The First Gardener (29 page)

“I’m going to forget you said—” Kurt began.

“Don’t.” Gray stepped closer. “I meant it.”

Kurt stood face-to-face with him. His head looked freshly shaved. “You need help, Gray. And I’m not going to support your running for reelection when you’re like this. The people will understand if you don’t run.”

“I don’t want anyone’s understanding! And don’t make this about something it’s not. You’re just ready to walk—and how convenient for you. Now you can go support whoever promises the easier path for your promotion. It’s always been about you anyway, hasn’t it? Riding my coattails because you don’t have any vision of your own.”

Another knock sounded on the door. “Come in.” Gray’s words echoed through the office. The door opened, and Sophie bounded through. Sarah stood in the doorway, a cup of coffee in her hand.

“Get out, Kurt.” Gray pointed toward the door. “The door’s already open for you.”

Sarah shot them a bewildered look as she walked toward Gray’s desk to set down the coffee.

“You too, Sarah. Get out.”

Kurt started toward the door. “We’ll talk later when you’re more in control of yourself.”

“I’m in perfect control, and we won’t talk later. Clean out your desk now. You’re fired.”

“Gray, what are you doing?” Sarah asked.

“Stay out of this, Sarah.”

“It’s okay,” Kurt said. “He isn’t thinking clearly.”

Gray got up in Kurt’s face. “I’m thinking perfectly. And I want you out. You are fired. Do you understand?”

He saw emotion behind Kurt’s eyes but he didn’t care. “Do you understand?” he asked again.

Kurt’s response was almost tender. “Yes, Gray. I understand.” But his calmness only caused a fresh wave of fury to boil up from deep inside Gray.

“It’s ‘Governor’!” he shouted as his fist connected with Kurt’s right cheek.

Kurt’s head flew back sharply. Sarah screamed and ran toward him. “What in the world is wrong with you?”

Kurt’s hand instinctively reached for his mouth. Blood trickled from the corner.

The quickness of it shocked even Gray, but he refused to give in to empathy. There had once been an endless supply of that in his soul, but now he felt as barren as Mack’s womb.

Kurt swiped at the blood on his mouth and locked eyes with Gray. “I’ll have my desk cleaned out in thirty minutes, Governor.” The sadness in his eyes was all Gray could see as he walked out of the room.

Sarah never said a word. Her tears were falling too hard for her to speak.

Gray strode into the familiar corridor of the Green Hills Nursing Center, Sophie tucked under his arm. His nerves were still frayed. And his pulse felt as if he had just finished running sprints.

“Good afternoon, Governor,” the elderly gentleman who sat at the front desk said as Gray passed by. But before Gray could answer, he heard a commotion from up the hall.

“. . . can’t keep us down. We’ll fight to the death!” His father’s voice echoed through the halls straight at him. Gray followed the sound and found his father fighting hard against two nurses who were trying to hold him. Gray hurried into the room, deposited Sophie on the floor, and threw his weight across his father, being careful not to injure his frail body. Harriet Purvis quickly raised a sleeve of Gray Senior’s baby-blue pajama shirt and inserted a needle into the wrinkled and sallow, thin skin of his arm.

Gray lifted his weight as his dad’s body succumbed to the sedative. He pulled Gray Senior’s sleeve down and raised the sheet up to his dad’s chin. He pulled the green coverlet up too, then folded the sheet over the edge and patted it down. As if straightening his father’s covers could straighten out the mess that had become his life.

Harriet brought her round, sixty-year-old frame next to him. Her smooth dark hand patted Gray’s. “He’s getting a lot worse. We’re going to have to make some more changes.”

He sat in a chair by the bed and shook his head. “I know. I’ll have a talk with his doctor this week and see what we need to do. We can’t have him hurting himself or either one of you.” Gray nodded to the nurse who had been helping Harriet. Tiffany—that was her name.

She walked to Harriet. “He’s still pretty strong, you know, and we just can’t hold him down. He’s even difficult for the male nurses at times.”

Gray’s eyes took her in. She was beautiful—he hadn’t realized quite how beautiful until now. Couldn’t have been more than thirty. Her body tight and her eyes soft. “Yeah,” he told her, “I’m really sorry.”

Harriet’s voice wrestled his brain back from where it had landed. “The only way to control him now is to keep him sedated all the time. It’s gotten to that point. Anytime he’s lucid, it’s not pretty.”

He shook his head again. “Maybe you’re right, Harriet. Why don’t you and Tiffany take a break and let me spend some time with him. Let the doctor know I’m here if he has time to talk.”

Harriet moved to the sofa by the bay window and picked up an orange tray that held Gray Senior’s uneaten dinner. “We may have to go to tube feeding too. I know you don’t want to hear it, but he hasn’t eaten anything much the last week.”

She patted Gray’s arm. “But we’ll get the doctor in here. Maybe he can take a quick look at you too—you don’t look so great.”

Gray smiled weakly. “I’m sure the doc doesn’t have time for that.”

Harriet gave him a sharp glance and shrugged. “Well, call me if you need me.” She picked Sophie up and plopped her in Gray’s lap. “You know I’m not going to let anything happen to the ornery cuss. When he remembers me, he likes me, whether he admits it or not.”

Tiffany caught Gray’s eye as she cleaned up the nightstand. Her blue uniform couldn’t conceal the soft curve of her hips. She walked toward the bed and her eyes settled on him. He could feel it. Something churned inside him.

She leaned over his father and straightened the coverlet, then approached Gray and touched his shoulder softly. “Yes, please let us know if you need anything else, Governor.” She let her hand fall away.

