The Wishing Garden (26 page)

She’d found another of his poems in the Juneberry tree that afternoon. She’d had to get it down with the extension pruner, and now she could not get it out of her mind. If she’d been the column he’d curled his tendrils around, then she must have been rotting from the start. Otherwise, he would have grown strong by now. He would have smothered her years ago.

“Jake asked us up to his cabin to stay a while.”

She breathed in deeply. She understood exactly what he was saying. If he went, he would not come back.

“It’s hard for me here,” Doug was saying. “Seeing the garden, but not being able to work in it. The fresh air … Well, stranger things have happened. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that I might get well up there.”

Outside the garage, a line was forming. Technically, Savannah was still writing copy for the supermarket, but even Maggie could not deny that her real job was here. Her neighbors came day and night now. An unusual purple light streamed out of the garage window, and Maggie thought she heard crying.

“He’ll want Savannah to come along,” she said. “He’s in love with her.”

“Well, sure.”

“This one’s got disaster written all over it, too.”

“Ah, Maggie. Give them a chance. You never know.”

When she turned around, Doug was sitting up straight. Despite his bald scalp and skin as flaky as pie crust, she sometimes refused to believe he was dying. Perhaps, through her eyes, he never would. Perhaps, if she never took her eyes off him, she could make him live.

“So what do you say?” Doug asked.

She wouldn’t say anything, just to put a little drama into it, but she decided right then that she would go to the cabin. Even if she had to put up with no air-conditioning and those psycho dogs running loose, at least they were doing something. They weren’t just going to sit in this house and rot.

In the morning, while Doug did what little packing he could, Maggie found Emma in the garden, dressed
in cut-off shorts and a stained tank top. She was slinking around the mermaid fountain, picking out the change Savannah’s clients had thrown in for luck.

“Mom’s in there with another one,” Emma said. “That woman with the red hair.”

“Marie Albert?”

“Whoever. She’s in there wailing about some guy she was in love with before she met her husband, like forty years ago. I mean, I’m sorry, but like, get over it.”

Maggie smiled. She adored this child. She would give her anything she asked for, if she would only ask.

“I take it you don’t believe in your mother’s powers.”

“Mom’s got no powers. If she did, we’d be millionaires. We wouldn’t be living in your garage. No offense.”

She walked around the fountain, stepping on the cobblestones hard enough to chip off the edges.

“I saw that … thing when Mabel was here,” Emma went on. “I don’t know what it was. It could have been the ghost of Christmas past for all I know. But, I mean, if her husband wanted to get in touch with her, he should have just done it. The fact that he had to wait for this two-bit psychic to help him is really pathetic.”

“You’re in love with that boy, aren’t you?”

Emma jerked her head up. Her eyes were like silver fire, passion oozed out of her pores with a lilac scent. With so much lust to spare, Maggie wished she’d share some. She’d give anything to go back to the days before she’d decided to be miserable, when wanting had been the only cancer, eating her up from the inside out.

“I know what you all think of him, but you don’t know anything. I’m not giving up.”

“Well, let’s hope not.”

Emma eyed her, then leaned back against the fountain. “Grandma, sometimes I think you’re messing with my mind.”

Maggie threw back her head and laughed. “We’re all going up to Jake’s cabin to stay a while. Eli goes up there quite a bit, doesn’t he?”

Emma went still for a moment, then threw herself into Maggie’s arms. “I love you, Grandma.”

Maggie sniffed. “I should hope so.”

They were still hugging when a sedan pulled up in the driveway, and a trim, white-haired woman stepped out of it. She spotted Maggie and Emma in the garden, and cut right through the rhododendrons.

“I’m Cheryl Pillandro,” the woman called over to them. “I’m looking for Jake Grey. I was told he often works here.”

Maggie squinted, but it was Emma who jumped in. “He had a heart attack, like right where you’re standing.”

The woman stopped and put a hand over her heart as if she might do the same, and Maggie glared at Emma. She took the woman’s elbow and steered her to the half-carved bench.

“He’s all right. He’s back at his cabin. Just needs to take it easy a while.”

The woman caught her breath, but Maggie could feel her whole body trembling. “I’m his mother. It’s vital that I talk to him.”

