Mulberry Park (3 page)

Trevor might be right about that. She wondered if Erik would ever decide to show himself to her. She hoped so.

As Trevor stooped to tie his shoe, she picked up Lucita from the bench.

“Do you believe me now?” she asked.

He shrugged, then got to his feet. “It’s going to take more than one little letter for me to believe God can do things like that.”

Analisa laughed. “Then I’ll meet you back here tomorrow and the day after that.”

“Why?”

“I’m going to write another letter to God tonight.”

“How come?”

“To thank Him.” She hugged the letter and Lucita close to her heart. Then she looked at Trevor. “Want me to find out if you have a guardian angel?”

“Nah. Don’t bother. There isn’t anyone looking out for me.”

After her usual five-mile run, Claire made her way across the lawn at Mulberry Park, her body cooling down from another heart-pounding workout.

Yesterday, while catching her breath and resting, she’d sat beneath the mulberry, looked up and scanned the foliage for the neon pink envelope. But she’d seen only leaves fluttering in the afternoon sun and a torn, wind-battered kite dangling by its tail.

She had no way of knowing what had happened to the letter she’d left for Analisa. The little girl could have taken it, of course. Or it could have blown onto the ground, where a park maintenance worker might have found it and tossed it into the trash.

There were a hundred different scenarios, and she decided it was ridiculous to give the unconventional correspondence more than a passing thought.

Still, as she neared the stone bench that rested in the shade of the tree, she couldn’t help but search the vast array of leaves and branches again. This time something small and blue caught her eye.

Another letter?

Whatever it was rested too high to reach unless she climbed the tree, which Claire wasn’t about to do. Talk about unconventional. Climbing a tree to retrieve a letter to God bordered on crazy.

Yet she continued to study the blue scrap of paper overhead, the message to her.

Well, not exactly to
her
, but since she’d answered Analisa’s last letter, this was a response to what she’d written.

Claire scanned the park and found herself alone. A vacant red pickup sat in the parking lot, but there was no sign of the driver. It looked as though everyone who’d visited the park today had already gone home.

But Claire had no one to rush home to, no one to smile at her from across the table.

For reasons she didn’t want to contemplate, that scrap of blue paper continued to call to her, and a strange compulsion settled over her, a growing urge to do something she wouldn’t normally do.

Without any further consideration, she stepped onto the bench and reached for the lowest branch, then she placed a sneaker on the concrete backrest and pulled herself into the tree.

The bark scraped against her knee, and she grumbled under her breath. Still, she pressed on.

Claire hadn’t done anything remotely unladylike in ages, not since she’d been a kid. This was
so
not like her.

What would her coworkers at the savings and loan think if they could see her now?

She braced her feet on the sturdy bough and rested her fanny against a slanting branch. Then, even though she felt like a nosy neighbor opening someone else’s mail, she reached for the card-shaped envelope, withdrew the letter, and read the child’s words.

Claire studied the rudimentary handwriting of a stranger, a little girl seeking God and finding Claire instead.

The first letter had gripped her heart, had made her want to protect the child from grief, but now she feared for Analisa’s safety.

Who was
Trever
? A dirty old man who’d set his sights on an orphaned child?

Claire shuddered at the thought. Good Lord. Little Analisa was worried about Mr. Trever, but who was looking after the trusting child?

Before she could ponder her growing concern, a graveled voice sounded from below. “Lose something?”

Claire’s heart thumped, and she jerked back, nearly losing her balance. She grabbed a branch to steady herself, inadvertently crushing the letter in her hand.

On the ground, an elderly man stood, one hand on his hip, the other holding the leather handle of a worn brown satchel. His hair was white and thick, and he needed a shave.

Her embarrassment ran amok.

“Crazy fool woman. What are you doing up there?” A sparkle in his eyes suggested he was teasing, although she couldn’t be sure.

“I’m…” She glanced at the blue letter and envelope she’d crumpled in her hand. “Just reading.”

He humphed, then shook his woolly head. “There’s probably a law against climbing trees in the park. And if there isn’t, there ought to be. You could fall and break your neck.”

The man looked as old as creation, and an aura of bright light lit his head like a halo or some kind of heavenly crown. She could almost imagine that God had taken human form and come down to earth to punish her for reading His mail, for pretending to be Him.

When the man shifted his weight to one hip, eliminating the reflected glare from the sun and revealing a pair of wire-rim glasses perched on his head, the pseudo-divine aura completely disappeared.

“I don’t suppose you have a ladder?” she quipped.

“Not
with
me.”

She watched him for a while, expecting him to move on and go about his way, but he continued to study her. “You’re watching me as if you haven’t been entertained in years. Don’t you have a television at home?”

