The Garden of Happy Endings (40 page)

“I don’t know. Maybe, under the right circumstances.”

“What would you get?”

She thought for a minute. “A shell. On my foot.”

“For the
camino
?” Alexa asked.

“Yes.” She swirled hot fudge around the ice cream. “It was very important.”

“How about you, Mom?”

“I don’t know. I’ve had kind of a boring life.” She laughed again. “Until lately, that is.”

Elsa said, “How about you, Alexa? Would you ever get a tattoo?”

She stared out the window. “Yes,” she said, and her brooding face came back.

Tamsin said, “Do you notice anything different about me?” She tucked her hair, still messy, behind her ears and blinked in exaggerated innocence. In her ears were enormous diamond solitaires.

“Whoa,” Alexa said.

“The police didn’t notice?” Elsa asked.

“They only put me in a holding cell. They didn’t take my stuff.”

“Lucky.”

“Shhh,” Tamsin said, and looked around the empty room. “The walls have, hmm, ears.” She laughed.

“Where did you find them?” Elsa asked quietly.

“In the secret drawer in the bread box.”

Alexa laughed. “Get out! Perfect.” She high-fived her mother.

“I have no idea how to exchange them, so to speak, but in the meantime, I have some money, baby.”

“Good job,” Elsa said. “Even if it was crazy.”

A
fter they came back from Dairy Queen, the women scattered. Alexa retreated to her bedroom, leaving the windows open to the rain-cooled air. Tamsin got on the computer. Elsa and Charlie went out to the porch. She thought, briefly, about a cigarette, but it was too dangerous with both Alexa and Tamsin at home. The rain had stopped, but leaves still dripped, making a tapping noise. Crickets began to whir.

Elsa curled up in a sweater and held her phone in her hand, thinking about calling Joaquin. Often, before she returned to Pueblo, Friday evenings were one of the times they would have long chats, after the evening Mass. They’d talk about their sermons and sticky issues that had come up, and problems they faced as shepherds of a congregation.

But Tamsin’s words had struck a reverberating note. Maybe she was using Joaquin as a crutch to avoid facing her life.
Maybe she was hiding out here, hoping the storm would blow over, rather than taking steps to figure out what her life should look like.

Her phone rang in her hand. Joaquin’s name flashed over the screen.

Of course. She answered. “Hey, is everything okay over there?” she asked, pulling the sweater sleeves down over her hands.

“I think so. Should I be checking?” She’d experienced the warnings since childhood, so he understood.

“Yes. There’s something amiss. I don’t know what it is. But it’s something.”

“I’ll make the rounds after we talk.” He paused. “I just wanted you to know that I have a cat on my lap. I’m completely covered in white cat hair, which is going to give the Gloriosa sisters fits.”

Elsa laughed. “I can imagine.”

“He is a really nice guy, I gotta say. He purrs and he likes his belly to be rubbed.” He sounded slightly surprised and very pleased. “It’s kinda nice.”

“Did you name him yet?”

“Yep. He’s Santiago.”

Elsa felt a whisper of stillness move through her. “Good name.”

“So. Tell me about your meditation this morning, Elsa.”

“Am I talking to Father Jack now?”

“Is that who you need?”

She swallowed a fierce, sudden rush of emotion. “Yes. I love my friend, but things are strange between us right now. I need a shepherd.”

“I’m listening.”

“I miss my work,” she said. “I don’t know who I am without it.”

He made a soothing noise.

“That seems like a sign I should go back.”

“Are you avoiding the subject of the meditation, Reverend?”

“No. I just don’t know what happened, exactly. I didn’t really intend to meditate. I sat down in the sunshine and just dove over
to the other side. You know how that is, when you dissolve into … whatever it is. God. The universe. San Roque, maybe.”

“So if there’s no God, where are you going when you meditate?”

She sighed. “I don’t know what it is.”

“But it’s something, right? A different place, a different state, a different something.”

“Yes.” And she spoke her own truth. “It’s impossible for me not to do that, not to seek that communion. When I got the warnings tonight, I started to pray.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

She laughed softly. “I know.”

“I think you’re asking a question we all ask at times, Elsa, and that’s ‘Why?’ Why do terrible things happen? Why doesn’t God intervene?”

“Yes. That’s it. And please don’t give me any platitudes. You know it’s a difficult question.”

“It is. And I don’t know the answer. What I do know is that God is good. God is wise and He uses even evil to further His own ends.”

The cold evil of Kiki’s body, lying exposed to the elements, flashed through her memory. How could any good come of that? Any good at all? She closed her eyes. “I have to figure this out.”

“Yes.”

“It’s driving me crazy to be so adrift. I have no anchor, no harbor. That was always my faith, and I don’t have it now.”

“You’ve lost faith before.”

Elsa wished for a cigarette. Took a deep breath of cool air instead. “Yes.”

“How did you get it back those times?”

She knew he didn’t expect a full answer. “I’ve been thinking about that.”

“As Father Jack, I suggest that more prayer is a good step. If you don’t show up, how can there be any communication?”

She thought of sitting with San Roque today, the peace that had overtaken her, the sense of the eternal rightness of things. “Maybe,” she said. He was quiet, which was one of the best things about him.

She was quiet, too, and for a moment, she slid sideways again, into the silence between crickets, the space between the scent of earth and rain. She yanked herself back.

Why? Why keep running? “Do me a favor, as my friend?”

“Anything.”

“Let me have some time in the courtyard in the mornings this week. When you go for your runs, leave the rectory through the front door.”

“Absolutely.”

“Thanks, Walking.”

“You need to stop running from God, Elsa, and turn around and face him. There is nothing to be afraid of.”

“Isn’t there?”

“One thing I know to be absolutely true is that God is good. Whatever happens in the world that’s evil is the opposite of God.”

