The First Gardener (9 page)

Gray looked at Fletcher. His friend’s red- and blue-striped bow tie tilted at his neck, and his thick head of brown hair looked rumpled. “Set up a public signing for Thursday morning,” Gray told him.

“Will do.”

“Well, gentlemen, I am off to see which paper I can get to write about me tomorrow.” He laughed. The rest of the room did too, proving they had all read the morning paper as well. Gray stood, grateful the meeting had gone well. He shook hands and headed back to his office. Fletcher was right behind him, with Kurt on their heels.

“They may pull a last-minute stunt.” Kurt ran to catch up. “I don’t trust Newman. He’s too . . . too . . .
pretty
.”

“They’ll sign it,” Gray assured.

“They’ve got too much to lose if they don’t,” Fletcher added.

Kurt wasn’t appeased. “They’re looking for a reason to get rid of you.”

“You read way too many newspapers.”

Fletcher laughed. “No, he’s just been in politics too long.”

Gray chuckled too. Kurt didn’t. “Y’all laugh. But don’t be surprised if they throw you a curveball before Thursday morning. And I need us to sit down and go over this lawsuit from the Victims’ Rights Association of Tennessee.”

Gray looked at his watch. Almost three o’clock. Maddie would be getting home soon, and he didn’t want to miss that call. “I’ll give you thirty minutes. But when Maddie calls, you’re finished.”

Kurt huffed. “When Maddie calls, I’ll give you a break, and then we can finish.”

Fletcher patted Gray on the back. “You hired him.”

There was nothing like deep friendships, and these ran the deepest. The three of them had played baseball and football together. They had gone on dates together and won Gray the student body president election together. And they had vowed that wherever the road took them, they would go together. So far they had done just that.

“Yep, I did, didn’t I? Stupid college promise.”

Kurt rolled his eyes. Fletcher and Gray laughed. It had been that way since college. Gray was grateful it hadn’t changed.

Chapter 8

Mackenzie drove through the six-foot scrolled-iron gates, then peered in her rearview mirror to see them creep toward each other like old lovers. Beyond them, she caught a glimpse of the stately mansion. It still amazed her this was home.

She made the short mile drive to Maddie’s school and pulled into one of the pickup lanes. She had never been in a pickup lane. For so many years she had longed for this day, the day she’d get to be like every other mother and pick up her baby from kindergarten.

She remembered all those years driving by schools, desperate for a child of her own, until she’d finally vowed never to go by a school at that time of the afternoon. It was just too painful a reminder of what she lacked. There had been so many of those reminders: kids’ clothing stores, Mother’s Day at church, diaper commercials, babies on playgrounds, jogging mothers pushing their babies in strollers—all of them feeling like slaps in the face.

And the questions—those were the worst. “When are you going to have children? What are you and Gray waiting on? Don’t you want children? Don’t you know the risks of pregnancy over thirty-five?” She had promised herself she would never ask anyone those questions. If people didn’t have children, there was a reason—and she never wanted to add to their pain by pressing the issue.

The ten years of trying to conceive Maddie had been so deeply painful. But something inside of her had held on to faith—faith that she would have a child, a child who looked like a piece of her and a piece of Gray. And it had finally happened. The day Maddie was born, she and Gray had cried tears from wells so deep she hadn’t known such depth could exist in the human soul. And when the nurse placed Maddie in her arms, she’d known what every pill, every shot, and every vial of blood had been for.

It had all been for the miracle of this little girl. She reached over and straightened Lola in the passenger seat. “Now you tell her what good care I took of you today, okay?” Mackenzie reminded. “Tell her about all the people you met at the luncheon and how we drove Jessica crazy. But it would be nice to assume some discretion and keep my little rendezvous with her daddy just between the two of us.” She looked down and gave Lola a wink. Lola’s painted-on smile assured her she would. Mackenzie’s phone vibrated in the console between her seat and Lola’s.

“Mrs. London?” Jessica’s voice sounded tight. Anything else would have surprised her more.

