The Wicked Garden (21 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Oregon, 2010s

             
Eli was glad to have something to do. After mailing a money order, he drove home in silence. It was a long drive back to his house in the woods. He didn’t mind, because it gave him time to think. He remembered another long drive, a drive from Carbondale to the cottage.

∞

Carbondale, 1990s

             
Eli had tried to contain his sense of urgency, but the speed limit on the two-lane highway that took him to Irvine was more than he could handle. As soon as the officer who had issued his ticket was out of sight, Eli was racing down the road again.

             
              It was Thanksgiving break. Eli had been packed and ready to leave for Oregon when he got a call. Teddy explained that Gretchel had taken a train to Irvine to see her newborn niece Holly, and to tell her mother that she was pregnant. Gretchel was at the cottage, alone. Troy hadn’t gone with her to break the news. This was Eli’s last chance, and he wasn’t going to miss it.

By the time Eli arrived at the cottage, it was nightfall. He could see lights on inside, but there was no answer at the door. As he paced around the cottage, he saw a figure moving near the lake. He took off in a dead run.

              “Gretchel!” he yelled. The figure moved more quickly “Stop running from me! I’m not the one you should be running from!”

             
Eli didn’t give up. He sprinted toward Gretchel, and she finally stopped. When he caught up with her, she closed her eyes and wiped tears away. He pulled her to him and caressed her back. He could feel the swell of her belly against his body, and it filled him with a hopeless joy.

             
“I’m not running from you,” she whispered.

             
“The hell you’re not.”

             
“I want to be with you, Eli, I do. I want you more than anything in this world. Almost…” she corrected.

             
“Almost?”

             
“I want redemption more. I have to pay my debt. Troy is my punishment. I have to go with him. This is how it’s supposed to be. I have to let you go. It’s my punishment,” she rambled. She was making no sense to Eli. If she only knew that she was the girl in his mother’s prophecy. If he could only tell her they were meant to be together.

“We’re heading to Chicago for Thanksgiving. I’m meeting Troy’s parents and we’re going to finally tell them about the baby. We’ll probably transfer to a school up there. He keeps telling me to stop worrying, but I have a really bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.”

              “You
should
have a really bad feeling, Gretchel. That’s your intuition telling you to run for your life. Are you insane?”

She smacked him hard across the face. He backed up, shocked.

“Yes, as a matter of fact. You have no idea what kind of person I really am, Eli. I’m no good. I never have been. I’ve been rotten since the day I was born, and I’ve never changed. I cause people pain no matter what I do. I can’t fight it anymore. Troy is my fate.”

             
“Why would you say these things?”

             
“Because I’m a wicked little witch who doesn’t deserve any better,” she said and stormed off past the lake.

             
“Don’t do this. I don’t care what kind of issues you have, Gretchel. You said it yourself: I heal you. And I can’t live without you because you bring out the best in me. We bring out the best in each other. You make me want to get up in the morning and live. You inspire me to go deeper, to love deeper, and feel deeper. And I know I do the same for you. I don’t care what you’ve done in your life, because I know there’s nothing that can’t be forgiven, but you have to learn to forgive yourself. You’re my goddess, Gretchel Bloome. I can’t sit back and watch you do this to yourself.”

             
“You don’t have time for me to get better, Eli."

             
“Baby, I’ve got all the time in the world for you. I’ll wait. Come away with me. I’ll take care of you. I have the resources, Gretchel. We can get you well, but you have to give me the chance.”

             
She closed her eyes and shook her head back and forth. “How are you going to take care of me when you’re struggling to get through school, too? Are your parents going to foot the bill? You know, your controlling mother and the lunatic father you’ve told me so much about?” Now she was angry and sarcastic. “I’m sure your father and I would get along quite well, since he’s crazy and all.”

             
“You
would
get along well, Gretchel, and I mean that in a positive way. Look, I haven’t been honest about who I am, and there’s a good reason for it. I can’t tell you about my father—you’ll have to meet him yourself—but I can tell you that my mother and my grandparents have powerful resources that can help you.”

             
“You’re lying,” she said and darted off down a worn four-wheeler path in the woods.

             
He grabbed her, they fell to the ground, and he held her there. “Please stop running from me. I’m not the one who’s going to hurt you. If you stay with Troy, he’s going to keep abusing you. He could kill you. Is that what you want? Do you really have a death wish?”