“Well, if you want to see him, you’ll have to go up the mountain. You can come with us. Your son asked us to move in.”

Cheryl looked at her closely for the first time. “Really?”

“Go figure,” Maggie said, turning her face up to the sun. “It’s mostly about my daughter. She could be anything she wants, but instead she’s turning into a
flimflam artist. Let me tell you right now, there’s no chance in hell it will work out with her and Jake.”

“I don’t think I understand.”

“What’s to understand? They’re horrible for each other. Someone’s going to get their heart ripped out, and maybe it will be Savannah. Maybe she’ll finally start seeing some sense.”

Emma was giggling. Cheryl rubbed her forehead, as if she was regretting leaving the safe confines of her car.

Maggie took pity on her. “Come on. I’ll make you some tea. Or would you rather have a gin and tonic? God knows I would. I need every drop I can get to watch my daughter walk around without her feet touching the ground. A woman’s got to get some soil between her toes. She’s got to
experience
things. Believe me, getting your heart broken is not the worst thing.” Maggie looked at Emma deliberately, but then Cheryl Pillandro grabbed her hand.

“No,” she said. “The worst thing is breaking someone else’s.”

Jake came home from Smitty’s with a sack of groceries, frozen foods mostly, and cream of mushroom soup for Doug. He stepped out of his car and looked up. Mountain fog had rolled in, but not thick enough to hide an arsenal of pine cones stacked neatly on the roof.

He was on Carvedilol to strengthen his heart, and huge amounts of Avapro to lower his blood pressure, but nevertheless he set the bag on the porch, grabbed the corner post, and climbed to the roof. When he looked over the edge, he found the metal roof littered with piles of ashes that could very well have come from the chimney. He heard laughter and then knew
he’d crossed some invisible line, because the ghost was as real as he was, sitting on the far end of the roof, tapping out ashes from his cigarette.

Jake pulled himself up and sat down. He was too woozy to try to catch a ghost, and he should have realized years ago that it was impossible anyway.

“Just go,” he said.

A light mist started to fall and went through Roy’s head and out his toes. When the downpour began a few minutes later, Roy lit up a new cigarette.

The ghost made his way across the roof, the metal creaking beneath him. His feet were still clad in fifteen-year-old black boots, his ruby pinkie ring now a dull black. He knelt down beside Jake.

Jake reached out a finger and was sure he touched a bony knee. He must have gone right over the edge, because everything was clear as day to him now. Love and meanness were the two things that could turn a dead man into a ghost, but only meanness turned him solid. Only viciousness let him point a cigarette toward a man’s eyes so he could feel the heat.

Roy smiled, and thrust his tongue through the hole where his gold-capped tooth had fallen out. He was still smiling when he said his first words in fifteen years. “I’m not going anywhere. So shoot me.”

Roy laughed uproariously, but Jake just climbed down the porch column. His dogs were running in circles, howling. He grabbed the sack of groceries and went inside, but right away he got a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach because the house reeked of cigarettes.

He opened all the windows, then put away the food. By the time the Dawsons’ car pulled into the driveway, the smell had dissipated and the ghost was gone. Maggie and Savannah helped Doug out of the car, while Emma lingered in the downpour. She didn’t
step up on the porch until she was thoroughly drenched, chancing pneumonia. One more woman still sat in the backseat. Jake had never expected to see her again, so it was a long time before he recognized his mother.

His heart throbbed painfully as he walked out into the rain. Cheryl Pillandro rolled down her window, and Jake took a good, long breath.

“Mom,” he said.

“The police found the body. The sheriff came to my house.”

He nodded. He was not even remotely surprised. All he felt was that this had been a long time coming, and in truth, he was a little relieved.

“You called me a while back.” He felt the rain sink through his shirt and drip coldly down the muscles of his back. His skin prickled, then he started to shiver. He had a feeling it would be hours, maybe days, before he’d be able to stop.

“Yes. When they started the draining. I wanted you to have time to run.”

He invited her in, then went to the loft to put on a dry shirt. By the time he came back down, the dogs were running around the living room in tighter and tighter circles, barking wildly. Jake banged his fist against the wall.

