The Trouble with Tulip (49 page)

When all of the excitement had finally died down, Danny brought Jo back to her car and then followed her home. Even though Keith McMann was now behind bars, Danny wanted to make sure that she was safe.

He had hardly slept all night. Instead, he kept thinking about Jo and how close she had come to death. He realized that no matter what happened, he had to tell her how he felt about her. He had to do it today.

Putting his cup in the sink, he decided to bike over to the park and find her. Maybe they could talk there.

It was time to go for broke.

On the way he glanced down Edna's street, where he saw Sally Sugarman out in front of her mother's house. He took the curve so he could say hello, and she smiled warmly as he rolled up.

“There's the star of the hour,” she said. “From what I understand, you were Jo's knight in shining armor last night.”

He shrugged.

“She saved herself,” he told her. “I just provided the transportation.”

They talked for a few minutes. Sally had returned her rental car last night, deciding not to sell Edna's vehicle after all, but to keep it for her teenage daughter. Sally was leaving today, driving all the way to Texas, the boxes of her mother's photos and papers and other keepsakes already tucked securely into the trunk and the backseat.

“If you don't mind,” she said, “would you tell Jo to cancel the classified ad for selling the car? I added a bonus in her check, to cover the percentage I had promised her.”

Sally said that from what she could tell, the job was just about finished. She had already written out a check for the balance that she owed and left it on the kitchen counter.

“I'll be calling her,” Sally said. “But please tell her I said thank you for everything that she did. Thank you, too, Danny. On behalf of my mother, thank you.”

Jo rolled down the sidewalk as fast as she dared, realizing as she went that she was missing Chewie. She was counting the hours until 2:00
P.M
., when she would be allowed to pick him up. She'd already spoken to the animal hospital this morning, and they said that the tube was out and he was doing beautifully. She had also called a fencing company and arranged for them to come next week and fully fence in the yard—though with an extra gate at the back for Danny to come through.

Compared to last week, this next week should be a breeze. This afternoon, a policeman was going to accompany Jo to the bank, where she would take out the alchemy notebook from her safety deposit box and hand it over as evidence. Tonight she hoped Danny would be free to help her finish up Edna's house.

Tomorrow would be a much-needed day of church and rest, and then Monday would begin a new era for her, new opportunities with her career, new household tips to explore.

Feeling better, Jo sailed along in the morning breeze. It was a sunny fall day, the autumn leaves a rich array of deep oranges and yellows and reds. Jo skated down the path through the park, taking the detour to the cemetery. When she reached her grandmother's grave, she pulled from her backpack a bottle of hydrated lime. On her hands and knees, she sprinkled it around the headstone. Hydrated lime was nontoxic to humans but deadly to weeds.

As she worked, Jo talked to her grandmother. She knew her grandmother couldn't really hear her, but there was still something comforting about the one-way conversation.

Today Jo felt as though she was on the verge of understanding something important. She hadn't slept well all night, and now an odd sort of undefined emotion hung over her. This morning Bradford had called, and their conversation had been short and strained. He said he needed to talk to her, in person, after all.

“Why, Bradford?” Jo had asked tiredly. “So you can explain why you ran out of our wedding?”

“No,” he replied. “So I can explain why we were getting married in the first place. There was…more to it…than you realize.”

That wasn't what she was expecting to hear, and though she tried to press him for more details, he said that was something he could only discuss in person. Against her better judgment, she agreed to meet with him next week. She had a feeling he was only acting to soothe his own aching conscience, but she would let him have his say if it made him feel better.

Now, something hurt, deep inside, and she wondered if it was the pain of pure loneliness.

“Why do I make such dumb choices when it comes to men?” she asked her grandmother. “As if Bradford wasn't bad enough, for a while there I was considering going out with
Keith
. A murderer, and a nut to boot. What's wrong with me, Nana? Am I blind or just stupid?”

The air was still. Jo finished sprinkling the lime and put the container away. She sat there on the grass, wishing her grandmother were here to talk to. Jo tried to think back, tried to remember the conversations they had had about love when she was a teen.

You're going to have a hard time in life, Jo Jo, if you don't stop keeping people so far away, outside of your heart
.

Jo hadn't understood what her grandmother meant at the time. Jo had friends. She let people into her heart all the time.

