The First Gardener (25 page)

Berlyn moved up to the counter and scooted Sandra over with a push of her ample right hip. “Oh, phooey . . . just put it all on mine. I’m on Social Security, and there won’t be any left in there soon, so let’s live it up now. If it weren’t for me, they’d all be six feet under by now, anyway. Or sitting in a nursing home, gurgling and hoping someone rolled them over.”

The poor cashier must have been new because her face registered horror.

“I’ll have a piece of your chess pie and a piece of your chocolate pie,” Berlyn announced. “And Dimples here wants your mint fudge brownie and a piece of pecan pie. We have both decided that life is better if you lead with dessert.”

The young cashier rang the order up quickly and turned gratefully to the people behind them. Eugenia and her friends waited until their names were called, grabbed their food from the counter, and found a six-seater over by the window. Neither Eugenia nor Sandra liked to sit too close to other people. Eugenia’s excuse was hot flashes. She’d been using it for twenty years. Sandra’s excuse was germs.

Sandra sat down and immediately informed them it was time to pray. They complied as usual, though Berlyn always kept her eyes open to torment Sandra. Sandra was convinced Berlyn was the biggest heathen she knew. Yet Berlyn was the first person Sandra called whenever she wanted company.

As soon as the amen was given, Berlyn grabbed five packets of Splenda from the tabletop dispenser and stuck them in her purse.

“That’s stealing,” Sandra snapped.

“Mind your own business, old woman.”

Sandra sniffed and turned to Eugenia. “How is Mackenzie?”

Eugenia’s fork played in her fruit cup. She watched as a strawberry tumbled over cantaloupe. “Pitiful. I don’t know what to do. I feel like a failure as a mother.” Her voice cracked.

Dimples reached across the table to take her friend’s arm. She missed by a mile in her first attempt but patted her hand around until she safely landed on Eugenia’s arm. “You’re a wonderful mother, Eugenia. We don’t even want to hear that nonsense. If it weren’t for you and her jewel of a husband, the poor child would have wasted away by now. You are doing all that you can.”

Berlyn pulled a bottled Coke from her handbag and popped off the cap with her bottle opener. “Have you considered a shrink?” she asked right before a big bite of chocolate pie and meringue entered her mouth.

Eugenia snorted. “My child doesn’t need a shrink.”

Berlyn chewed just enough to make sure none of the pie spewed from her mouth when she talked. “It’s not time to be self-righteous, Eugenia. It’s time to be realistic. Mackenzie and Gray have both been through hell. And when you go through hell, sometimes it helps if you have someone other than a family member to talk to. That’s all I’m saying. We may not have grown up with all that counseling stuff, but—” she looked at the three women surrounding her—“that might be the reason why y’all are all screwed up.”

Eugenia’s back softened against the wood lattice behind it. She was still mulling over Berlyn’s previous statement. “Mackenzie barely leaves the house. Her doctor, Thad, has her on these antidepressants.”

Sandra sniffed again, and Berlyn eyed her suspiciously. “What are you turning your nose up at now?”

Sandra wound a strand of pearls around her neck tighter. “I happen to think that depression stuff is nothing but nonsense.”

“Well, some people think uptight old women are nonsense too,” Berlyn retorted, “but it doesn’t make them any less real.”

Eugenia spread her napkin over her lap. She ran her hands across it as she spoke. “You aren’t saying a thing I haven’t thought, Sandra. That’s just not how we were raised—to take pills when we had problems. I even begged Thad and Gray not to give that stuff to my baby.”

Dimples picked up her fork and stabbed at the pecan pie in front of her. She caught a smidgen of the edge.

“But he told me that depression is kind of like potholes in the brain.”

Dimples never looked up. “A pothole in the what?” She stabbed at her pie again and managed to get a forkful.

“In the brain, Dimples. The brain. Now will you eat your pie and let me finish?”

Dimples already had a mouthful, but she smiled and nodded. Eugenia went on. “Thad said that when a person suffers trauma, what it does to the brain is sort of like a pothole. And—”

“Oh my stars! Sandra, now we finally know!”

