The Garden of Happy Endings

by Barbara O'Neal

  What do you think? Walking, thanks for pulling the funding together to get us in motion. Deacon, I knew you’d be great at organizing volunteers, and you were.

  Next step is to put a calendar in place and start the planting. Are you both free at some point in the next couple of days? Tuesday, maybe, since Monday is Father Jack’s day off. Tamsin has some challenges at the moment, so I’m not sure she can be there, but I’ll keep her in the loop.

  Off to a great start!

  Elsa

  When the kettle water was boiling, she made a heartening pot of strongly scented tea. On the table, she spread an old, worn-soft cloth embroidered by some unknown hands long ago, and linen napkins, and two cups from the collection she had amassed, china in all sizes, in colors of blue and pink and gold. The cup she set at Tamsin’s place was one of the best she had, blue on the inside with a rim of gold, and a matching saucer. The spoons were antique English teaspoons, gathered on her travels when she was young and heartsick. No flowers were blooming outside yet, so she put a potted African violet in the middle of the table, along with a plate of ordinary shortbread cookies and some chocolates in foil wrappers.

  Tamsin emerged a little while later with wet hair hanging down her back. She wore a YMCA T-shirt with long sleeves and a pair of yoga pants and some socks. Her face was washed clean of makeup. She had always been a beauty, from smallest babyhood when photos showed that she’d had a crown of soft blond curls to frame her eyes, the color of the inside of the china cup. As an adolescent, she’d grown coltish and radiant, with slim hips and generous breasts, and silky blond hair that tumbled over her shoulders. Even now, exhausted by the worst day she’d probably ever had, she was gorgeous, her skin still smooth at forty-six, her eyes the same electric blue, her mouth full and plump. Elsa suspected she had begun fillers and lasers long ago, and the result was a face as lovely as it had always been. Elsa was so much plainer, it was hard to believe they had the same parents. Perhaps if they were closer in age it would have been an issue, but Elsa had worshipped her big sister when they were growing up.

  “This is so pretty,” Tamsin said as she sat down. “You have such a knack for setting a table.”

  “Thank you.” She picked up the pot and poured a cup of deep red tea. “It’s an herbal blend. Caffeine didn’t seem like a good idea.” She pushed a little crystal bowl of sugar cubes across the table.

  “Do you have any Equal or Splenda?”

  Elsa smiled softly. She didn’t believe in artificial ingredients. “You know better.”

  Tamsin lifted her cup and sipped, made a face, and reached for the sugar. Elsa simply waited as she stirred it in, watched it dissolve, and took another sip.

  “I feel shell-shocked,” Tamsin said, finally. “Like I’m in a dream. I don’t even know how to begin to make a plan. Like, how long will it be before I can get some clothes out of the house? And if it’s a long time, what should I do in the meantime? I can’t go around like this forever.”

  Elsa nodded.

  Tamsin stared into her tea for so long that the silence in the room took on a noisy rustling depth. “He’s gone, isn’t he? That’s why I haven’t heard from him.” Her eyes filled with tears.

  Elsa paused before she answered. “I don’t know. Maybe he is. From a practical standpoint, it might be best to move forward as if that’s true.”

  Tears spilled from her sister’s lovely eyes. “He disappeared to some faraway place so he doesn’t have to face the music. He probably stashed a big pile of money in some Swiss bank account and left me to deal with this mess on my own.”

  “Do you have any idea where he might be? Favorite places? People tend to do predictable things even when they’re in trouble, maybe even more so then.”

  “You know how smart he is. He won’t do anything predictable.”

  Scott was almost freakishly smart. But it was also true that an animal run aground usually found a way to reproduce the familiar. “Just for the sake of argument. What if he did?”

  “He loves anywhere they speak French, since that’s the only other language he really knows, so France, Canada … where else? Switzerland, maybe.”

  “For someone who only speaks English and French, he sure spends a lot of time in the Spanish-speaking world—Chile, Central America, Spain, even, right?”

  “I guess he might have learned some Spanish by now. There are a lot of places he could be.” She dropped her spoon, leaned back in the chair, and stared across the table. “Elsa, really? What the fuck am I going to do? What if they never let me have my house back? Or my stuff?”

