The Garden of Happy Endings (36 page)

He’d been uncomfortable and restless for days, haunted by dreams full of whispers, and a sense of impending doom. Each time they passed a church, he had ducked within and dropped a coin into the bucket to pay to light a candle.
Keep us safe
, he’d prayed.
Keep us safe
.

Twice, they had been trailed by a black dog, a big shepherd mix of the type that was so common on the road, and Joaquin had wanted to run away from it. Elsa left it food.

They had taken shelter in the concrete hut, alone, which was a miracle in itself, so close to the finishing mark. The rain poured down with rare intensity, driving everyone off the Camino, into friendly bars or hostels. Elsa curled up into a ball and went to
sleep. Joaquin watched over her, and he moved along the walls, reading the petitions and prayers and graffiti. It was always so touching to think of what they carried, the pilgrims who’d walked this road—the offerings they had made so that God would take away their pain or cure a child or bring back a lost wife. He found himself touching the words, praying on behalf of the writers, one and another and another, whispering with them, however long it had been. After a time, he fell into a meditative state, apart from the rain and his body. His nose was cold and his arm began to ache, but he kept touching the petitions.

He saw the light first, that spill of palest green, which he had come to believe over the years was just something his childish brain had filled in for him. It softly glowed in a corner of the room. Joaquin turned, feeling both dread and piercing excitement. There was the angel, so startlingly familiar and beautiful, wearing a green gown. Her eyes were clear and large and very dark. “It’s time, Joaquin,” she said.

He frowned at her, the fingertips of his right hand still touching the wall. He shook his head, denying her or the moment or what she was about to ask.

“You will be a priest. When you leave Santiago, you will leave your old life behind.”

Again he shook his head, gesturing toward Elsa. “I’m to be married.”

She gazed at him steadily and in her eyes he saw what eternity might look like, vast and beautiful.

A third time, like Peter, he shook his head in denial. But his eyes filled with tears as he knelt on the cold hard floor and felt the angel surround him, filling him with light.

All these years later, alone in the rectory kitchen, he knew he could not have denied her. It was the greatest joy and the greatest sacrifice of his life.

Deacon had the option of choosing one of the women who brought him plates of food. A woman to be his partner and listen
to his problems and random observations. He would lie with her at night, and when he awakened in the darkness, she would be there, and he could put an arm around her and hold her close.

Grief rose in Joaquin. This was the suffering that was his to bear, the loss of this simple, ordinary thing—a wife to keep him company and bear witness to his life. He longed for it, longed for Elsa. To make love, yes, of course. It was a simple, cornerstone pleasure in life, and they had been well matched. But more, he longed for her face at breakfast, for her comfort in the middle of the night, for her hand on his head when he was overcome with human suffering.

The loss of it welled in him, filled him like a dark smoke, and he bent his head to his arms. Would it really have made him a lesser priest if he had married? What would have been lost if he had children to fill the rectory? To bring him his slippers when he was tired, as he had brought his own father’s?

He wept, ashamed of his weakness and longing, but so filled with it that he could not help it.
What would it have cost you
, he asked the silent heavens,
to let us have wives?

He fell asleep just like that, his head on his arms, chicken bones spread around him.

D
eacon, too, had chicken for supper. It was dark by the time he made it home, and he was dead tired. He was getting too old to dig in the dirt and haul 4 × 4’s and manhandle bags of peat. He’d be fifty in three years, and he felt it in every bone and muscle in his aching back.

He tended the dogs, filling the water dishes and food bowls, giving each dog a good dose of loving. He’d diapered Sasha before he left, and now he took it off and shooed her outside. The others, smelling chicken, had no intention of leaving him. Joe made his laborious way to the table and plunked down, waiting with sad eyes for Deacon to join him. Mikey, the Shih Tzu, skittered
forward and back, eagerly looking up at Deacon for the possibility of a treat, until Deacon finally got fed up with it and barked out, “Go lie down.”

The chicken was perfectly golden brown, the batter speckled with pepper and something reddish. Each piece was just right, the crust not too thick or too thin or falling off. He debated heating it in the microwave, but feared the breading would go soft.

Still, he wanted hot food, not cold. He’d give it a try with a lesser piece, see how it worked. Choosing a thigh, fat and battered, he wrapped it in waxed paper and heated it in the microwave for a minute, then let it sit in its own grease for another minute while he opened a can of beans and put them in a pot to heat.

When he unwrapped the chicken, it steamed. When he bit into it, the skin was crisp, but hot juices burst out and spilled down his chin, salty and delicious. He closed his eyes, chewing. Perfect.

Elsa came into his mind. Elsa, Elsa, Elsa. He’d thought of little else for days. Weeks, really, since that first day when they’d planted the garden. He’d seen her slip away, weeping over the blessing, and then come back with her little fierce face, determined to be present, even if it was hard.

Grit. He liked that about her. In fact, he had yet to find anything about her he didn’t like. She was good with the kids, and a no-nonsense organizer who pulled off the feat of the soup kitchen every week as if it were coffee for her sister. Her newest venture was to organize Saturday night potlucks in the garden, giving the gardeners a chance to share recipes, trade secrets, and generally cement the place as a community center. Smart.

