The Garden of Happy Endings (39 page)

With a lump in her throat, she removed the opals she’d been wearing since the seize and placed them on the counter. She slipped the diamonds in her ears, and felt tears stream down her face. She wished he had not done this. She wished she could talk to him. She was angry about what he’d done, and confused about her future, and furious on behalf of her daughter, but she had also loved him. She had been so afraid over the past few months that everything she’d believed to be true about her marriage was a lie. Now she knew it was not. Scott had loved her. He had protected her. Tried to provide for her—

And with a blast of insight that almost knocked her sideways,
she knew where there was more. Grabbing a couple of trash bags from the pantry, she ran upstairs to her tower room.

The loss hit her again in the solar plexus. She’d always loved to work in here when it was raining, the panes of the windows running with gray, the lightning flashing all around. She could get lost for hours and hours in this room.

Pushing past the pinch of longing, she yanked open a deep narrow closet that she’d rarely used. It was creepy. But in the back was a secret door, left over from Victorian times. Tamsin had thought it quaint, but of course, there were sometimes spiders in there. No way she’d wanted to reach her hand inside.

Now, when she slid the little door sideways, there was a thick envelope. Heart pounding in her ears, she wrestled it out sideways. Her name was on the front, in Scott’s hand. She opened it.

A thick wad of bills was inside, along with a single white sheet of paper.

The bills were hundreds, and there were a lot of them. A stack as thick as a hardcover novel. Stunned, she flipped through them, hands shaking in fear and anger and relief.

God! What to do with it? Where to hide it?

Awash with a sense of urgency, she yanked open the closet where her quilts were stored carefully, between layers of tissue paper. She took several of them out and shoved them into the bags, then wrapped the money in a square of fabric still lying on the desk. She tucked it into a bag. Layered another quilt on top.

No. She took out the money and peeled three bills off the stack and tucked them into her jeans, then dashed down the stairs. Her feet clattered on the wooden steps, and skittered over the polished floor at the top of the cellar stairs. She dove through
the cellar, and back out into the rain, down the alley to her car. Urgently, she shoved the money under the front seat, locked the doors, and looking around at the empty street, rushed back into the house, her heart pounding. She realized when she was back in the tower room that she’d gone through the creepy spidery basement twice, and her hands were shaking violently.

Breathe
.

Planting her hands on her hips, she took in several long slow breaths, and felt herself calm down.

Sweating now, and feeling scared, she decided it was time to cut her losses. She started taking more quilts from the shelves and layering them into the two trash bags she’d brought upstairs with her. They were bulging by the time she finished, and she realized she couldn’t even lift them. Sweat dripped into her eyes as she ran back down the stairs, all three flights, grabbed two more bags, and tried to run back up.
Ha
.

She walked back up, then painstakingly divided the contents of two bags into four. The weight was manageable now, and she hauled two down the stairs, leaving them by the basement steps, then ran up and grabbed the final two. With one last look over her shoulder at the room she had loved so much, she began to drag the bags downstairs. Her breath was becoming ragged now.

Almost there
, she told herself.

Just as she reached the landing on the second floor, she heard the front door burst open. She had enough time to glance out the window and see the flashing lights before two uniformed policemen appeared in front of her, guns aimed at her chest.

“Drop the bags and put your hands up,” one said. He looked about thirteen, and that somehow made her want to laugh.

She said, “This is my hou—”

“Hands up!” he shouted, wiggling his gun.

Tamsin obeyed. “These are my quilts,” she said as the other officer rushed up the stairs. The first one took her right wrist in his hand and slapped a handcuff around it. Then he grabbed her
other hand and pulled it around her back and slapped the cuff onto that one, too.

“Ow!” Tamsin protested. “You don’t have to yank my shoulder out of joint.”

“You are under arrest for breaking and entering,” the baby said. “You have the right to remain silent—”

It dawned on her, finally, that she was being arrested. “Wait!” she cried, pulling free. “You don’t understand. This is my house.”

“Ma’am, this house has been seized by federal authorities. Everything in it belongs to the courts.” He took her arm, firmly. “I would advise you to stop talking now.”