Sandra furrowed her brow. “What in the world are you talking about, Berlyn?”

“We finally know what your problem is. When your mama dropped you on your head, it made a pothole in your brain. That’s what is wrong with you.”

Sandra’s eyes squinched up. “If I weren’t a lady, Berlyn . . .”

Eugenia threw her hands up. “That’s it! I can’t even have a normal conversation with the three of you because y’all are incapable of having one. I don’t know why I thought I could do anything normal with crazy people.”

Berlyn shifted her large bottom in her seat. “Go ahead, Eugenia. We’re listening. But I just couldn’t help it. It was such a revelation.”

“I’m not saying another word.”

Dimples gnawed at her pie. “No, seriously. We want to hear, Eugenia.”

“The only way I will speak again is if none of y’all open your mouths until I’m through.”

Dimples ran her fingers across her lips as if she were zipping them. Berlyn followed suit. Sandra just sniffed one more time and stuck a bite of chicken salad in her mouth.

Eugenia pointed two fingers at her eyes, then back at them. “Like I said, trauma creates potholes in your brain. And when you keep going through difficult things one after the other, it’s like your body can’t fill up those holes fast enough, so you get depressed.”

Dimples looked up from her plate. “Fill ’em up with what?”

Berlyn rolled her eyes. “With asphalt, Dimples. What do you think?” But she looked expectantly at Eugenia. Obviously she didn’t know either.

“It’s this brain stuff—Thad called it serotonin. He said the antidepressant kind of fills in the pothole until your body can produce enough serotonin to take over. And I don’t know—” she lowered her head—“it just made sense to me. My baby needs some help filling her potholes. If those pills help do that, then I’m for them.” She lifted her eyes and fixed them on Berlyn, who was opening her mouth. “And I don’t want to hear one wisecrack about anything I just said.”

Berlyn’s mouth closed slowly.

“How is Gray?” Sandra asked.

Eugenia’s eyes moistened again. “Hurting. And brooding, it seems. He’s not himself. And he still hasn’t officially announced he’s running for reelection.”

“He’s got time,” Sandra responded. “And this state loves him. They know what he and Mack have been through. Plus, people respect what he’s done with the budget. It had to be done. I know the politicians are behaving like juveniles, but no one needs money spent on how to teach college students to watch television. Did you know some senator from Knoxville actually had that in his budget request for UT? I was in education for forty-five years, and I assure you the kids had no problem watching television. I’m glad Gray has been willing to do the difficult things. Truth is, we need him.”

Eugenia shook her head. “Well, not everyone thinks he is a hero. And I know he’s a smart man and he’s been a wonderful governor. But honestly, I don’t know if Gray and Mackenzie can handle a reelection campaign. I’m not sure they should try. My children need to grieve and they need to heal.”

Dimples hacked into her napkin before she spoke. “Mackenzie has been a wonderful first lady. What she’s done for that rescue mission has been just beautiful.” She smiled, chocolate from her brownie covering her top teeth.

“Well, I’m voting for Gray, even if he pulls out,” Berlyn announced. “I’ll write his name in if I have to.”

“You can spell?” Sandra quipped, a gnawed lemon between her fingers. She kept her eyes on Berlyn.

Berlyn stabbed her fork into her pie. “Have you ever been hit, Sandra? I mean right-smack-dab-between-the-eyes, stars-flying-over-your-head, bells-ringing-in-your-ears hit? Because that is what the experience is going to be like when my fist comes up against the side of that French twist of yours. Just because you were a school librarian doesn’t mean other people don’t read.”

Sandra patted her hair. “You’re a Neanderthal.”

“No, I’m a little redneck and a little Southern, which means I could deck you and then offer my hand to help you back up. The delight will be the same.”

Chapter 31

The alarm went off by Gray’s head. He reached over and pressed a button on top of the clock. A green fluorescent light backlit the numbers.

Six thirty. He thought he had set it for seven. He was tired these days. He hadn’t seen five thirty in over a month.