             
“Maybe,” she said and finally stopped fighting him. She tucked her legs underneath her on the dirty path and cried into her hands.

             
“What about the baby?” Eli whispered, and tears began falling from his face. Gretchel began to sob. He wrapped his arms around her. “Let’s go to Oregon, or we can even stay in Irvine if you want, but let’s raise this baby together. I’ll treat it like it’s my own. I swear to you, I will love you both until the day I die.”

             
She slowly pulled herself back, then touched the spot on the edge of his face where stitches had been sewn only weeks before. He reached up with his mouth and kissed the inside of her wrist. She shuddered, and then she put both hands on his face. He drew her in and kissed her fully. She finally pulled back. He studied her face as she looked over his shoulder into the woods. Then she grabbed at her head and howled in pain as she ran back to the cottage.

              Eli took his time walking back. He could taste the alcohol in her kiss. In addition to being sad and confused, he was also pissed beyond belief.

             
When he got to the cottage, he found Gretchel huddled in the corner of the master bedroom, her hands on her ears, rocking back and forth. He wanted to reprimand her for drinking, but he bit his tongue. Instead he bent down and wrapped his arms around her. He didn’t force anything. He just held her.

             
“You make the voices go away better than the booze,” she whispered.

             
“The voices?”

             
“The ones in my head, especially the angry one. She yells at me, tells me what a no-good, worthless whore I am.”

             
Eli looked up at the ceiling. He needed his grandmother, and he needed her badly. He wasn’t qualified to doctor the little girl inside this woman. The only thing he was capable of doing was listening to her and loving her unconditionally. He said a silent prayer asking for guidance, then did the best he could.

             
“Gretchel do you see things?” he asked. She nodded her head yes. “Have you been seeing the ghosts again?”

             
“Yes,” she whispered through a sob. “And sometimes I see animals—animals that nobody else can see. I’ve seen them since the accident. Sometimes it’s worse than others. Right now it’s really bad.”

             
“What kind of animals?” he asked. She didn’t answer. He pulled himself away from her, and reached out a hand. She let him pull her up, and he laid her on the bed and snuggled up next to her.

             
“A wolf mainly, and lots of deer,” she finally answered, "Sometimes I see a snake and a massive stag,” she continued. “Since I’ve been pregnant I keep seeing a white horse beckoning me in my dreams and a black horse in my nightmares,” she said, and nestled her head on his chest.

             
“Do they mean anything to you?”

             
“It seems like they should, like I already understand, but at the same time I don’t.”

             
“Do you think they have anything to do with the truck and the Wicked Garden?” he asked.

             
She nodded again. He tried to process this information. “Gretchel,” he started as tenderly as he could, “is Troy the first man to hit you?”

She shook her head no.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Oregon, 2010s

             
Eli stood, staring at his suitcases, still not sure about whether or not he was going to load them into his trunk. It was the last week in March. Ame had sent him a message thanking him for the package he’d sent, but he hadn’t heard a word from her since.

Going to see Rebecca had not helped. Not at all. She had chewed him out about the night he’d gotten drunk and started talking about another woman. It was pretty clear that their relationship—such as it was—was finished, so Eli had left without staying the whole weekend, and they both knew he wouldn’t be coming back.

Spending time with his friends hadn’t done him a whole lot of good, either. Rappelling down mountains, camping in the wilderness, going to shows, getting baked on the beach—none of it was sufficiently distracting anymore. Not even the thought of sailing—once his greatest passion—could pull him out of his renewed obsession with Gretchel.

He thought about taking the suitcases back inside, unpacking them, and getting on with the rest of his life… But he just couldn’t. His chance encounter with Ame gave him hope that he would see Gretchel again, and everything he had learned since that first conversation in a hotel elevator assured him that Gretchel needed him. He was ready to go, as soon as the time was right.

In the meantime, he really needed to get his shit together.

Eli was reading—trying very hard to avoid both Facebook and weed—when he heard a knock at the glass door that led to the patio. It was Andy, Jim, and Rick. Eli sighed and walked, reluctantly, into the evening air to greet them. Andy sat a cooler on the patio and handed Eli a bottle of beer.

“You’re really starting to creep us out, man,” Rick said. “What the hell’s going on?”

