The Garden of Happy Endings

by Barbara O'Neal

  Elsa nodded.

  “Thanks. Calvin sure likes to be with you, and he thinks Deacon hung the moon.”

  “All the boys do. He takes time to pay attention to them.”

  “Rare.” Paris brushed elm seeds away from a row of what looked like peppers. “You’ve got a good man there.”

  Elsa made a noise between a laugh and a protest. “Oh, no. He’s not my—it’s not like that. We’re friends.”

  “Is that right,” Paris said, not a question.

  A voice cried from the other side of the field. “Elsa!” She turned, and Joaquin was walking their way, her phone in his hand.

  “Whoops. I left my phone in the rectory again. Nice talking to you, Paris. I meant what I said. You can call me if you need somebody to watch him, or help with anything.”

  “Thanks, Miss Elsa.”

  Elsa hurried back to meet Joaquin. He gave her the phone, which had a live call on it. “It’s your pal,” he said.

  Deacon’s name was on the screen, and for the space of a second, Elsa found herself hesitating. You’ve got a good man there. Joaquin looked at her down his hawkish nose, lashes making a shadow over his eyes in the bright light. Holding his gaze, she put the phone to her ear. “Hello?”

  “Hey, sweetheart, are you still over there at the gardens?” he said in his raspy voice.

  “I am,” she said, and turned from Joaquin, walking away so that she could listen to Deacon in peace. “What do you need?”

  “Will you take a look at my plot and make sure it’s not too wrecked?”

  “I’ll walk over there right now. Do you want to call me back or wait until I get there?”

  “I’ll wait, sugar.”

  “Oof!” Charlie slammed into her legs and dropped a stick. “Don’t you ever get tired of fetch, dog?”

  On the other end of the line, Deacon laughed, and she held the phone closer to her ear, pausing as all the nerves along her nape and spine rustled to life, as if that sound was a hand, brushing over her skin. “Good luck with that.”

  She flung the stick hard, and Charlie raced after it. Holding the phone to her ear, she walked toward the plot that Deacon had planted. He was quiet on the other end of the line, and then murmured a direction to someone: “Cut those bushes away there.”

  “Okay,” she said, “I’m here.” And the situation here was not as good as she would have liked. Fully half the plants were drowned or smashed. “Well,” she said, kneeling, “the good news is that a lot of the babies are doing fine. Corn and collards look good. Tomatoes are a complete loss, though.” She brushed half-melted stones away. “Oh, wait. There are some that look like they’ll be fine.”

  “Bad, though, huh?”

  “Not that bad. You don’t have to start from scratch.”

  “All right, then. I’ll try and get over there at lunchtime, see what I can do.”

  “No need. I’ll knock the hailstones off and get the branches out, and you can come after work.”

  “You don’t have to do all that.”

  “I don’t mind, sweetheart.”

  He laughed again, and Elsa closed her eyes. “So, see you tomorrow?”

  “Yes.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  On Saturday morning, Tamsin opened the fabric department, arriving at seven to get everything ready for the busy day. She loved being there first, going through the bolts of fabric to be certain each one draped just so, sometimes rearranging bolts to create a more inviting display, and making sure that all of the little packets of tape and pins and various notions were where they should be. She wore a tape measure around her neck, and her reading glasses dangling from a cord. For three years, she’d been using the glasses only when no one else was around, but it was impossible to do this job without them—cut fabric and read prices and read the lists of notions on pattern envelopes—so she’d given up her vanity and let them hang around her neck like some old lady.

  It was a challenging job, and for the first week, her back ached so badly that she soaked in the tub for an hour when she got home. It was also embarrassing to face where she was working. How could she be in her forties and have so few employable skills that she had to work at Walmart, as if she were a teenager?

  But she was grateful for the money. One of her quilts had sold on eBay, bringing in two hundred dollars, yet that was just a drop in the bucket. It was a blessing that Elsa had the house, that they could live rent-free. Even in the short amount of time she’d been working at the store, she couldn’t believe the struggle many of her fellow employees faced just trying to make ends meet.

