wanted.”

  “So what happened?”

  “I heard that men who had the mumps were sometimes unable to have kids. So, I took myself to Birmingham to a doctor there, and he checked me.”

  “You were sterile?”

  All the pain of it rushed back to Harold as if there’d been no passage of time. “She wanted the one thing I couldn’t give her.”


  “But surely she didn’t just kick you to the curb. I mean, that’s not love.”

  He nodded. “She didn’t have to. I didn’t go back.” Even now he could remember the very moment he’d decided to walk away. To walk away from her, from their love, from everything. And even still, it stabbed his heart.

  Daisy’s sudden intake of air pulled Harold from the memory. He squinted in the darkness to make sure she hadn’t gone under water. “You still with me, girlie?”

  “I am. You just left?”

  The water covered his torso, working its way to his shoulders. “I joined a dance troop headed out of town and sent a letter to my folks.”

  “You broke her heart.”

  “Had to. Couldn’t let her pine for me. I can’t say I expected George to carry the torch, but I’d hoped. At least I’d know she’d be taken care of by a good man.” And for months, he’d gone to sleep each night fighting the desperate sinking feeling that his life was over. He’d destroyed it before it really began.

  “Harold, that’s tragic. Like Romeo and Juliet kind of tragic.”

  “About Louise’s car accident—”

  “Yes?”

  He could hear the shaking in her voice. There was no fat on Daisy to hold her body heat in, and he wondered about hypothermia. “Louise and her brothers were driving home from school and wrecked. The car caught on fire. Louise was trapped inside. Using nothing but love and brute force, her brothers dragged her out of that burning car.”

  Daisy was quiet for a few moments. “Wow.”

  Harold was tired. The talking and confessions had worn him out. Maybe he could just close his eyes for a few seconds. But before he could, he saw something. He craned his neck. Over the rush of wind and the waves that were just cresting the tops of the boards and curling over their necks, he saw lights behind him and prayed it was salvation.

  Dalton was already thanking God when he spotted Harold’s car. Without thinking about the depth of the water, he threw his truck into four wheel drive and drove to the shed, where he could faintly see the outline of Harold’s arm, raised and waving to him.