“Yes, Jessica.”

“Chandra told me the mission just called. They’ve had a father come in with his wife and eight children. They got evicted and need a place to stay until the mission can make room for them at the shelter.”

Mackenzie shook her head. The economy had wrecked the lives of so many hardworking people in her state. She had never seen it like it was now.

She didn’t hesitate. “Tell them yes. And tell her I’d do it at the mansion, but with the big dinner Wednesday night, I don’t think that would be a good idea. Too much commotion for those children.”

“That’s good to hear.” Jessica hated it when she let families come stay at the mansion. She said you never knew who you were letting in and it wasn’t wise. Mackenzie had informed Jessica that the mansion belonged to the people of this state, and if they needed a place to lay their heads in an emergency, it was available. In the nearly three years she and Gray had lived there, almost a dozen different families had taken temporary residence there.

“Have Chandra call one of those residence hotels that has the sitting rooms and the refrigerators and stovetops. Get as many rooms as they need and put it on my personal credit card. Tell Mary at the mission that we’ll pay for a week, and if she needs more time, to let us know. And be sure—”

Just then Mackenzie spotted a dark head bobbing above the front end of another car in the lane nearest the curb. Maddie’s blue eyes popped up long enough to see her mother.

“Never mind. I’m going to go now because I see my baby girl.” Mackenzie hung up the phone.

One of the teachers was helping a pack of tiny people, book bags hanging like sacks of bricks on their backs, cross into the second lane of cars and crawl into the safety of their parents’ arms. Mackenzie was craning her neck for another glimpse of Maddie when the back door opened. Maddie tossed her backpack on the floor with a thud, then pulled her little legs up into the car and bounced into the backseat, her feet swinging wildly. “Oh, Mommy, what a day!” She threw her head back dramatically against the black leather seat.

Mackenzie laughed. “That good, huh?”

Maddie jumped up and leaned against the console between the driver’s and passenger’s seats.

“Maddie, you know you’re supposed to immediately buckle your seat belt.”

“I know.” She climbed into her booster seat with a heavy sigh. “I just wanted to be close to your face to tell you about my day.”

Mackenzie searched for Maddie’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “Okay, here’s my face. Tell me all about it.”

“Where’s Lola?”

Mackenzie passed the doll back to Maddie and watched as Maddie cradled her baby.

“Did my mommy take good care of you?”

“Lola and I had a very adventurous day. But we want to hear all about yours first. Did you eat your lunch? Did you remember to go to the bathroom? What did you do?”

“It was great, Mommy. We sat in a circle and said the Pledge of ’legiance. And I already knew it ’cause Daddy always makes me say it. And we got to pick out our desks, and she signed them to us and everything.”

Mackenzie smiled. “You mean assigned?”

“No, she signed them to us. She wrote our name on a piece of paper and put it on top of the desk.”

Mackenzie laughed. “I stand corrected.”

The remainder of the drive home, Maddie talked nonstop. As the iron gates began to part for their arrival home, Mackenzie’s cell phone rang. It was Gray. He couldn’t wait. Mackenzie pushed the speakerphone button so Maddie could talk.

“Hey, Daddy!” Maddie hollered from the backseat.

“Hey, Maddie lady. How did it go? I know you were such a big girl today.”

“I was, Daddy! I get to be the helper for the whole first week of school!”

“You do? Well, I’m so proud of you. How about you let Daddy take you and Mommy out for a really nice dinner, okay?”

“To celebrate?” Maddie responded with her infectious excitement.

“Yes, to celebrate. That okay with you, Mack?”

“Sure. You need to work late tonight?”

“Not tonight.”

“I want Rotier’s!” Maddie declared.

Rotier’s was the place where Gray and Mackenzie ate the night they knew they loved each other. Neither of them had expressed it until the next day, during halftime of a University of Tennessee and Vanderbilt football game, but they knew. Maddie loved that story as much as she loved Rotier’s famous cheeseburgers on French bread, which had garnered them eleven straight years of being named the best burgers in Nashville. Their shakes and Reuben sandwiches were just as good. Though “really nice” it wasn’t.

