The First Gardener (21 page)

She laid her head against his arm. It felt so good to have her near him simply because she wanted to be. And yet he couldn’t help feeling a little angry too. A little hurt. The way she had pulled away, shut him out, had torn at his heart.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” She let the tears fall. “I love you so much, Gray.”

“I love you too, babe. It’s okay.” He bent to kiss the top of her head, his own tears falling into her hair. She clung tightly to his arm. And he let his body absorb every ounce of her presence.

“Nothing feels the same,” she whispered.

He savored her words. There had been so few since Maddie’s death that he wished she would sit here and talk to him all night. “It will never be the same. But we still have each other, and we can’t forget that.”

They settled in this place for a long time before she spoke. He felt the movement of her lips against his arm. “I’ve got something to tell you.”

“You can tell me anything.”

She pushed herself up. “I’m pregnant, Gray.”

He blinked. His mind fired off thoughts like an AK-47.
When? Where? How? Why now?

Finally he found his voice. “How—when did you find this out?”

“Thad called and confirmed it tonight, but I had been thinking this past week that was where the nausea was coming from.”

He sat up straight in his chair. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I had to know for sure. I didn’t want to speculate about something like that.”

Gray stood, his flip-flops slapping against his feet as he paced across the tiled kitchen floor. He ran both hands through his hair over and over. “This is crazy, Mack. I can’t believe this. I don’t even know how to feel.”

She didn’t move. “I know. I don’t either.”

He walked over to her. “All these years. We’ve been trying for the last three years, and this is when it happens? This is when God decides to give us another baby?”

She shook her head. “I know. I’ve gone through all those same thoughts all week. I haven’t known whether to be ecstatic or angry. But I think this might be our miracle, Gray. I think it might be God’s gift since we’ve suffered so much. Our restoration. I can’t help but think that.”

He sat down again and pulled her toward him. She rested her weight on the front of his barstool and leaned her head on his shoulder. He wrapped his arms around her neck. It had been his initial thought too, but he’d been afraid to verbalize it. Mack’s body had rejected so many children. If this pregnancy failed, he couldn’t imagine how devastated she would be.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t even begin to understand God’s mind. I just know that this is where we are. This is what is happening. And I’m going to choose to be happy about it.”

She leaned back and looked at him. Her face was so different from the face he had seen the last several weeks. This one had a spark, almost a smile. And he was so grateful. If this life inside her could bring her back to him, then he would do everything in his power to make sure it arrived safely into this world.

Her body softened in his arms. “I love you so much.”

“I love you too.”

He studied her wounded but hopeful face, then leaned over and kissed her. At first it felt awkward, but gradually she responded as she had so many times before. He picked up her tiny frame in his arms and headed to their room. And that night he made love to his wife in that way of knowing that only a shared grief—and a shared hope—can bring.

Chapter 24

Six weeks later

Mackenzie nuzzled her face in the crease of Gray’s neck. “Do you know what today is?”

“No,” he said. “What’s today?”

“It’s the end of the first trimester.” She popped up to sit cross-legged on the bed. “We actually made it. I knew we would.”

Gray rolled onto his side and propped his head on the palm of his hand. “You kept saying it, didn’t you, babe? And you were right.”

She leaned down and kissed him softly on his lips. “I’ve just felt from the beginning that this was our gift. Our restoration. We’ve been through so much, you know.” Her hands pulled at the hem of her red silk pajama top. “It’s time, Gray.”

“Time?”

She punched him. “You know what I’m talking about. It’s time to make our announcement. You don’t keep stuff like this quiet, Gray. You share it.”

They’d had this conversation before. From the moment they learned about the pregnancy, she’d wanted to shout the news from the rooftops. She said that the people of Tennessee had grieved with them and should now be able to celebrate with them. Because of their track record, he had asked her to wait at least until the first trimester was over, and she’d gone along with his request. But she just knew. She knew in her gut that this was the boy they had longed for. And now she was ready to tell the world.

“You sure you don’t want to wait a little longer?” he asked with a gentle smile. “Are you ready for the public attention? I mean, after—”

“I’m ready.” She hopped out of bed, and he followed her to the bathroom. Sophie let out a yip from her kennel in the closet when she heard them.

“Just a minute, girl,” Gray called to the puppy. “Hang on.” He walked to his side of the counter and pulled out his toothbrush.

“It’s going to be a busy week,” she told him. “Things have been hopping since we agreed to host that luncheon for the Duchess of Wilshire in a couple of months. Jessica might as well be preparing for the queen. She’ll have a heart attack when I ask her to put together a press release about the baby, but too bad. She’ll just have to work it in.”

Gray turned to look at her, his eyes serious. “I want to read it before it goes out.”

“Sure,” she said through a mouthful of toothpaste. She finished, wiped her mouth, and walked to the shower, opening the door and turning on the shower to warm the water. “What’s your day look like?”

“Full. The budget requests have all come in, and we’re in the beginning stages of going over everything.” He rinsed his toothbrush. “What about you? Besides the announcement, I mean.”

Mack slipped from her pj’s and into the warmth of the streaming water. “Well, I’ve got a trip to the baby store with Anna. I’m buying something today to celebrate.” Steam began to filter out of the shower. “We’re going to meet Tina and Heather for lunch. And then I’m working on writing the foreword for the Junior League’s new cookbook. I’m pretty sure my mother got me that gig.”

Gray put down his towel and walked over to the shower. “I bet you’ll smile all day,” he said through the door.

She giggled. “I’ve smiled the last two months. I’ve even done everything Jessica has told me to do. Can you believe that? I haven’t changed her schedule one time.” She poked her wet head out. “Until today.”

“I wondered why she was humming the other day.” He gave her a quick smile and disappeared into the closet, where Sophie gave another yip.

