The First Gardener (24 page)

She never moved. The life that had rekindled for a brief instant might never be found again. And if he were being honest, he wasn’t sure his would either.

Chapter 29

One month later

The fur of the winter coat was soft against Mackenzie’s face, but she couldn’t feel it. The air was as frosty as a snow cone in July, but she felt hot inside. The smell of the pine trees was as rich as a Christmas morning, but she had no sense of Christmas. And chickadee songs were as whimsical as an aria from
Don Quixote
, yet they barely registered in her ears.

This was the first time she had left the house since . . . since her hope had died. She didn’t even know why she was out here. She’d just wrapped a coat around her pajamas, slipped on some boots, and walked. Maybe deep down she thought she could walk away from the pain, the noise, the silence. The . . . world.

Maybe she would never stop walking.

A flash of setting sun caught her eyes, and she squinted. Then she cursed the brightness. It should be raining. It should pour from now until God decided to get off his duff and get back to doing his job. At this point, though, she doubted if there even was a God.

And if there was, she was pretty sure she hated him.

She turned toward the azalea garden and heard a mumbling sound. She jumped instinctively when a figure suddenly straightened up in front of her. She pulled at the edges of her coat. A scream escaped her lips.

“Just me, Miz Mackenzie. Just me.” Jeremiah’s voice was easily discernible before his face registered.

“You almost scared me to death.”

“Sorry, ma’am. Ain’t mean to scare you.” He gestured toward the ground. “Just makin’ sure these gon’ be ready for spring. What you doin’ out here this afternoon, Miz Mackenzie? Though it sure ’nough good to see you up.”

“I . . . needed some fresh air.” She wrapped her arms around her chest. “What were you mumbling when I came up?”

“Oh, just prayin’. I do that a lot when I’m workin’ out here.”

She stared at him. “What do you pray about, Jeremiah?”

He let out a soft chuckle. “Just ’bout ever’thing, I guess. I pray ’bout the boys that work with me. I pray ’bout life. I pray my bones don’t give out. I pray ’bout you . . .” The last part came out soft.

“What do you pray about me? I mean, what do you pray for?”

“I pray for your heart. That it won’t ache forever.”

She felt a sudden fury rise up inside her. She didn’t want to feel it, didn’t want to feel anything, but there it was. “Don’t waste any more of those prayers on me, Jeremiah.”

She watched him shift his weight slowly, back and forth. “Ain’t prayed nothin’ I figure to be a waste. Only wasted prayers to my way a thinkin’ be the ones you ain’t gone and prayed.”

Her words fell as more of a whisper. “Then you’ve never heard mine.”

Jeremiah reached down and pulled a leaf from the camellia shrub at his feet. He twirled the green leaf between his fingers. Mackenzie watched as it moved slowly in the fading sunlight. “This here be a camellia leaf. Now, the flowers on this here bush ain’t gon’ bloom ’til spring. But y’know what them flowers mean? They mean ‘you be a flame in my heart.’ And I done lived long ’nough to learn a thing or two ’bout the heart.”

He paused as if waiting for her to respond. She didn’t.

“Knowed me a lot of people through the years. They hearts be all shut down. Y’know what that look like?”

She shook her head.

“A shut-down heart’s ’bout the saddest thing I ever see. ’Cause we all come out the womb with our hearts wide open. All sweet and trustin’ and close to God. It like we got this line runnin’ straight up to heaven.

“But life can start cuttin’ into that there line. Li’l cut when we li’l and sump’n sad happens or we find out somebody can do things better’n we can. More li’l cuts when we go and get married and our husband or wife does sump’n to hurt us—or maybe we don’t never marry and we lonely. And it just keep comin’. When we lose sump’n or hurt somewheres or get lied on and betrayed—all that just keep sawin’ at that line from heaven to that li’l alive heart. And finally it don’t want to stay open no more, so it just clench up.”

He held his tightened fist out in front of her, soil still clinging to it. “That be to me what a shut-down heart look like—all sad and scared and bitter, all them things. But the real sad thing is, it don’t have to shut down. ’Cause even with all them cuts, that line to heaven still there. If it go and close up, that be our doin’.”