“Nope. Got tired of all the dang reruns.” A teasing glimmer lit his eyes, and humor tugged at his lips. He nodded toward the case he carried. “I don’t suppose you play chess.”

“Afraid not. I never could figure out how to balance the game board in a tree.”

“Too bad.” His grin broadened to an outright smile. “If you ever get it figured out, just give me a holler. My name’s Walter.”

“Mine’s Claire. And I’ll do that.”

He nodded, then turned toward the parking lot, heading for the red pickup with the American flag decal displayed on the rear window. She’d seen it here before. It had a bumper sticker that claimed he was one of The Chosin Few.

A Korean War veteran, she suspected. A man who’d proudly fought at the Chosin Reservoir.

She tried to smooth the letter, then carefully tucked it into the waistband of her shorts.

As the pickup roared to life, she lowered herself to the ground. Her legs were still a bit rubbery from her run, and her foot slipped, causing her ankle to twist slightly and her knee to scrape against the bark.

“Ouch.” She regained her footing, but grumbled again at the stupidity that had put her in this position.

The old man had called her crazy, and she had to agree. All she needed was a broken neck. Or to get laid up and be unable to work. Or worse. God forbid she’d be unable to run anymore. The rigorous daily jog was what kept her sane and her life on track.

Once safely out of the tree and seated on the bench, she pulled out the letter, reread it, and considered her response. Then she took the marker Analisa had again provided, printing this time so the girl could read the words all by herself—without
Trever’s
help. When she finished, she dropped the marker back into the envelope, folded the wrinkled paper, tucked it inside, and placed it on the lowest branch.

As Claire drove toward the small condominium complex just off Chinaberry Lane and the three-bedroom place she called home, she again recalled the old man’s words:
Crazy fool woman.

For a moment, she’d wondered if maybe he’d been right. After all, how many grown women climbed into trees and responded to letters addressed to God?

There was a time when Claire might have called Vickie, the woman who’d once been her best friend.

“Hey, Vick,” she would have said. “You’ll never guess what I found today. And what I did.”

But Claire had lost her connection to Vickie when Erik had died. Not that Vickie had been the one to pull away; she hadn’t. It’s just that one of the many things they’d had in common had been children the same age, and Claire hadn’t been able to face the constant reminder of what Vickie still had.

And what Claire had lost.

W
alter turned down First Street and headed for the house he’d lived in for the past twenty years. He didn’t often chat with people he’d met in the park. Why should he? Folks just seemed to think he was either feeble-minded or a dirty old man, so he pretty much kept to himself.

But that shapely brunette jogger reminded him a lot of Margie when she’d been a sweet young thing and full of spunk.

He’d never said a word to the jogger before today, though. Women like her didn’t want to be bothered by a worn-out old man like him. But when he’d walked out of the restroom and spotted her climbing a tree, he hadn’t been able to resist.

It had been ages since he’d kidded a pretty little gal who knew how to tease back.

Margie, with her quick wit and playful side, had been like that. She’d had a way of making him smile and laugh at the simplest things. And when she’d died in the prime of life, Walter had been devastated.

He’d tried to shake the grief that had dang near killed him by drowning himself in the bottle, but it had been only a temporary fix.

How long had it been? How long had he been without the woman who’d shared his life and loved him in spite of his flaws and the demons that plagued him in the middle of the night?

Nearly twenty years, but it seemed like forever.

He supposed a man got used to fixing his own dinner, mending his own shirts. But living alone—or rather, sleeping alone—was tough.

And he wasn’t talking about sex. It was more than that. It was the intimacy they shared, the conversations they had while lying close, holding each other.

They said time healed grief, but he wasn’t so sure about that. After seeing the attractive young woman perched up in a tree, having a chance to talk and hear her voice, to catch a glimpse of her smile…

For a moment, he’d let the years roll back and had pretended she was his sweet wife.

And where had that gotten him?

Now he had an overwhelming urge to toast Margie’s memory, to tell her again how sorry he was for the times he’d fallen off the wagon and let her down.

Maybe he ought to talk to someone. But who? Blake or Tyler? The kids who hadn’t spoken to him in over ten years and had told him to lose their phone numbers? Or Carl Witherspoon, his best friend and mentor who’d died six months ago?

Walter looked up in the dusk-tinged sky and shook his head. “You left me in one heck of a fix.”

He wasn’t exactly sure who he was talking to, but as usual, there was no response.

It seemed that even the Ol’ Boy Upstairs had forgotten him. Maybe He’d deemed a reformed hellion unworthy of entering the Pearly Gates. Not that Walter was looking forward to death. He suspected that all those years he’d been stubborn and had refused to accompany Margie and her sons to church had finally caught up with him. And that when he finally passed on, his tombstone would read: All Dressed Up And No Place To Go.