Tamsin caught sight of the bags. “They’re mine,” she said, and let herself be led down the front steps and back into the rain. “Can I get my purse, my phone? They’re in the car down there.”

“No, ma’am.”

W
hen Tamsin called, Elsa was on the sunporch, shelling peas. All day she’d been feeling a sense of unease, of things gathering in the distance. Sitting with the bowl of peas in her lap, she tried to tap into whatever that darkness was. She cracked the pods and slid the peas from their casings with a fingernail,
pop pop pop
, taking pleasure in the rhythm, the color of the peas, their fresh green smell.

The unease stuck with her, though, a low-level hum. She looked off into the horizon as if it had an answer, but there was only the cool, life-giving rain. It had been an odd day, between Joaquin and Deacon and the lost hour in the courtyard with San Roque. Around her wrist lingered the marks of the rosary, pale red as if the little leaves had been scorched into her skin. The beads were in her pocket still. She should remember to put them away. She had no idea why she was carrying them around with her all the time. She wasn’t Catholic and hadn’t been for a long time.

Charlie snored at her feet, exhausted from his long day of play,
and she rubbed a foot over his side. She’d tried to enlist Alexa in the shelling, but the girl had rolled her eyes. “No.”

But now she came outside. “My mom’s on the phone,” she said, holding out the sleek iPhone she used. “She said she tried calling you on yours, but you didn’t answer. She sounds kinda weird.”

Wiping her hands and taking the phone, Elsa said, “Hello?”

“I need to be bailed out of jail,” Tamsin said. “Don’t tell Alexa where I am. And don’t make a big fuss because I know she’s listening.”

“She’s in jail?” Alexa said, making a face.

“She heard you,” Elsa said. “What happened?”

“I went to the house to get some of my quilts.” She sighed. “It was stupid, okay? Just please come get me.”

“Right away, sis,” Elsa said. “Don’t worry.”

As she handed the phone back, Elsa probed the disquiet, wondering if the arrest was what she’d been sensing. But no, it was still there, dark and gathering weight. She rubbed her belly irritably. Why, she wondered, as she had wondered all of her life, give a warning without giving some direction along with it?

Even as a small girl, she’d had these washes of knowledge. A sense of death lurking, or danger. Once she’d shied away from a side street, later learning someone had been kidnapped from it that same day. Another time, she awoke screaming about a car accident and learned that afternoon a classmate had been in one very near that hour.

The advice she’d been given was to pray at those times, that her hunches were like a smoke alarm going off. The world needed prayers.

Because she had no other way to address the warnings, she now found herself taking the rosary out of her pocket and looping it around her wrist, a habit she’d picked up as a child. All through the drive to the police station, she mentally chanted the rosary, flicking the leaves through her fingers one at a time.

“Are you praying?” Alexa asked.

“Yes.”

“Do you think she’s in a lot of trouble?”

“No,” Elsa answered honestly, parking the car. “It feels like something is out of sync, but it’s not your mother.”

In the station, Tamsin was bedraggled, her hair tangled and knotted, as if it had been wet and then dried without being combed. She’d clearly been crying. “I’m so sorry,” she said as she walked out with them, her head bowed. She climbed into the front passenger seat.

“Why did you
do
that?” Alexa asked.

“I guess you really don’t need two criminal parents, huh?”

“It’s not that. It’s just kind of crazy. It’s not like you.”

“I wanted to get the quilts. They’re mine. I made them. I should be able to sell them so you can get back to Spain and work things out with Carlos.”

“Mom! Nothing is going to work out with us. He’s part of the royal family. He can’t marry the daughter of a criminal. I love him, okay? It’s just this very careful world he lives in, and they will
never
let him marry me. I needed to make it a clean break so that he—” She set her jaw, pressed her thumbs to her eyelids. “I don’t want to talk about this. I don’t want to cry anymore. It’s just done.”

Elsa touched her sister’s hand. “I think your daughter means that what you did was a grand gesture.”

“I do, Mom,” Alexa said, and she leaned forward to put her head on her mother’s shoulder. “Thanks for trying. Only, don’t have any illusions, okay? He’s lost to me now.”

“What about all those emails? I didn’t mean to read them. But you left your account open on the laptop, and I saw them. He loves you.”