“Take it outside.”

The dogs obediently went out onto the back deck. Emma went with them, then stood on the edge, where the rain poured out of the gutters in thick surges. The Dawsons all surveyed the downstairs.

Jake had not wanted to make the cabin beautiful. He hadn’t sanded down any of the logs, had not put a single coat of urethane on the floors. He’d chosen the roughest, knottiest wood he could find, but now, when
Savannah turned around, her eyes shining, he knew he had failed.

“Nice,” Doug Dawson said. “Really nice. I think I’d like to lie down awhile.”

Jake showed him to the bed upstairs. Above it was a single, triangular window he had salvaged from an old Victorian house in town. He was afraid the ghost might hang his feet outside the glass, but all that was there now was rain.

Jake helped Doug into bed, then turned to leave. “Jake,” Doug said softly. “You all right with this?”

Jake turned around. If his father had lived, Jake’s whole life would have been different. Yet when Paul Grey had died, the last thing he’d told his wife was “Thank God it wasn’t you.” That was the thing with fathers; they had no idea how vital they were. They had no idea a child just went to pieces without them.

“I’m not all right with you dying, no,” he said. Already the loft smelled sweeter, as if pieces of Doug were coming off in the air. He went to the window and propped it open. “But if it has to happen, then you ought to do it here.”

He looked back and Doug was smiling, his eyes closed. Jake walked down the stairs.

Cheryl, Maggie, and Savannah all sat around the dining-room table, whispering. They stopped cold when they saw him.

“I suppose you told her,” he said, gesturing to Maggie. “What’s the point of being an escaped murderer, if everyone’s in on it?”

He walked out onto the deck. The rain had finally let up and the air was cold and charged. He threw a rawhide for the dogs and sparks flew when it hit the ground. He heard a throat clearing and turned around to find Emma standing there, glaring at him.

“As a matter of fact, I hired Mr. Malone back. He’ll be here tomorrow afternoon.”

Her sudden smile startled him, and it would bring Eli Malone to his knees. A boy like that never expected a girl like this to fall in love with him. It was out of the realm of possibility. It could shake a whole world.

She ran off into the woods after the dogs and, a few minutes later, Cheryl came out. She put her hand on his shoulder, then quickly dropped it.

“I didn’t say a word to the police,” she said. “I swear I didn’t.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it does. Everything matters now. They’ve identified the body, Jake. They think I did it. And since I didn’t, there’s nothing to worry about.”

Jake turned to her. He did not laugh, because it would have hurt too much.

“You know why I left?” he asked.

Cheryl looked away. There were tears in her eyes and he was glad. He’d waited a long time to hurt someone back.

“It wasn’t because I killed him,” he went on. “It was because I hadn’t done it sooner, before he’d tainted you.”

Cheryl grabbed his arm with the hand Roy had broken all those years ago. Today, her nails were smooth and polished in pale pink. She had a ring on her middle finger with a sapphire blue stone.

“You can hate me,” she said. “I can take that. But what I can’t take is you giving up. Just letting them get you.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

She dropped her hand and stepped back. Her hair was cut clear above her ears, a style Roy would have beat her for.

“I was crazy then,” she said, running her hand
along the wet deck railing. “I lived on hating Roy. I know you can’t understand that, but it’s the truth. I woke up every morning holding my breath, hoping my heart would just give out.”

Jake turned away. He had waited a long time for this day, but now he was disappointed. It was too hard to hate a person. It took more energy than he had. He wished Savannah would come out and lay her head on his shoulder. He wanted her to stand beside him until the sun went down, and then point out every constellation and tell him the myths behind the stars.

“You can’t understand it,” Cheryl went on. “I know you can’t. I can’t, not now. There are very few things a woman can’t forgive herself for, but one of them is not standing behind her son.”

“It’s all over now,” Jake said, but of course it wasn’t. It was just beginning. The thing with hiding out was that nothing got done. Time would stand still until someone found him out.

Cheryl leaned against him, crying. He closed his eyes. He tried to work up some kind of loathing, but the woman in his arms was too much of a stranger, and strangers were easy to forgive.