Eli took the beer, twisted off the top and, with the cap between his thumb and middle finger, he snapped it across the patio, directly into a zinc bucket already half-filled with bottle caps.

“He’s still got it,” Jim said, attempting the same thing, but watching his cap take a wrong turn, ricochet off the house, and come back to hit him in the leg.

“I’m just like my mother. I’m obsessed. I can’t for the life of me get Gretchel out of my head.”

“Well, this was going to be an intervention. Guess you’re not in denial, so what next. Andy?” Rick asked.

Andy glanced at his best friend. Eli had been there for him through everything. He was the best man at his wedding, the first one to visit after they brought both kids home from the hospital. Hell, Eli was his kids’ favorite babysitter, and he had provided all kinds of money and resources for Andy’s disabled daughter. When Andy was determined that he could start an olive farm in the Pacific Northwest, Eli had gone in as a partner. And he wasn’t just a financial backer, either. Eli had worked as hard as anybody to make sure the farm was a success. Andy was indebted to his friend, and he knew that his friend would never ask for or expect any kind of repayment.

Andy tipped back his own beer, but he had nothing to say.

“So, why did she leave you hanging in the first place? Did she have daddy issues or something?” Jim asked.

Eli thought about the truck that sat in the Wicked Garden. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure she has some serious daddy issues.” He took a long pull of his beer.

“Ought to go well with your mommy issues,” Rick mumbled, and Jim snickered, spraying beer involuntarily.

Eli chuckled, too. He knew it was the truth.

“You know, there’s a gaggle of women from here to Portland waiting for you to ditch Rebecca.”

“I already did.”

“Thank god. She wasn’t your type, dude,” Jim said. “What’s Gretchel look like?”

Eli pulled out his wallet, and showed his friends the picture of Gretchel with her kids.

“Holy hell,” Jim whispered.

“Good god almighty,” Rick agreed.

Eli looked to his best friend for answers. Andy took another drink of beer while he considered what he should say. He had no right to not tell Eli what he really thought. It would be selfish. He had to do it.

“Go,” Andy said.

“What?”

“Get the hell out of here, Eli. Why are you still here?
Why are you still here?
”

Eli shrugged his shoulders. “My mother.”

All three men face-palmed in unison.

“Look. Eli, ever
yone knows Diana could make a lumberjack piss down his leg with just a glare, but this is your life, man. You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do. Go to Illinois.”

∞

Eli had the blessing of his friends. It still wasn’t enough to convince him to leave. So, he made a call to the maniacal genius who would give him the final push.

“Is Mom in the house?”

“Yes, sweet boy, but she’s sleeping. What’s on your mind?”

“Dad,” Eli began clenching his fist, “Gretchel’s husband is dead. I’ve been communicating with her teenage daughter through Facebook, but I haven’t heard from her in weeks. They’re living at her family’s cottage.”

“The dirtbag’s dead?” Peter asked.

“Yes.”

“You know where Gretchel is, and haven’t gone to see her yet?”

“No.”
             

“What kind of pussy are you?” Peter bellowed into the phone.

“But Mom...”

“Cut the cord already, Oedipus. You’re almost forty years old. Oh, for the love of all that is orgasmically grown. How long do you want to live like this, Eli? Because you’re the one that makes that call, not some fucking prophecy. I love your mother, son, but we’ve never seen eye to eye on this ‘second love’ issue. If there is such a thing as fate, I’ll tell you one thing for sure, its only job is to set the pattern; it’s your job to make the choices of how you will arrive. To your mother, you’ll always be those fluttering swallows in her belly, the sweet baby that she had to protect from the world. But you’re a grown man, Eli. Go out and live your life! I’m driving to your house tomorrow, and if you’re still there I will personally kick your ass from here to Timbuktu, which is an interesting enough place to visit, but I’d think you’d much rather be in Illinois.”

“Are you done?” Eli asked.

“Oh, I’m just getting started, son. You are an abomination before the god of love.”

“I’m just waiting for Gretchel’s daughter to let me know it’s all right to come. I haven’t heard anything from her in weeks."

“You’re waiting on a teenage girl to give you permission to live? Are you serious? Go out into the woods of Illinois and make life happen, Eli. Get your ass off the sidelines, and dive head first into the abyss.
Life is malleable, son. What do you have to lose?”

Just my mother’s trust, love and respect
, he thought.