He looked at Mack. She was sleeping. It used to be, when he woke up first, he’d slide over, slip one arm under her head and the other around her waist, and just hold her for a few minutes. He’d loved that sense of closeness in the first moments of his morning. But he hadn’t touched her in weeks. And if he was being honest, he didn’t want to. When she shut him out this time, it had felt too much like a betrayal. She knew he needed her too, and yet she acted as if she was the only one who had lost anything.

He wanted to shake her out of it. Make her respond. Make her feel . . . something. Even if it was anger, maybe that would bring her back to the land of the living. Back to him.

But he couldn’t do that. He couldn’t shake her. So there didn’t seem to be much that he could do.

He climbed out of bed and went into the bathroom to get ready. He set Mack’s pill on the counter. Per Thad’s orders, he was overseeing the disbursement of her meds. Then he stepped into the shower.

Ten minutes later, while he was shaving, Mack scooted in to use the restroom. She went to get her pill but dropped it. He watched her bend down and pat her hand across the stone floor, but she couldn’t find it. He told her he’d leave her another one. But those were the only words they spoke to each other.

He didn’t even kiss her when he walked out of the room. He knew he should. But he didn’t.

Why? Because he simply didn’t want to.

“Come on, Sophie, let’s go to work.” Gray opened the car door, and Sophie hopped in. They had their routine down pat by now, and with the help of the dog trainer, the puppy had more or less mastered the basics of being a good canine citizen. Sometimes Gray wished his fellow politicians had manners as good.

A black Toyota Avalon was what Gray was driving now. He only used a driver on long car trips when he had meetings to prepare for, and he had traded in the black Escalade for something more practical and fuel efficient. The state paid his gas bills, and he wanted to use that privilege wisely.

Sophie stretched out in the passenger’s seat for the fifteen-minute jaunt to the capitol as snow fell from a gray sky. The thought crossed his mind that schools were probably out because of the snow. A fact that no longer mattered to him except as one more reminder of the gaping wound that still sliced through his heart.

He reached over to scratch Sophie, and she instantly rolled over to give him unobstructed access to her belly. Her fur was soft as cotton, her presence healing. Truth be told, she got him out of bed more days than his job did. She depended on him, and he depended on her too. Several members of the household staff had offered to help with her, but he craved her unhindered desire to be with him.

Every now and then, he did feel a little self-conscious about having a shih tzu by his side instead of a golden retriever or Great Dane. But most people knew Sophie’s story, so there were few remarks.

The most disparaging remarks about Sophie, in fact, had come from Mack. To her, the puppy was simply a reminder of Maddie’s last days. She had wanted Gray to get rid of Sophie right after the accident. Later, when she was pregnant, she had finally warmed up to Sophie a little. But since the miscarriage—well, Mack desired nothing these days. Not Sophie and certainly not him.

The counselor Thad recommended, Ken Jantzen, had started coming to the house to see Mack twice a week. According to Eugenia, Mack wasn’t responding to him either. The counselor was worried that Mack was dangerously depressed, so Thad had started her on an antidepressant, but Gray saw no sign that it was working. Thad had encouraged Gray to meet with the counselor too, and he’d promised to think about it. He had—thought about it, that was. And decided he wasn’t going. He didn’t need therapy. He simply needed his wife back.

He had never been a man to use his work as an escape from his home life. Until now. More and more, he found himself escaping to the one place where he knew he was wanted.

A state trooper assigned to the underground parking garage opened the door when Gray pulled in. Gray climbed from the car, and Sophie jumped out behind him. He scooped her up and headed for the elevator.

Fletcher fell in beside them in the corridor outside Gray’s staff offices and handed over a file.

“What’s this?” Gray asked.

“Something we don’t need right before we announce a reelection campaign.”

The door to the suite opened, and Kurt appeared. “I know you don’t need anything else on you now, and we would handle this ourselves if we could. But the news will break at lunch hour. Thankfully, it happened too late to hit the morning news cycle. And it would be another random killing to most people in the state if Marcus Newman and his people weren’t looking for a way to keep you from running for reelection.”