  For a long moment, Elsa was quiet, listening just in case some angel wanted to step in and handle this for her. But she was on her own. “You’ll start over. Just like somebody who has been in a fire or an earthquake or a terrible accident.”

  Tamsin put her head down on her arms. “I don’t know how to do that.” It came out muffled.

  “I know.” She put a hand on her arm. “But you aren’t alone, I promise you that. We’ll get through this together.”

  “Shit!” Tamsin’s head jerked up. “What am I going to tell Alexa? I don’t want to ruin her last month in Spain, but what if this is all a big mess when she comes home?”

  “Let’s just leave that alone for now. You don’t have to decide tonight.”

  Tamsin nodded.

  She looked so exhausted that Elsa slid the laptop over to her. “Why don’t you check in with your quilting people and have a glass of wine. There isn’t anything more we can do tonight.”

  Across the world, Alexa Corsi stood stunned in the middle of a one-bedroom flat in an old neighborhood in Madrid. The flat was tiny in every way, tiny stove and fridge against the back wall to make a tiny kitchen and dining area, tiny salon, tiny bedroom almost filled by a double bed, teeny-tiny bathroom barely big enough for the door to open. But the windows, three of them, two in the salon and one in the bedroom, were giant, floor to twelve-foot ceiling. They overlooked a quiet, out-of-the-way plaza still in shadows this morning. It would be scorching hot by afternoon.

  A package had come for her three days ago, containing a deed and a key and instructions to contact a real estate agent. She knew it had to be her father who had provided it, but when she asked the agent, the man only shook his head—it had all been managed long-distance, through a third party.

  Clearly, he thought she was the mistress of a rich man, and Alexa had let him think what he liked. The apartment was exactly right for her—old and darling and a little bit weary. She would replace the drapes with something lighter, and order a sofa that did not smell of old dust and dogs, but the rest—

  She spun in a circle, laughing. Perfect!

  The agent gave her the key and the papers with a courtly bow, and left her to it. Her own flat. In Madrid.

  She carried a simple kitchen chair over to the window and read through the paperwork. The price of the sale was staggering for such a small space, and Alexa shook her head. Her father had been extravagant with her before, when he’d made a big deal or won big at his games, but this was unprecedented.

  She laughed. In the square, a woman tugged a wheeled basket with groceries through the shadows, and Alexa could hear the sound of a fountain splashing somewhere nearby. The woman looked up, spied Alexa, and waved.

  Her first home, Alexa thought.

  Giddy, she leapt up and looked through the cupboards, opened the fridge, peered inside the narrow oven. She used the toilet and opened the medicine cabinet.

  A postcard was taped to the inside. A picture of a church in Madrid graced the front of it. Alexa pulled it free and turned it over, finding her father’s distinctive handwriting. Baby, he’d written, this is your pied-à-terre, for always. Your first home. Our secret, ok? Don’t tell anybody. You’ll realize why later. Burn this card. When things hit the fan, remember I love you.

  No signature. Alexa frowned. Her dad liked to stir up drama sometimes, but this was over the top, even for him. A little ripple of worry cr
ossed her shoulders, and she turned the card back over, thinking he must have picked it up the day they had supper together last week. He’d embarrassed her a little with his hectic color and slightly-too-loud voice. Now she thought she understood. He’d known he was setting this up for her. He’d also given her an envelope stuffed with cash—a lot of cash—which wasn’t entirely unusual.

  Another ripple of unease moved through her body. “When things hit the fan”? What did that mean? She sucked on her lower lip for a minute, wondering if the price tag had been too high. Was there some trouble attached?

  No, she decided. It was just Dad being Dad. It was entirely in keeping with his larger-than-life gestures, and it was deeply touching that he’d given her something so meaningful to her. She couldn’t wait to thank him.

  She also couldn’t wait one more minute to call Carlos. Taking her phone from her envelope of a purse, she punched in his number. “Guess where I am?” she said, and started to laugh in wonder all over again.

  Home! Her own home in Madrid!