Mackenzie shifted her boots. But still had nothing to offer.

“God okay if you mad, Miz Mackenzie. Way I figure, he hear ever’thing, so ain’t much we gots to say gon’ shock him. But when you take that heart he gone and placed inside you and shut it all down, well . . . don’t know if there be anythin’ make him ache more.”

Mackenzie’s eyebrows rose, then lowered.

Jeremiah twirled the tiny leaf again through his fingers. “Can’t pretend I know where your heart be. Just know from my own ’periences that when life come at you hard, like it done come down on you now, be easy to quit livin’. And I don’t want you to do that. Not when there more livin’ left to do.”

She had heard enough. “Have a good day, Jeremiah.” She turned before he could respond.

“I sure will. Seein’ you already make it perfect.” He paused for a moment. Then his words shot through the gathering darkness. “Miz Mackenzie, you know what a pink camellia mean?”

“You already said. Something about a flame in my heart.”

“Guess I did, but that what a
red
camellia mean. A pink one, it mean ‘longin’ for you.’” He paused. “That’s what I figure God be doin’ when we tryin’ to shut down the flame in our heart. He longin’ for us.”

She stared at the outline of his figure for a moment longer, then turned again and headed toward the house. Heavy clouds had rolled in as she talked to Jeremiah. A snowflake skirted in front of her.

She paid it no attention. Nor the hundreds that would fall before morning.

I ain’t never forgot that smell ’round here after the Tennessee flood. The soil was soppin’. I wore muck boots just to get it all cleaned up. The boys and me worked so hard, pullin’ up dead things, transplantin’ wet things. Just stank like death.

Kinda how it smell ’round here now. Like death.

I’m always plumb near amazed at how tragedy can swallow people whole. I ’member that dark day for me almost thirty years ago. I thought I would die. I wanted to die. But I didn’t die. I lived. And when I knowed I was gon’ live, I decided to do just that.

Live.

Couldn’t change what happen. Couldn’t change the lies told ’bout me. Alls I could do was live the life I been given to live. I ain’t wanted to live it this way. This life ain’t looked like the picture Shirley and me had for our lives. But it what we get. And Shirley and me, we just dig in. We dig in for the pain, and we dig in for the healin’.

But ain’t no healin’ ’round here right now. Them two ain’t doin’ nothin’ but diggin’ in to dyin’.

Lord know good and well I ain’t got a lot to give. And he know good and well that there be days when I see Miz Eugenia stroll out here and wanna ax her what Sanford ax Esther. You know: “How you doin’? How you feelin’? When you leavin’?” Or tell her what Ralph always tol’ Alice: “I gon’ give you one right in the kisser.”

So reckon I do got sump’n to give. It just ain’t what I needin’ to give. But I don’t know how to pull ’em up outta ’emselves. And Eugenia, she do try. She try harder’n most folks I know. She love that girl and boy so deep and so wide.

Trouble is, Eugenia just a lot a woman to be lovin’ on anybody.

She keep tryin’ that hard, might well smother ’em to death.

Chapter 30

Berlyn pulled Eugenia out the front door of her house. Eugenia slapped wildly at her hand. But Berlyn was a brute. She hauled Eugenia onto the sidewalk where Sandra and Dimples waited, then pointed her toward Main Street. Snow fell softly while they walked.

Eugenia had come home to check on things and grab some clean underwear. She hadn’t planned on having to fight a seventy-one-year-old woman intent on kidnapping her.

“We’re getting you out, and that’s that. You’ve been living at the mansion full-time for the last month, and it’s time for you to have a day for you. Plus, you’re getting skinny and I am not going to be in the healthy club all by myself.”

“Since when did obesity become healthy?” Sandra quipped.

Berlyn snapped, “Since when did full-figured become obese? I wish you would tell Marilyn Monroe that or Betty Grable. Or Oprah.”

Sandra puffed, “You are no Marilyn Monroe or Betty Grable. And Lord knows you’re no Oprah.”