She closed her eyes, thinking of her parents and the cruel way they would uproot her life without a moment's notice. Maybe over the years, Jo had learned to “connect” with people without really connecting at all. Maybe over the years, Jo had guarded her heart so carefully that these days almost no one got in.

Especially not God
, she could almost hear her grandmother say.

“Not God?” Jo asked out loud. “I worship. I pray.”

Let Him in
.

Jo was so confused. For the first time in her life, she realized that maybe this was a struggle she couldn't handle alone. She closed her eyes and prayed, asking God to show her what she should do.

Simon awoke with a start, a steady beeping sound coming from somewhere near his head. He was hurting, deep in his chest, but it was different than before.

He felt coherent now.

He tried to make a sound but nothing came out. That's when he realized that there was a tube down his throat. There were tubes everywhere. Tubes and wires and beeps.

A man stepped over to the bed, gray hair, black shirt. Collar. A priest. The man wore the collar of a priest.

“My son,” he whispered. “Do you know the story of the thief who hung on the cross beside Jesus?”

Simon couldn't answer. He only blinked, feeling a terror gripping deep inside his soul. Glancing frantically around, he saw a uniformed policeman standing guard nearby.

“There were two thieves crucified with Him that day,” the priest continued, “and one of them mocked Jesus. But the other defended Him, saying ‘This man has done nothing wrong!' ”

Beep, beep, beep…beep.

The hesitation in the beeps terrified Simon. He looked up at the priest, eyes wide.

“He asked Jesus to remember him once he got to heaven. And you know what Jesus said? He said, ‘I tell you the truth, today you will be with Me in paradise.' Do you understand what that means, my son? It means you must ask Jesus to remember you. It means it's not too late to commit your soul to heaven.”

Ask Jesus to remember him? But how? Simon couldn't talk. He couldn't move.

Simon closed his eyes, picturing Edna last Friday evening as she told him about her own miraculous transformation.

“You can't really understand unless it's happened to you,” she had said. “But faith is such an amazing thing, if you'll just take that step.”

A voice was chanting now and Simon opened his eyes, realizing that the priest was giving him the last rites. Simon wasn't Catholic, but he thought it couldn't hurt. Most assuredly, he was about to die. One thought pierced him through the fog: What if the ultimate con—God's con—hadn't been a con at all, but the truth?

What if Edna had been right?

Simon closed his eyes again, knowing that whether this heart attack killed him or not, he wanted to believe. What had the thief said to Jesus?

Remember me
, Simon prayed suddenly. Then again, praying even more firmly, as if his brain were shouting:
Remember me, Jesus! Please!

After he prayed, hot, sudden tears rolled from Simon's eyes. Tears of shame, of forgiveness, of joy. As he slid slowly toward unconsciousness, he had one final thought:

This thing that seemed impossible was actually so simple
.

Danny didn't see Jo at the park, so he kept going down the path, hoping to catch her at the cemetery. He knew her routines so well that he could almost set a clock by her.

He was feeling anxious about this encounter, but when they finally spotted each other, the smile she gave him reached into every single chamber of his heart. He loved her. It was time to tell her so.

“Jo,” he said, gesturing toward a nearby bench. “Let's sit down. I have to tell you something.”

“Before you do,” she said, “I have something to tell you too. I've been doing a lot of thinking, a lot of praying, and I just realized something.”

Danny's pulse surged as they sat. She took his hands in hers, and on her face was an expression he'd never seen before. Could it be, was it possible, that Jo had realized she loved him too?

“Yes?”

“Danny, I've decided that I'm going to give up men for a while.”

He swallowed hard, blinking.

“You're what?”

“I'm going to give up men, give up dating. I'm making bad decisions, doing something wrong, and it wasn't until today that I realized that this isn't just about boy-girl stuff. It's about me. It's about my own fears of intimacy.”

Quickly, Danny could feel his hopes tumbling to the ground. Yet, deep inside, he had to tell himself that this wasn't a bad thing. It was time for Jo to tear down those walls inside.

He would just have to be patient.

“For how long?” he asked, hoping his voice didn't betray more than it should.

“Until I figure stuff out,” she replied. “All I know is that I don't want to live the rest of my life like this. I need to find out why I keep making such poor decisions.”

“Jo—”

“Danny, I
want
love in my life, I really do. But I've got some things to figure out first. Big things.”