  Chapter Nine

  Deacon McCoy loved dogs, every dog on the planet, even the little yappy ones with no hair and those ugly bug eyes, for one reason: They were true. They were honest. They might have some issues but only because some asshole had beaten them or mistreated them or trained them to kill or be killed. (And if Deacon had his way, he’d go out and shoot every last one of those bastards clean through the heart, which was a lot more than they deserved.)

  After he’d been released from prison, his soul dry as salt, Deacon went straight to the humane society to see about finding a dog to rescue him. All through that long last year, he’d had in mind a pup of some kind, a midsized dog with some fur to run his hands through, smart and not too crazy. It didn’t matter what kind, a mutt was a mutt, and he just needed dog loving. So he wandered through the aisles of the shelter, holding his hand out, looking for somebody who needed him.

  And damned if it turned out not to be a pup at all, but an old black Lab mix with white all around its muzzle and the kind of sadness in its eyes that Deacon recognized clear to the bottom of his heart.

  “Well, hell, buddy,” he said, kneeling so the Lab could come over if it had a mind to. “What’s your story?”

  The dog just looked at him. Deacon stayed where he was, waiting, talking quietly. When the dog sighed and hung its head, showing that it’d given up all hope, Deacon damn near cried. He went and found somebody to let him into the cage. The girl, skinny as licorice, walked with him. “He’s a good dog,” she said, and he saw that she had one rotted tooth in front. “Family got divorced and neither person could keep him.”

  “Couldn’t keep him,” Deacon repeated, rubbed the dog’s solid ribs. “How old is he, do you know?”

  “He’s eleven,” she said, and hurried to add, “but he doesn’t have anything wrong with him.”

  “Aside from a broken heart, that is.”

  The girl looked at him in surprise, and her eyes teared up. “Right.”

  “Give us a little time here, will you, sweetheart?”

  When she walked back toward the building, Deacon sat down and faced the dog. “Here’s the thing. I’m worn out and don’t know what I’ve got left inside. But I’ll give you a walk every day and make sure you have a good bed, and I will find out what kind of bones make you happy. You don’t have to do nothin’ but lay around and look at the sky. What do you say?”

  The dog looked at him a long time, considering, his whiskey-colored eyes searching Deacon’s face. Deacon scratched him under the chin and the dog lifted his head, then put a paw on his forearm. Deacon smiled. “All right, Joe. Let’s go home.”

  That was four years ago. Joe had been joined by Sasha, a fourteen-year-old terrier whose owner had been killed in a car accident, and much to Deacon’s complete surprise, a ragamuffin of a Shih Tzu, a three-year-old whose owner had surrendered him at a pet fair. Deacon had never had a little dog, but he had to admit it wasn’t so bad when Mikey would sit in his lap and stare up at him adoringly. Like a cat, maybe.

  But two real old dogs and a crazy little Shih Tzu meant he didn’t spend a whole lot of time trying to find a nice house. He lived out east of town in an old ranch house, not a rancher, but an old ramshackle cottage with a big fenced yard where the dogs were safe from predators. Joe was fifteen now, and arthritic, but happy. He loved to ride in the truck in the front seat and still liked going for walks in the mountains when Deacon could get him up there. Sasha was in diapers when she was in the house, and not much went on in her mind these days, but she still liked a bone so he wasn’t going to rush her off this plane. She had the sweetest brown eyes you ever saw, and a sandy Fu Manchu mustache he loved.

  Tonight, he fed and watered them all, put down a fresh blanket over a trash bag for Sasha, and let Joe waddle behind him into the truck. He kept a stair-step for the old dog, and even so he had to help him into the cab, but Mario, Deacon’s Little Brother, loved the old critter, and Joe purely adored getting out, so that was that.

  He drove back into town and parked in the lot in front of the apartment buildings. Eyesores, all of them, completely neglected by the landlord. Screens were missing from the windows, where mini-blinds with broken slats didn’t quite rise the way they should. The bones of the place were sound—it just needed painting and sprucing up. He heard somebody was trying to buy it, so maybe that would help. Just because you were poor didn’t mean you had to live like trash. The gardens would offer some dignity and self-sufficiency to the community, not to mention beauty. He liked Father Jack for pursuing projects like this. He was a good priest, selfless and smart and compassionate.