Gray’s voice filtered through the car. “Rotier’s, huh?”

“Or Chuck E. Cheese’s?” Maddie offered.

Gray’s laugh echoed. “That was going to be my second choice. How about we go with Rotier’s. I may just fall in love with your mother all over again.”

“Sounds good to me,” Mackenzie said.

“Me too,” Maddie echoed.

“Well, I’ve got to check on Dad first. They’re wanting to change some meds, and I want to talk with the doctor.”

“Do you need me to go?”

“No, I’ve got it this time. So I’ll pick up my two best girls a little after six for some cheeseburgers.”

“Three girls!” Maddie hollered, raising Lola by one arm and shaking her as if Gray could see her.

He answered as if he did. “Oh, right. Lulu’s coming too, huh?”

“Daddy!”

Mackenzie’s car pulled into the garage. “We’ll see you later.” And in that moment all was perfect with her world.

Maddie Mae done bust out that door like her britches on fire. I chuckled to myself today ever’ time I thought ’bout that li’l spitfire takin’ over that schoolhouse with her spirited self and that mouth that don’t close ’less it’s full up with some kind a ice cream cone or sump’n. That chil’ can carry her an entire conversation with them big ol’ blue eyes and thick eyebrows. She raise ’em, roll ’em, squint ’em, and purty soon she gone and tol’ you ’bout the whole day without ever openin’ her mouth.

“Jeremiah!”

Lord knows I love to hear that chil’ call my name. Took her a while ’fore she able to say it where you had a clue what she was sayin’.

“Maddie Mae!” I knelt down ’cause I knowed what be comin’. The mud on my overalls was still kinda wet as I planted my ol’ creaky knees down on the cushy grass. “How your valley be today?”

She throwed her li’l frame up against me ’til she ’bout knocked me backward. “Green!” she squealed.

Make my belly shake ever’ time. Hers too. She laugh that li’l giggle that make me glad God thought ’nough ’bout this ol’ earth to make chil’rens. Ever’ time I see her, I think ’bout my own granchil’ren. On days like today, I get to wonderin’ what they like. How they smell. How they voices sound. I ain’t never seen any a them kids. Life gone and messed that up good. But when my ache to hold ’em or know ’em floods over me, I thank God he give me this chil’ to love.

I finally let go and put her back on her own two feet.

“Jeremiah, it was awesome!” Them bony li’l fingers still planted top a my shoulders like she the teacher and I’m her pupil. That girl love tellin’ anyone what to do.

“Awesome, huh? That’s a big ol’ word.”

She let go my shoulders and throwed her body down in that grass we just cut and then laid on her back like she could drink in the world. “My teacher loved me, you know.”

I plopped my own self down on that furry grass and stared at the eighth wonder a this ever-spinnin’ world. “I ain’t got no doubt.”

She popped up, pushed her palms behind her like she seen some big girl do. “You didn’t? You mean, when I left this morning, you thought my teacher was going to love me?”

“Yep, sure ’nough did.”

She crossed her ankles. “How’d you get so smart, Jeremiah?”

I stuck a piece a grass ’tween my teeth. “Just come out that way, I guess.”

She wrinkled her nose and pushed her lips up, then grabbed her a piece a grass too. “She said I can be her helper this entire week.”

“Well, ain’t no better helper in this whole universe.”

She nodded her head while she chewed as if she agreed. “Wish I could do it all year.”

“Well, you gots to give those other chil’rens chances too.”

“That’s what Mommy says. She says I’ve got to share.”

“Yep, sharin’ always be a good thing. Way I see it, you keep your hands open . . .”

She fell back in the grass like she do, starin’ up there at that big ol’ blue sky, and finished my sentence. “. . . and God can get more in. But if you keep ’em closed, all you got be all you get.”

Couldn’t help but chuckle at that. “Guess I done said that a coupla times.”

She lifted her hands up to the sky and twirled her fingers. “Trillions.”