But heck, here he was on the right side of the cemetery lawn, and he still had no place to go, nothing to do.

Up ahead, flanked by an empty, weed-infested lot and a vacant building that had once housed a feed store, Paddy’s Pub waited to pour a flood of scotch on a man willing to drown.

Happy Hour would be in full swing, which was tempting, but three years ago, Walter had made a promise to take one day at a time. A promise he hoped to keep.

Carl had more or less become Walter’s AA sponsor, although Walter had refused to attend any meetings. “You’ll have to get me rip-roaring drunk first, Carl. Crowds make me skittish when I’m sober.”

The two men had become friends anyway and met almost every afternoon at Mulberry Park to play chess. Now, even though Carl was gone, Walter still showed up and set up the board on a picnic table.

Hanging out at the park alone was a stupid thing to do, he supposed, but it was a heck of a lot better than reverting back to the old ways, going back to the time when the pub had been his home away from home.

When he felt weak, he willed himself to think again of the tragedy that had struck about three years ago and had been so instrumental in causing him to take that first step into sobriety when nothing else had.

There but by the grace of God go I, the old saying went. And it was true.

It could have just as easily been Walter behind the wheel that afternoon, his reactions dulled by Jack Daniels’, Walter who’d hit that little boy riding his bicycle along the street, Walter who’d have to live out the rest of his days behind bars.

At least he’d been spared that.

Still, there was enough other remorse to wallow in, other guilt to trudge through.

He kept the steering wheel straight, his eyes on the road ahead, but the urge to stop at Paddy’s was growing stronger. He could make a turn down Main and change his route, but each day on his trek to and from the park, he chose to drive by the pub, forcing himself to face temptation and pass it by.

Today he was driving slower than usual, though. He glanced at the speedometer. Yep. Well under the twenty-five-miles-per-hour limit.

He was practically at a standstill when he came to the pub, where a yellow neon
OPEN
sign flickered like a porch light, welcoming a tired old soul home, offering rest to weary bones, a place to unload a few burdens for a time, to share a few laughs.

Yet in spite of the overwhelming impulse to stop, Walter pressed down on the gas pedal, increasing his speed. He’d beaten it again today, but he feared there might come a time when he’d give in, when he’d take the easy way out.

As he passed the bar, he spotted a young boy walking along the sidewalk, kicking at a rock along the way. It was that kid from the park, the one who didn’t appear to have anywhere else to go, anything better to do.

Again Walter suspected he and the boy had a lot in common, that they were both miserable and alone.

He had half a notion to befriend the kid the next time he ran into him, but Walter didn’t have anything to offer anyone.

And he was a fool to think he might.

At quarter to ten, Sam Dawson grew tired of watching television and decided to read for a while. He clicked off the power on the remote, then headed to the room that had been his den before his niece moved in.

She’d gone to bed hours ago, but checking on her before he turned in had become a nightly ritual. He wasn’t sure why, though. Maybe because he used to sneak off at night when he was a kid—not that anyone knew or cared when he did.

Sam supposed that might not become a problem with his niece, but peeking in on her still seemed like the kind of thing a responsible guardian should do.

From the doorway, he studied Analisa’s sleeping form, watched her chest rise and fall in peaceful slumber. She’d tucked a worn-out doll under one arm and a brand-new teddy bear under the other.

His niece was a real cutie, and he was going to have his hands full when she grew up. But he was up to the task, even if that meant going head-to-head with any of the teenage boys who followed her home.

Sam raked a hand through his hair, then glanced at the little table and chair set that Hilda, the nanny he’d recently hired, had suggested he purchase.

Analisa sat there for hours, pretending to host a tea party for the queen or imagining a classroom for a couple of dolls and a few stuffed animals.

Tonight scissors, paper, markers, glitter, and glue littered the white wooden tabletop.

Analisa was usually pretty good about picking up after herself.

He’d have a talk with her about it tomorrow, which was a much better solution than his old man would have come up with. Sam would have been jerked out of bed, asleep or not, and slammed against the wall for making a mess.

In a strange twist, his own father had become the antithesis of a role model when it came to parenting.

As Sam turned away, allowing the light from the hall to add more illumination to the child’s room, the bold writing on a light green envelope on the little table caught his eye, drawing him back.

To God
, it said.

She was writing another one? Wasn’t the last one bright pink?

A subtle wisp of concern blew over him, and he wasn’t sure what—if anything—he should do with it.

A couple of days ago, she’d come up to him and asked, “What’s it like in Heaven?”

Her question had thrown him off balance, and he hadn’t been sure if he should have given her a Santa Claus explanation or his own cold, hard spin on the afterlife.

“I don’t know” was the only response his conscience had allowed.

She’d looked at him as if he’d kicked a puppy, and he’d felt as if he had, too. Maybe he should have made up something, mentioned the Pearly Gates, streets of gold, and a mansion in the clouds.