“It’s lonely, without that connection.”

“You know what to do.”

“Yes.” She rubbed the dull worry at the base of her solar plexus. “Check the gardens, will you? Just take a look, and then text me.”

“Will do.”

She was brushing her teeth when the text came in:

As she climbed into bed, Charlie slumping down with a sigh at her feet, she felt the warning double, triple. There was nothing to be done but pray. Whether it was real or not, whether anything or anyone could hear, it was the only thing she knew to do.
Mainly it was a prayer of protection, for all of her loved ones, for Tamsin and Alexa, who honestly seemed much better this afternoon. For Joaquin, engaged in his own struggles, for Deacon and the boys, for the garden and her congregation and whoever might need it.

She prayed, even though prayers had not made any difference for Kiki. She prayed, even though God had taken her fiancé away and seemed disinclined to replace him, even after all these years. She prayed for her congregation, and something pinged, hard, in the middle of her chest.

More of this
.

So she offered more prayers for them. Protection for whatever was coming.

I
t was Joaquin who found Joseph.

He had been running, going the reverse of his usual direction to give Elsa the privacy she had requested. The morning was cool after last night’s rains, and clouds still hung low over the trees, turning the river a dark silver.

When he’d told Elsa the night before that she needed to stop running from God, the words seemed to lodge somewhere in his own chest. He was only a man, after all. Called to be a priest, but not called to be perfect. In the still morning, alone, he murmured aloud to God and San Roque and the angel who had never returned. He asked for forgiveness and guidance. He asked for help in mastering his hungers. And even in the asking, he felt a great weight fall away.

He was not alone in this.

As he ran along the levee, the church came into view, first the bell tower and the roof, surrounded by the graceful arms of elms, their leaves thick and green now, offering shade from the hard summer suns. Scores of birds twittered in them, blue jays and sparrows and robins; magpies with their magnificent long tails
and patterned wings; the odd owl and bullying ravens. Their mingled calls seemed loud beneath the blankets of clouds.

The building came into view, and then the wide expanse of the garden, the width of a full city block. At first, it only looked as if the rain the night before had knocked some branches out of the trees, for there was a lot of litter strewn across the paths. Then he realized that fences had been knocked down.

Yanked
down.

He detoured, dashing sideways across the steep bank to investigate, and stopped dead.

It looked like a herd of buffalo had torn through, trampling fences and the carefully tended plots. Plants were smashed, tossed into piles. A scatter of squash leaves and blossoms lay in a clump in the middle of the path, and much of the sturdy knee-high corn that had been looking so vigorous had been snapped at the base.

Wanton destruction. Rage rose in him as he strode down the middle path.

Here was Elsa’s warning. Almost all the fences had been torn down, almost every plot had some damage, but it was capricious, like a tornado. Some gardens had been trampled and yanked up badly. Others had only sustained wounds from the toppled fences. He started counting. Three very badly damaged plots. One of them was the church soup kitchen’s, which was better than if it had belonged to a family. He picked up a fence, shoved the support in the ground, tenderly knelt and propped up a listing tomato cage. Within, the tomato plant had a broken arm, but Joaquin pinched it off.

A handful of others had taken a hit, with broken plants, footsteps in the middle. Toward the far end, the damage was very minimal, as if the vandals had been chased away.

And that was where he found Joseph, lying facedown in one of the narrow alleys between two plots. A drum had been smashed
near his head, and a gourd rattle lay near his knee, a hole stomped through it.

Joaquin knelt urgently. “Joseph!” He touched the old man’s back, the frail bones beneath his cotton shirt. He was breathing. Joaquin pulled the long hair off the old man’s face, and saw that he’d been beaten. A cut with matted blood and dirt marred his left eyebrow and his eye was purple and swollen beneath it. As Joaquin murmured, the old man groaned.

“Be still,” Joaquin said. “I’m going to get some help. Don’t move.”

He ran toward the church, dashed into the courtyard, and halted, torn. Elsa was sitting on the bench, hands folded in her lap, her face utterly serene. A rosary made of green leaves was looped around her wrist.

“I’m sorry,” he said, touching her shoulder. “I need you. Joseph has been beaten.”

Her eyes popped open and she was on her feet. “Where is he?”

“All the way at the other end of the garden. I’m going to call 911.”

“I’ll go sit with him.”

“Elsa,” he called, walking backward. “The gardens were trashed, too.”

Something fierce crossed her face. “I’m going to sit with Joseph.”

E
lsa ran, barely taking in the damage all around her, at least not consciously. By the time she reached the old man, tears were already streaming down her face, and she didn’t bother to stop them. Kneeling at his side, she gently placed her hands on his shoulder. “Can you hear me, Joseph? Help is coming.”

He tried to stir, and she said, “No, just be still. I’m so sorry you were hurt.”

He reached for her hand. “You … got to … drum. Somebody.”

“Shhh, Joseph,” she said, stroking his head. “You can tell me later.”

“No.” His voice was raspy, and he struggled to sit up. Elsa heard an ambulance in the distance. “Spirits need our help. He … bad …” He coughed, and there was a wet sound to it she did not like. “Bad evil. Bad spirit.”

“We will drum. I promise. I’ll find somebody.”

“Broke my drum.” He closed his eyes.

The paramedics arrived with an electronic whoop and two big guys in dark blue uniforms carried a stretcher toward her. Joaquin directed. “This way!”

Elsa stepped back to give them access, crossing her arms as they took the old man’s vital signs and called in statistics. Tears still poured from her eyes, unchecked, as if from some untapped well.

People started to drift over from the apartments, the word spreading. Joseph was taken away, his daughter in the ambulance with him, her hair scattered down her back. Mario had been sent to Calvin’s apartment.