  It was humbling. Nobody here drank five-dollar coffee drinks. The first time she heard someone describe a twenty-dollar haircut as expensive, she nearly laughed, before she realized they were serious. “How much do you pay?” she asked.

  “I can go to Cost Cutters for twelve dollars,” the woman said.

  Tamsin had regularly been spending close to seventy-five, not including the very expensive foil streaks she required every three months. It was the thing she probably missed the most. Not the gym or the fancy coffee drinks, but a good haircut and color. She’d been due for a cut and color just before her world fell apart and it was starting to look pretty gruesome now. She wasn’t graying, thank heaven, but the base color of her hair these days was a very boring dishwater, not a sunny blond. The line showed badly, and she was going to have to ask Elsa to help her do a home color job.

  It was like going back in time. How she had scraped and saved to look halfway decent in high school! She’d read magazines obsessively (at the library, of course) to stay abreast of fashion trends and beauty shortcuts.

  But aside from all of the humiliation factors, Tamsin had to admit that she really, really loved the job. Helping people make good choices in fabrics, matching cloth to task. She loved wandering through the aisles of material, running her hands over them, as she was doing right now. She had her eye on a diminishing bolt of deep green velvet. She kept seeing trees on a cliff. Not pine trees, something else, more verdant. Putting her hand on the fabric, she rubbed her palm over the nap, seeing trees/cliff/sea.

  A new quilt, growing. Between getting the little sunporch room ready for Alexa’s return and the forty hours a week she worked at the store, she had not had much time to work with the idea, but it tickled her daily, teasing her with the shape it wished to reveal. Soon, she thought. Soon.

  A voice over the loudspeaker announced the opening of the store. Collecting two cardboard bolts that were nearly empty, Tamsin made her way to the cutting center and unwrapped the last bits of fabric, unpinning them from the cardboard. She smoothed the creases from the cloth, folded it neatly into a remnant, and set the empty bolts aside.

  “Tamsin!” said a woman’s voice. “Is that you?”

  She turned, sticking the spare pins into a red strawberry she’d taken to wearing around her wrist. Standing there, in a crisp jacket over a tidy pair of trousers, was Cynthia Rhoades, the wife of a lobbyist who worked for the pharmaceutical companies.

  Tamsin willed herself not to blush. She was wearing a simple pink button-down with a white skirt, and her uncolored hair was pulled into a French braid. “Hi, Cyn!” she said, taking a pin from her mouth. “How are you?”

  “Are you working here?”

  Tamsin straightened her shoulders. “I am. I’m sure you’ve heard about Scott. I had to do something.”

  “But the house! All your things—!” At Tamsin’s expression, she halted, her own face going red. “I’m so sorry. The last thing you need is me making it worse.” She came forward and wrapped Tamsin in a hearty honest hug that nearly brought tears to her eyes. “I know all about it. We all do, of course. I’m sorry I couldn’t do more for you.”

  “Oh, please,” Tamsin said, cheekbones burning. “I know.”

  Cyn straightened. “How is Alexa doing?”

  “She’s been in Spain.” Tamsin thought of the pained phone calls they’d shared since Alexa had discovered her father’s
disappearance. “She’ll be home on Monday.”

  “That will be good for both of you.”

  “Yes.” Tamsin touched her friend’s arm. “What about you? What have you been up to? How are the kids?”

  “Everybody’s fine. No grandchildren yet, but I keep hoping. I’ve been taking a painting class, and we’re headed to Bali in two months. Hope there won’t be any tsunamis or earthquakes. Right there on the ring of fire, you know.”

  Something brushed over her imagination, a niggling aspect she should notice, but Tamsin couldn’t quite catch it before it flew away. “I’m sure it will be fine. Have you been before?”

  “No. I’m really looking forward to it.”

  An awkward pause enveloped them, empty of the things they might have said to each other when both were busy with their book clubs and charities and fundraisers. “Well,” Tamsin said, “it was good to see you, Cyn. I should get to work.”

  Cyn nodded. “You look … happy, Tamsin. Happier than you’ve looked in a long time.”