Her blue eyes had glistened to the point he feared she might start crying, then she’d crossed her little arms and shifted her weight to one foot. “Well, if
you
don’t know, and since Mrs. Richards doesn’t, either, we need to ask someone else.”

No, they couldn’t ask anyone else. First of all, Sam no longer knew anyone even remotely religious. And secondly, he wasn’t about to flip through the yellow pages, call some minister out of the blue and ask a question like that.

Instead Sam had reached for one of Analisa’s long, blond curls and gave it a gentle tug. “I probably should have asked your dad. I’ll bet he knew all about it.”

She’d nodded. “My daddy knew
everything
.”

At times Greg Dawson had come across as a know-it-all, which had led to a second falling out between the two brothers nearly six years ago. Just one more rift they’d failed to mend.

But Analisa didn’t need to know anything about that.

Sam leaned against the doorjamb of her bedroom and raked a hand through his hair. At times he wished he’d been on better terms with his brother, but it was too late now. Fate—or Whoever—had dealt them a fatal blow.

But hey. He’d get through it. He always did. And even though he couldn’t make amends with his brother, he would do everything he could for his niece.

All right, so he didn’t feel especially competent about being a parent, but money solved a slew of problems, and he had plenty of that. So the first thing he’d done was hire a nanny to take care of all the things a mother would do.

Jake Goldstein, a friend who’d attended law school with Sam, had recommended Hilda Richards, so that had solved the first dilemma.

Sam already lived in a nice house in one of the best neighborhoods in Fairbrook, so he’d hired a professional designer to create a pink and frilly bedroom that was every little girl’s dream. Then he’d provided his niece with all the dolls and toys she would ever want, all the things she would ever need.

It was a galaxy far, far away from the rundown neighborhood in which Sam and Greg had grown up. A fairy-tale world away from the childhood he and her father had experienced, a life Sam had done his best to escape.

Greg had escaped, too, but he’d chosen a religious path.

“You ought to come to church with me,” Greg had told him more than once.

“Forget it.” Sam hadn’t needed the religious crutch. Instead, he’d pulled himself up by the proverbial bootstraps, excelled in college, utilized student loans, and went on to law school.

Rather than admire Sam’s achievements and acknowledge that he’d kept his party-animal nose to the grindstone until he’d become an attorney, Greg had downplayed it all.

At the time, Sam had chalked it up to jealousy, but Greg had never seemed the least bit interested in money or success.

Six years ago, Greg had started in on Sam again. He’d told him that he still had an eat-drink-and-be-merry attitude and that his parties had merely gotten classier, the drinks more expensive.

Greg, who’d always found fault with Sam’s self-reliance and drive, had criticized him to no end, preaching about the importance of placing one’s trust in God.

A lot of good that had done Greg. With all his lofty ideas about the hereafter, he’d neglected to consider the present by drawing up a will or naming a guardian for his child.

Trusting God to the very end, Sam supposed. But who was looking out for Greg’s daughter now?

Sam was.

Greg would be rolling over in the casket Sam had purchased for him if he had any clue that his hell-bent, self-centered brother was the one answering Analisa’s questions about Heaven. Answers Sam didn’t have and couldn’t quite bring himself to fabricate.

“
Welllll
,” his precocious niece had told him that day, “then I’ll just have to ask
God
.”

Sam had been happy to pass the buck to whoever would take it, but he hadn’t meant to send her on some quixotic quest nor expected her to strike up a one-sided correspondence.

Or to offer God pictures she’d colored.

This evening she’d sketched an angel who looked a lot like the drawings she made of herself. The blue-eyed cherub—a boy—had glittery wings and wore a gold halo perched on blond, spiky hair. She’d even named him Erik.

Again, concern niggled at him. For a man who’d prided himself on his ability to solve any problem, he wasn’t used to feelings of inadequacy, even when he was clearly out of his league with this sort of thing.

The angel was just artwork, he told himself. An innocent childish creation. That’s all. But he would talk to Hilda about it in the morning.

That’s why he’d hired the woman, although he had to admit being a bit apprehensive about her age. She had to be nearly as old as God himself, and, quite frankly, a good sitter ought to be able to keep up with the kid she was watching.

Jake had sworn up and down that Hilda was the best nanny in California. Not that she wasn’t, but Sam hadn’t seen anything to impress him to the point of singing her praises yet. Still he knew he ought to be thankful she’d come out of retirement and taken the job. His law practice was busier than ever, and even if it hadn’t been, Sam didn’t know squat about parenting, about what was normal for kids to do and what wasn’t.

Struggling with the urge to shake it all off and retire for the night, his compulsion to step inside Analisa’s room and study the artwork on the table won out.