  Haunted, too, Deacon sometimes thought.

  Mario lived on the third floor. The boy was waiting by the door of his apartment when Deacon walked out of the stairwell. His long hair was washed and combed back into a shiny black braid the way his grandfather Joseph, the medicine man who lived with his daughter and grandson, wore his. Mario wore a clean shirt and jeans and bright new tennis shoes. “Hi, Deacon!”

  “Hey, kid. New shoes?”

  “Yeah, my mom got a bonus. She said you should come in for a minute if you have time.”

  “All right.” Gingerly, he stepped into the apartment, a sunny place filled with houseplants he remembered from childhood—purple Wandering Jew, coleus and Swedish ivy and spider plants. Nothing strange or exotic, but simple, robust, and easily propagated. The walls were covered with Native American art—calendar pictures in cheap frames from Walmart; a woven blanket in red and white and black; a poster of a beautiful young man with long hair, sitting on a horse. Mario’s mother was in the kitchen, a pretty, plump woman with dark eyes and long hair as black as her son’s.

  “Hey there, Deacon,” she called. Her cheeks were flushed from the steam. “I saved you some good bones for that old dog of yours.”

  “Thank you kindly.” He picked up the package she pointed to with her chin. “Where’s your papa tonight?”

  She waved a hand. “Drumming away evil spirits or something.”

  “I see.” He breathed in, smelling spice and onions. “What are you cooking this evening?”

  “Oh, just suppers for the week. Some beef stew, some enchilada mix, a pot of posole.”

  He thought of the rich hominy stew, studded with tomatoes, and his stomach growled. “Smells good.”

  “You’re always welcome to stay and eat,” she said, and inclined her head, sending her long hair down her back in a fresh, glossy wash. She couldn’t be thirty yet; her skin still held that fresh rosiness that started to fade as a woman got older. Her mouth was plump and pink, her breasts generous, and he thought she would taste like cinnamon and coffee. As a young man, he would have thought she was fat. Now he knew better.

  He also knew she was about six lifetimes too young for him. “I appreciate your generosity, Ms. Padilla, but I reckon me and Mario are going to head on out. We’ll be back by nine.”

  “No problem. Thanks for being there for
him. He loves it.”

  Deacon waved, and gathered Mario with an arm around his shoulders. In the hallway he said, “I was wondering if you’d mind if we asked Calvin to go along with us? Would that interfere?”

  “Calvin’s my man,” Mario said. “Let’s go ask him.”

  The other boy lived in the next building over, on the middle floor. His mother answered the door, a woman as thin as a paper clip, her hair covered tightly by a bright scarf. She was hard and pretty at once, her mouth tired. “Hey, Mario,” she said. “What’s up?”

  “Ms. Jennings, this here is Deacon McCoy, and he’s my Big Brother. He takes me to dinner most Saturday nights and we was wondering if Calvin could come with us.”

  She looked at Deacon’s face. “I don’t know you.” Now he could hear a southern accent, softer than his own. Kentucky maybe, or Tennessee.

  “You could call my mom,” Mario said. “Deacon’s the one getting the farm ready out there. Father Jack and him are friends.”

  “Y’all come in for a minute, let me call.”

  “No problem.”

  The rooms were painfully utilitarian. Couch, chair, coffee table; an old television with a converter box balanced precariously on top. A pickle jar of wildflowers, including two bright yellow dandelions, graced the dining table under the window. He and Mario sat on the couch while she went to get her phone.

  Calvin came out of a bedroom carrying a comic book. He wore a white golf shirt three sizes too big for him and a baggy pair of khakis. “Hey, Mario. What’s up?”

  “Wanna come to dinner with us? We’re going to Village Inn for pancakes.”

  The boy’s face blazed. “Yeah! Hold on. Let me get my shoes.”

  “We’re asking your mom’s permission first, son.”

  In the kitchen, Calvin’s mother was on the phone. She came out and said, “You want to go, baby?”

  “Can I please?”

  “Go get your shoes.” The woman looked at Deacon, her gaze smart and clear. “He’s the most precious thing in my world. Make sure you keep him safe and sound, hear?”