  Startled, Tamsin released a sharp hoot of laughter. “Happy? Really?”

  “Yes,” she said, frowning slightly as she studied Tamsin’s face. “Really.”

  “Thanks. I guess.”

  A woman carried a bolt of yellow satin to the table. “I’d like seven yards of this, please.”

  Cyn raised a hand in farewell and Tamsin turned toward her customer, happy in this moment anyway.

  Across the world, Alexa had never been more miserable in her life. She sat in the vastness of the Madrid airport waiting for her flight home, trying not to cry. This was not how she had imagined leaving. She had not imagined leaving at all, not anymore.

  Her ring finger was empty now, the ring left with a servant at Carlos’s home outside the city this very morning. She had written a letter to go with it, explaining that she could not marry him after all. Her family needed her. She asked him to respect her wishes, and not to contact her.

  Staring at the dull skies, she relived every moment of their romance, from the magical time on the rooftop to the long walks they took through the plazas of the city, one folding into the next and the next, talking and talking. It was as if they had known each other in other lives. He told her later that his heart had stopped when he saw her across the room, because he could swear he’d seen her before, in a dream or on a plaza somewhere, drinking coffee.

  Destiny, they both decided. She called him Count Chocula. He called her Azul. They were so very, very, very much in love.

  In the Madrid airport, she began to weep again, helplessly. She covered her face with a pashmina that still smelled of her days with Carlos. A woman next to her patted her shoulder kindly, told her she would be all right.

  Alexa accepted the touch but she knew she would never recover. Not from this, from finding her life and then losing it.

  If she ever saw her father again, she would kill him.

  On Saturday afternoon, Elsa received another email before she met Deacon and the boys for supper. They had been coming in a steady little trickle, every day or two.

  Today’s message was from a child.

  Dear Reverend Elsa,

  I know you’re having a hard time, but I hope you come back. I miss you. I miss my sister and I miss your laughing, and I want to know everything is going to be okay.

  Love,

  Nick

  Kiki’s little brother, only seven. Too young, at least now, to understand what had happened to his sister. Elsa sat at the computer reading the words over and over, imagining someone helping him write it, a Sunday school teacher or relative. It was, she thought, a good sign. Maybe Tall Pine wasn’t as much of a threat as she feared.

  Not that it mattered. She couldn’t leave Tamsin yet, especially with Alexa coming home

  She sat in front of the computer for so long that she only had a few minutes to change her shirt and wash her face before her dinner with Deacon and the boys. Nearly everything was in the laundry, and she was down to one of her last T-shirts, a short-sleeved V-neck with a scene of beach life on the front. It was a good color, a little darker than turquoise, and she’d been getting plenty of sun on her arms and throat. At least with the tan she didn’t really need makeup.

  She made sure Charlie had water, and headed out.

  As she got in the car, she caught sight of herself in the rearview mirror, and heard her mother’s voice: It’s too bad you’re so small and plain. As if she were a gnome.

  A tired, familiar anxiety rushed through her. Why wasn’t she trying to look her best tonight? Why hadn’t she washed clothes in time to wear something a little less down-market? She liked Deacon. All day, she’d been lit with anticipation.

  And yet, here she was, wearing an old T-shirt, her hair pulled back into a ponytail, not even a touch of lipstick on her mouth.

  Why?

  Looking at herself in the little mirror, she saw the lines starting to etch themselves into her forehead and around her mouth. Her skin was not as luminous as it once had been. She would be forty in eighteen months.

  What do you want? she asked herself. Church, children, love, marriage, family, faith?

  Even knowing she would be late, she got out of the car and went back inside. In her closet was a delicate peasant blouse, embroidered with turquoise threads. She tugged it over her head and found a pair of silver hoop earrings to make herself look more feminine, and traded her shorts for a pair of worn-soft jeans that fit her very well. In the bathroom, she took down the ponytail, picked out the curls, and brushed on a tiny bit of lipstick and mascara.

  When she stepped back to look at herself in the mirror, she saw a woman with her own style of beauty. She wasn’t a swan like Tamsin, long-necked and graceful, but she wasn’t a wren, either. She was a finch, smart and colorful and blessed with a gift of song.