His insides shook as she left the room. He hadn’t been touched like that by a woman, a beautiful woman, since—well, since the day Mack lost their baby. And he hadn’t looked at a woman that way since he met Mack.

The frightening thing about it all was . . . Tiffany had noticed too.

Chapter 36

If hell had steps, Eugenia Quinn would march right down them just like she was marching down these veranda steps into the garden. Because if anyone bugged her more than Satan himself, it had to be that man with the pruning shears and dingy old blue handkerchiefs. She didn’t know what it was about him that drove her so crazy. But something about him rubbed her the wrong way. She just didn’t trust him, especially with that history of his. She knew people, and she was convinced that under that aw-shucks exterior was somebody calculating and mean. Besides, his blasted garden wasn’t all that, in spite of the fact that it had won the most beautiful garden contest among governor’s mansions.

Her black pumps stopped when she reached a line of holly trees. “Ahem.”

Jeremiah’s head turned toward her. “Well, good afternoon, Miz Eugenia.” He nodded as he slowly got to his feet. “You sure lookin’ lovely in that blue coat a yours.”

“Don’t try to butter me up, Jeremiah,” she shot back. “How dare you?”

“Now, Miz Eugenia—”

“Don’t Miz Eugenia me. I don’t know what you’re trying to do. As if Mackenzie wasn’t hurting enough, you have to go make it worse by sending her that orchid.”

“Well, I didn’t—” he began. But she wasn’t having any of it.

“I’m telling you right now, mister—you’d better not send her anything else. Not a pansy, not a marigold, not a weed! Do you understand me?”

She saw the change in his face. She hadn’t bargained for pain, and that bothered her a little. She shook it off. This man wasn’t going to manipulate her.

“Yes’m,” he said quietly. “Didn’t mean no harm.”

“Give me a break,” she huffed and turned to go.

“Miz Eugenia, what is it ’bout me you can’t like?”

His question startled her. Her friends were as forthright as they came, but she’d had a relationship with them for all her days. Most other people knew better than to try and go a round with her.

Her anger rose. “You ought not be here,” she spat. “I don’t know who thought letting you keep the lawn of the governor was a good idea. You don’t know what you’re doing anyway.”

The look of hurt was gone now, replaced by an expression she couldn’t read. “Well, you might be right about that, ma’am. Probably ain’t gots no business bein’ here. And I sure ’nough ain’t gots no business interferin’ with your family. Guess all these years workin’ here in this beautiful place made me lose track a my place.”

She froze, unsure how to take his words. Did he mean them, or was he mocking her? She just couldn’t tell.

“Well, I got my eyes on you,” she finally said. “And I mean it. Not another flower to my daughter.” She pivoted on her heels to march back to the house.

“She all but dead, y’know.”

His words came around and arrested her. She turned toward him, and her eyes narrowed, causing everything in her line of sight to converge on Jeremiah. “What did you say?”

“I said, she all but dead.”

“‘She all but dead.’” She danced her head as she repeated his phrase back to him. Her hands flew up in the air. “Don’t you think I know that? Don’t you think every day I’m fighting for her to come back? I’ve done everything I know to do for her, Jeremiah.” Eugenia felt her voice quivering. She worked desperately to control it. “She’s all I have. I have nothing else in this world but her.”

“I ain’t tryin’ to hurt her,” he said softly. “I ain’t never want to see Miz Mackenzie hurt. I be tryin’ to encourage her. Show her she got sump’n worth livin’ for.”

She stepped closer. “And you don’t think I’m trying to do the same thing? I’ve lost my husband. I just put one grandbaby in the ground and lost another one in less than a year. And now I can hardly find my daughter inside this shell of a human being she’s become. But I sure in God’s name am not going to let her think that children are going to bring her back to life—not when she may never have another one. What were you thinking, Jeremiah?”

“It weren’t me that thought it.”

“Well, that much is true. You didn’t think at all—”

“I done it ’cause he gone and tol’ me to.” He shifted his eyes to the sky.

She moved her eyes upward too. “Who? God? I don’t care if God himself came down and wrote it on the branches of one of your pitiful holly trees.” She grabbed a limb and shook it wildly. “If you want to know my opinion, the Almighty’s got a lot of explaining to do for all he has allowed my family to go through.”

Her voice broke for good this time, and she shook her fist upward. “A lot of . . . explaining . . .”

Her hands flew to her face. She didn’t want to break down. Not now. And certainly not here. But she couldn’t help it. It was all too much. Just . . . too much. Her shoulders shook with heaves.

She felt Jeremiah’s thin but strong arms curl around her. His hand patted her back in unrhythmic poundings. It felt strange, foreign. She never let Burt hold her. In fact, it had been a long time since she had let a man other than Gray touch her. And if she was going to get back in the letting-men-touch-her business, this was not the man she wanted to be doing it.

Yet she needed him. In this moment, she needed him badly. The tears shook her hard, but his arms never gave way.

When a final wave washed over her, she collected herself. Pushed herself from his arms and patted her face as if a few Southern flitters could wipe away the residue of grief.

“We on the same side, Miz Eugenia.” Jeremiah’s voice was quiet. “I know what you think a me, and maybe you right. Maybe I don’t deserve to be here, but I here anyway. Been here these last twenty-five years and grateful for ever’ day. Ain’t done nothin’ but love the families come through here. And Lord amercy, I sure ’nough love this one.”

She wasn’t used to not knowing what to say. She just stood there looking at the ground, willing her tears to dry. Finally she shook her head. “Well, no more flowers, and I mean it.”

She turned and this time wouldn’t stop even if he did call out to her. She could never let anyone know she had just cried on the shoulder of a man who had no business being gardener at the governor’s mansion.