“I didn’t tell him what happened. I felt so … ashamed.”

Elsa looked at her niece in the rearview mirror. There was
something a little off about her tone. Something she was hiding. “Do you know anything? Like where your dad might be?”

“No!” The word was vehement. “If I did, believe me, I would track him down and make him pay for ruining our lives.”

“Revenge doesn’t solve anything,” Elsa said, stopping at a traffic light. In the mirror, Alexa was chewing on a thumbnail, worrying it. She might not know where her father was, but she was definitely hiding something.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Tamsin said. “I bet it would solve some things for me.”

Elsa glanced at her. “Are you finally angry? It’s about time.”

“Don’t,” Tamsin snapped. “Just don’t be the wise one. I’m sick of it.”

“Somebody has to do it,” Elsa snapped back. “Maybe I’m tired of it, too.
You’re
the older sister!”

“As if you’d ever listen to anything I might have to say!”

“I do listen to you!”

“No, you are the supercilious know everything, never in trouble, always with the same guy—”

“Who left me, remember!”

“Yeah, for God! You can’t really say, ‘No, sorry, God, I’m not doing that.’ ”

A light went red in front of her and Elsa stepped on the brake a little too hard. “Oh, yes, you can. You can walk away. I’ve done it, three times, and no bolt of lightning has knocked me down yet. I seem to be doing just fine!”

“Oh, yeah, you’re doing great,” Tamsin said sarcastically. “Hiding out in your hometown, playing wife to the priest—”

“Stop!” Elsa yelled, slapping her.

The car went deadly silent. Tamsin’s mouth dropped open and she raised a shaking hand to the red mark on her face. Alexa was as still as a statue. Elsa gaped, her fingertips stinging from the contact.

Behind them, someone honked. The light was green.

“I’m sorry,” Elsa said. She drove through the intersection, and on the other side parked at the curb. “I can’t believe I did that.”

Tamsin grabbed Elsa’s hand and pressed it to her own face, on the other side. “I’m sorry, too. I should never have said that. I’m just in an evil, evil mood.”

“You’re right, though. I mean, there’s a lot that rings true in that.”

“Wow,” Alexa said from the backseat, and her voice was stronger than it had been since she arrived home. “I don’t even have to watch TV to get a Hallmark moment.”

Both sisters laughed.

“I think we need ice cream,” Tamsin said. “I’ll buy.” She reached into her pocket and fanned out three one-hundred-dollar bills. Wiggling her eyebrows, she said, “I found some money.”

“They didn’t confiscate it?”

“Nope.”

“I want a banana split,” Alexa said from the backseat.

Elsa glanced at her sister. “Let’s feed the girl.”

They drove to Dairy Queen. Alexa ordered her banana split, and Tamsin got her favorite, an Oreo Blizzard. Elsa chose a hot fudge sundae. The clerk was annoyed over the hundred-dollar bill, but he broke it.

They carried the sundaes to a table by the window and watched it rain.

Tamsin said, “You should see how bad my garden looks. It’s totally overgrown and the peonies bloomed without anyone noticing.” Her voice broke. “How stupid, right? But it breaks my heart that no one saw them bloom, that they’re just invisible. They’re so beautiful!”

“That is sad,” Alexa said. “I’m going to miss our bathtub for the rest of my life.”

“It was a pretty good one.”

“What happens next, sis?”

“I have to go to court on Monday.”

“Wow, that’s fast.”

“It’s just an arraignment or something. To see if they’ll press charges or not. I’m worried it’ll be the same lady judge I got before. She didn’t like me one bit.”

She slapped her hands over her face. “Argh! I can’t believe I even have conversations like this!”

Elsa laughed.

To her surprise, so did Alexa. “You’re such a bad girl. Maybe you should get a tattoo.”

“Maybe I will. Maybe I’ll pierce my nose.”

“No,” Alexa said firmly. “Tattoo yes, but I will not let you pierce your nose like some pathetic middle-aged divorcée.”

Tamsin gave a belly laugh. “You mean like the pathetic can’t-get-divorced-because-her-husband-has-disappeared middle-aged mom I am?”

“You are not like that.”

Tamsin asked Elsa, “Would you ever get a tattoo?”