  Still, when she drove into the parking lot of the Passkey, she felt another swell of nervousness.

  Deacon was beautiful. As a young man, he must have been impossible to resist, with that dark hair and those bright, twinkling eyes, his absolute assurance that you were going to like him. Even now, with crow’s-feet at the outer corners of his eyes, his bone structure gave him power and beauty. He had a good mouth, smiling and sensual, and she often found herself watching him talk, watching his lips move.

  She wanted him. It was hard to admit that after such a long dry spell. Hard to face her own desires, and hard to face the possibility of rejection.

  But there it was, her desire, plain and clear as she spied him through the window of the restaurant. The boys were out of sight, below the level of the window, but Deacon was laughing, so they probably were, too.

  That was the thing about him that kept drawing her in so insistently, besides his physical charms. He was kind. Vastly, deliberately, insistently kind. She saw it in the way he listened carefully to the old alcoholics who wandered in and out of the meetings on Thursdays, men so far gone, so long gone, that chances were good they’d never surface. If he ever felt that way, it didn’t show. He welcomed them with coffee, with good words, with compassion. It was the embodiment of goodness and mercy on earth, the real thing.

  What did she bring to this? A restless soul, a broken faith, a heart that had been so thoroughly shattered at Joaquin’s hands that she had begun to wonder if it would ever be whole enough for genuine use again.

  Stop thinking so much.

  Right. She got out of the car, tucking a slim billfold with her ID and a little money into the back pocket of her jeans. On the way to the door, she finger-combed her hair. When she went into the restaurant, she spied the children and Deacon grouped in a corner booth. Deacon smiled, and he watched her all the way across the dining room. She slid into the booth, a little flushed. “Hi,” she said, and her words came out breathless. “Sorry I’m late.”

  “Hey,” he said, eyes glittering. “We weren’t worried.”

  “How’s it going, kids?” she said.

  “Miss Elsa, look what I drew you!” Calvin s
aid, and held up an exuberant drawing of flowers and bees and birds. In the middle was a boy who looked like Calvin and a lady with crazy black-crayon curls, presumably Elsa, holding hands and admiring a beanstalk that rose all the way to the sky.

  “That’s some beanstalk!”

  He looked down at it, inclining his head. “I’ma climb it and get me a dog.”

  His hunger for a pet plucked at her again, but she said only, “Just like Jack and the Beanstalk.” She leaned toward Mario, whose hair was braided tightly down his back. Around his neck was a medicine bag made of soft leather. “Did you make that?”

  “My grandpa made it for me. He’s teaching me stuff.”

  “Like what?”

  “It’s secret. To be a man, you have to know things.”

  “Ah.” She finally felt grounded enough to look over the table at Deacon again. “There are a lot of things to learn, I guess.”

  “I would say so,” he said. He wore a chambray shirt with pockets on the front, the sleeves rolled three-quarters of the way up, to show his lean, powerful forearms. He had a cup of coffee in front of him, black and steaming. “We waited for you to order. But some people here”—he bumped a shoulder against Calvin, sitting next to him—“might be getting impatient.”

  “That’s ’cuz I can smell all the sandwiches right now and my stomach is growling, saying Eat eat eat!”

  “Man, you is always hungry,” Mario said with a grin.

  Calvin bent his head and colored in the petals of a red flower. “I’m growing. A boy needs a lot of food.”

  She thought of Paris, kneeling in the garden yesterday, afraid she could not feed a dog in addition to her child. “Dogs need a lot of food, too, you know. Maybe that’s why your mom doesn’t want to get one just yet. She wants to make sure you have what you need.”

  “I’ll feed my dog,” he said stubbornly.

  The waitress stopped by the table, dressed in a polo shirt and black pants. “You ready to order now?”

  Elsa opened the menu. “I will be in two seconds. You guys go first and I’ll figure it out.”

  The boys ordered cheeseburgers and French fries, and for himself, Deacon ordered the classic grinder, a flat patty of Italian sausage smothered in provolone on a toasted bun.