He wrapped the rest of the chicken pieces individually and put them on the plate to heat in the microwave, then returned his attention to the thigh in his hand. Thighs, breasts. He liked those things about Elsa, too, physical things. Her hair, especially,
caught him every time, those dark glossy spirals. It was such healthy hair, the evidence of good living. He wanted to undress her, taste her, shake that composed exterior into a frenzy of—

The trouble was Father Jack. Who loved her even if he never said so. Deacon owed him. A lot. A good man didn’t steal a woman his friend loved.

But if that friend was a priest? Didn’t that change things?

He wiped his fingers and put the chicken bones in a bag in the sink—if he didn’t get them outside, one of the dogs would find them and choke to death. The microwave dinged. He dished up the beans, and took them to the table, where he turned on his iPod, connected to a small dock. The music looped out, quiet blues tunes, and it eased the tenseness in his neck.

He had met Father Jack when he was in prison in Cañon City, so full of anger and shame he was like a whirling tornado. He’d been chosen to participate in a program for recovering alcoholics to take some training in anger management and prayer, and despite his upbringing, he’d gone for it. Father Jack and a Protestant minister of some kind led the sessions once every other week.

Deacon liked Jack immediately—his earthy sense of humor, his realness. He seemed less a priest than a man who had happened to run into God somewhere at a watering hole and had become good friends with him.

Even now, Deacon envied him that relationship. He sometimes thought he might have a glimmering of the Divine, and he sure had long talks with his Higher Power, because a drunk like himself wouldn’t stay sober long without them.

But he didn’t know God like Jack did.

Or Joaquin, as Elsa called him.

He rubbed his face and tried to shake it off. Elsa, Jack, Joaquin, God, angels, the garden, all of it. The chicken waited, hot and salty and juicy, and Deacon began to eat. Slowly. Savoring it. Hot juices, tender flesh. He thought of Elsa’s mouth, plump and succulent
and eager, thought of her hands on his lower back this morning, moving in little circles, and the press of her pelvis against his.

He closed his eyes, half-dizzy, and took a breath. His libido gave him a vision of her naked on his bed, that black hair scattered over his white pillowcases. He would begin at her forehead and kiss every inch of her body. He would not let her move until he had done that, covered her with his mouth and tongue. And then—

A scratching at the back door startled him out of the fantasy, and he stood up, adjusting himself like a teenager. He let the dog in, and his craving moved with him, on the back of his neck and the small of his back, in his belly and his knees and his mouth.

She deserved to be more than the surrogate wife of a celibate priest.

But what did Jack deserve?

And Deacon supposed that he, as a man who’d already lost a perfectly decent family, and the killer of a mother, didn’t technically deserve anything at all.

A strange, ancient desire rose in him then, a remembrance of whiskey, the way it blotted out dilemmas like this one. He could taste it on the back of his throat, the fire and relief, the letting go.

Dangerous, that. Maybe it was a sign that he wasn’t ready for anything as intense as this might be. Wiser to stay away, keep her at arm’s length.

If he could.

I
n the dead of night, Alexa snuck into the living room to check her email on Elsa’s laptop computer. She used a web-based service and logged on, finding a long line of messages from the same address. Clenching her teeth, she highlighted the whole list and put her finger on the delete key.

At the last minute, she couldn’t resist just the smallest glimpse of him, the small pleasure of hearing his voice through his written words. Bracing herself, she opened the first.

It was like shards of glass slamming into her heart. She thought of his chest, covered with silky black hair, thought of her beautiful ring lying against his heart. She punched the button to read the next one.

Tears began to leak from her eyes, blurring the screen. She should not have started reading them. She could hear his voice clearly, feel his touch. But now she couldn’t stop.

And another.

And the last one:

Alexa crumpled into a fetal ball, covering her ears with her hands to banish his voice. She was dying, too, she could feel it. Without him, there was no reason to live.

T
amsin found her daughter asleep on the living room floor, her magnificent hair spread around her. For a moment, she looked dead, and Tamsin pressed her hands over her heart, feeling like Lady Capulet. Then she saw Alexa breathe, and realized that she was only asleep.

The girl looked so wretchedly miserable. Her cheekbones
stood out like hawk wings, her skin was as pale as chalk. Tamsin sank down beside her, touched her hair, brushed it away from her face. “Wake up, sweetie. You’re going to get a crick in your neck.”

Alexa stirred, rolling over to rest her head in Tamsin’s lap. “Why did he do this?”

“Carlos?”

“No, Dad. How could he be so cruel to us when we were supposedly the center of his world? How could he do something so terrible?”

Tamsin drew her fingers through her daughter’s hair, thinking of the pat answers, that Scott had a disease, a gambling disease, and he couldn’t help it. But Tamsin didn’t feel the truth of that herself, and her daughter needed more. Deserved more. “Sometimes people take a wrong turn, baby. A really, really bad turn. He loves you. I know that. I know he would have tried to spare you.” Against her body, Alexa tensed a little, or maybe only came to attention. “I think it must have just gotten out of control and he didn’t know how to get off the merry-go-round.”