She slipped from the shower, grabbed her towel, and picked up a bottle of baby oil. And for just a moment she remembered. It all came back. She opened the pink top, thinking of how soft the oil had made Maddie’s skin. That was why she’d started using it on her own.

But she couldn’t go there. Not now. She pushed the thought away and replaced it with a new, positive one. She imagined how wonderful it would be to slather oil on the new baby.

She wrapped a towel around her body and walked to the closet just as Gray stepped out with Sophie in his arms. The puppy had grown so much over the last two months. Her shaggy hair fell in front of her eyes and was about ready for a ponytail holder. She wiggled wildly.

Mackenzie reached out her hands. “Let me take her.”

Gray’s shock was evident.

She laughed. “Don’t act like that. I have been very sweet to her lately.”

“Sweet, yes. Dog walker, no.”

She wiggled her fingers. “Come on. Let me take her.”

“No,” he said flatly.

Her brow furrowed, and she dropped her arms. “Gray, I just want to take our dog for a walk.”

He answered again. “No.”

She was getting frustrated. “You’re being ridiculous. Seriously.”

“Mack, you’re wearing a towel.”

She looked down and burst out laughing. She had completely forgotten. “Well, I guess I am.” She crinkled her nose. “Maybe I’ll take her tomorrow.”

He chuckled. “Yeah. I’ll help you remember that.”

She walked into the closet smiling. Her outfit for the day was hanging up and ready to go. And so was she. She had been on a full schedule for six weeks now. From the time she knew life was inside of her, life seemed to have come back to her. Her brown slacks swished softly as she made her way to the small balcony off their bedroom. The location had changed, and so had the prayer. But she couldn’t help but return to praying after the gift she’d been given.

She raised her face to the sunshine, the soft leather of her jacket rubbing at her neck. And then, when she was finished, she headed downstairs to the garage. In minutes, her new car was headed for Anna’s house and then that quaint baby store in Belle Meade.

She had a nursery to decorate. And for the second time in her life, she was going to enjoy every minute of it.

The last few months ’round here be sweet. Miz Mackenzie seem to come back to life, and I knowed why even ’fore they gone and finally told. Any man seen his wife with his seed planted inside her know what a woman with chil’ look like. I ain’t said nothin’ ’bout nothin’ ’til they ready to ’nounce. But I still knowed. And I knowed it be a miracle.

They havin’ a gatherin’ here at the mansion today. That feel like a miracle too. After Maddie Mae died, I be wonderin’ if this house ever do any celebratin’ again. But then they gone and had ’em a coupla Christmas parties. And now what they havin’ be some kinda ladies’ tea honorin’ a dignitary from England. Some relation to the queen, I hear.

You’d think that kind a highfalutin stuff would keep the crazies out. But Miz Eugenia and her three cronies been up in here all day fussin’ ’bout. Eugenia even insist that her and her friends gon’ do the flowers, and Miz Mackenzie say okay. Don’t know what she was thinkin’.

That Dimples ’bout near destroyed my magnolias. Probably maimed ’em for life with all the leaves she gone and cut. But Eugenia bringin’ all the rest herself. All she had to do is ax me—I gots me plenty a flowers winterin’ in the greenhouse.

But she ain’t done it. She too proud.

’Course, them crazy women the least a our worries ’round here. The gov’nor, he be ’bout near through with his budget, I hear. He tell me he find ’nough manure in that thing to keep my gardens fertilized ’til Jesus come back. I tol’ him at least that be one less thing the gov’ment gon’ have to go and pay for. He just laugh the way he do. An’ that fine with me. I just glad to hear him laugh at all.

But I be a li’l worried ’bout him and Miz Mackenzie too. Not my place to say nothin’ ’bout it. But it seem to me the healin’ that need to be happenin’ ain’t really happenin’. Seem like it was at first. But now, there just lots a ’stractions. They ’stracted from they pain with this new baby comin’ and all. They ’stracted with gov’ment stuff too. But there be a piece a me know, way down there deep in my knower, that this here grief ain’t finished yet. ’Stractions can only ’stract for so long.

Always hard to understand why life happen like this to good people like Miz Mackenzie and the gov’nor. But I heard a preacher man say one time that when God call you to sump’n big, ever’thing in your life gon’ be big. Your mountains and your valleys—they all gon’ be big. And this here valley, it be as big as any I ever see. But maybe that just ’cause they both made for greatness.

Still, I can’t help but wonder what God gon’ use to get that grief out. I kinda scared to know. Because that last grief so deep, they almost gots lost in it.

Had to dig hard that time just to find ’em.

Can’t ’magine where we might have to dig next time.

Chapter 25

Spring had been birthed in the middle of January. Outside, the winter winds were bitter. But inside the governor’s mansion, it was a breathtaking April day.

Eugenia put her hands on her hips and surveyed the dining room with satisfaction. Two gorgeous chandeliers hung over the two twelve-seater round tables that were covered in crisp ivory linens. Mackenzie had been bound and determined she was going to add two more seats to the stated capacity of the dining room. So she had moved the long dining table out and had two rounds brought in. It had worked perfectly. Each chair was wrapped in beautiful moss-green silk fabric gathered in the back with a large ivory bow. In front of each chair was a place setting of new custom-made Pickard china decorated with the state flower, the purple iris. And on every conceivable surface in the mansion there were blossoms.

That was Eugenia’s doing. She had proclaimed herself chief florist for this event the minute she found out that royalty was coming to Nashville. She was excited to use her talents to make sure Mackenzie shined. Of course she had no doubt her talents would shine as well.

“I got these from out there.” Dimples’s head was slanted toward the back door. Her hands were full of glossy magnolia leaves. “But that Jeremiah told me I couldn’t have any more.”