Berlyn ignored her and tugged at the sleeve of Eugenia’s royal-blue coat. While Eugenia huffed down the street, Dimples was pulling up the rear, trying desperately not to take a tumble over her too-big black galoshes.

“Get her!” Eugenia barked at Sandra, pointing to Dimples. “Last thing we need is her in the street.”

“She needs egg salad,” Berlyn announced.

Dimples instinctively licked her lips.

Sandra walked back toward Dimples, taupe leather pumps squishing in the snow, matching handbag dangling from her wrist, and the mink collar of her taupe coat encasing her like she had a beaver wrapped around her neck. Franklin’s Main Street was bustling, its sidewalks crowded with people wanting to enjoy winter’s first snowfall in one of Tennessee’s most picturesque towns.

Eugenia had always loved living in Franklin. Long before it was featured in
Southern Living
, she’d known the town was a treasure. Something about it always felt soothing to her. And now, walking down Main Street with her friends, she realized how much she’d missed being home. She’d almost forgotten there was a world outside the walls of the mansion. Her soul needed this so badly.

They walked past Chico’s, where most of Eugenia’s wardrobe came from. She had tried to get Berlyn in there. But the low-cut floral pantsuit Berlyn wore under her bright-pink coat was proof that if it didn’t come from the Tacky Palace, Berlyn wouldn’t wear it. The pantsuit was orange and fuchsia, for goodness’ sake! Frederick’s of Hollywood was conservative to Berlyn.

They crossed Main Street, and Eugenia could see bubbles floating outside the homemade soap store. Maddie had loved that bubble machine. The thought made her heart ache. Just as it had ached since the moment she first got the news about Maddie.

Had that really been six months ago?

The pain had been so great at times she wasn’t even sure that she was going to survive it. She’d never tell them, but if it hadn’t been for these three crazy women, she wouldn’t have. Their calls, notes, meals, even their bickering, renewed her. They could drive her to drink, but she’d have died without them. And without their intervention today, she wouldn’t have been able to tear herself away from the mansion. She was afraid of what she might find when she returned. The thought made her shudder.

When they walked through the door of Merridee’s Breadbasket, the smells of butter and yeast accosted her senses. The warmth of the place seemed to press against the perpetual chill she had been living with. She closed her eyes and let momentary delight overtake her. Standing here now, basking in it, she realized she’d forgotten what delight even felt like. Her soul was grateful for the distraction and eternally grateful she had a place like Merridee’s to visit.

The shop’s founder, Merridee, had been destined for the baking business. Her grandmother had once been a baker for Pillsbury. And everyone in Franklin rejoiced when she decided to bring her baking gifts to this Southern town in 1984. The place was a carb lover’s dream. And Eugenia and her friends had always loved carbs.

“I’m only eating pie today,” Berlyn announced as she finally let go of Eugenia’s arm.

Dimples braced herself against the counter and stared into the glass-paned display case. “Me too. Just sweets today. We’re on the doorstep of death, and I haven’t had my own teeth in years, so why not enjoy myself?”

“You’re drooling, Dimples.” Sandra pulled at the fingers of her leather gloves. “I’m having a salad.”

Berlyn stared at her in disgust. “You’re going to die without ever enjoying life.”

“At least when I get to heaven, I won’t get scolded for having abused my body.”

Berlyn’s eyes widened, and she leaned her head back. “Excuse me, but just about every time I read about Jesus in the New Testament, he’s somewhere eating. So I’m thinking he’s going to tell you that you wasted a lot of wonderful opportunities to enjoy yourself.”

Eugenia ignored them and focused on the cashier. “I want a double egg salad, a bag of chips, a fruit cup, and a piece of rhubarb pie. And I want these women to pay for it. They’ve driven me crazy in less than three blocks, so they should have to foot the bill.”

Eugenia turned to look at Sandra, whose expression went as tight as Berlyn’s thong—or at least the thong Berlyn tried to convince Sandra she wore. Sandra scurried to the counter. “Oh my . . . well, now . . . I think we’re going to have Berlyn here pay for it—” she motioned toward her—“because she was the one who decided we all needed this outing. I will have the chicken salad on lettuce with your strawberries and house dressing.”