House of Mercy (41 page)

“Who are you?” he said to Beth, and then without giving her a chance to reply, he said: “Where is my daughter?”

37

C
at was a mess, a screaming, hysterical, delusional mess, and Garner’s heart broke with paternal love for her. As he pieced together the emerging stories told by Trey, Dotti, and Nova, who floated onto the scene and took Garner’s hand like a pale ghost, he found the logic to understand what Cat had done.

The sheriff arrived. An ambulance arrived. And the entire town of Burnt Rock came out to see what the trouble was all about.

Garner refused to press charges against Catherine. He simply couldn’t.

He was examined and found to be in apparently fine health. He knew no one would be able to prove, even if he cooperated, that Cat had given him a fatal dose of death camas. That was an experience he’d hold privately, in his memory. And he was willing to bet no doctor would find any cancer in his liver anymore. His entire body shuddered with wellness that he hadn’t known since he was forty-six years old.

He resented that health with all his heart.

The girl who claimed to be his grandchild was mostly silent and watchful. Her hands were buried in the full ruff of a pretty cattle dog at her side, but Garner could see her fingers trembling.

Nova did most of the talking. She did not share Garner’s opinion that Cat could be forgiven. Even if she had, Cat’s future had been set for her by her past.

So when the EMTs finally sedated the doctor, and the sheriff cuffed her to the gurney, and the convoy of flashing lights finally pulled out of town, Garner came to see his miraculous recovery as another undeserved punishment from the hand of God. Another daughter taken from him. Another twenty-seven terrible years loomed ahead. He wished he had died before he understood any of it.

Garner didn’t want Beth Borzoi, daughter of the aloof and unforgiving Rose Borzoi, in his basement the next morning. He didn’t want her in his house, in his town. Ever. He wouldn’t have allowed her within ten miles except that Dotti was manning the shop, “protecting” Garner’s privacy, when Beth barged in. Dotti welcomed her and, effervescent with positive thinking, ushered the cowgirl downstairs.

Beth, not Rose, stood in the dim corner of his basement while he worked. He snipped ferociously at his plants as if they were responsible for his daughter’s failure to appear in his darkest hour. He couldn’t fathom how he’d mistaken this fair redhead for his own flesh and blood, but she had produced an aging wedding card and a brittle check, both written out to her mother in his hand. Garner decided Beth was the feminine derivative of her father, that porcelain Russian, so unlike Garner’s dark-skinned Rose that only a DNA test would convince him the girl wasn’t the love child of some other woman. Not all the hallucinogenic toxins in the world could lead him into such an embarrassing error again.

Such errors littered his past. He had always been a poor judge of character, hadn’t he? In particular of women. Of wives and daughters who abandoned their families, of doctors who tried to kill their patients, of healers who wanted . . . He wasn’t sure what this girl wanted yet, but he was confident that he wouldn’t like it.

He lived in a sick and twisted world. What good were flimsy herbs in such a place? He pruned blindly.

Garner glanced up to see if Dotti had left him alone with the girl, but Dotti stood at the bottom of the stairs like a muted moth, large and soft. She offered him a daring smile that likely meant
Go on now. Take the lead with this granddaughter of yours
.

He would not. And while he was not taking the lead, he decided he also would not open his doors or his heart to Dotti anymore either. Who knew what she might do to him?

“This greenhouse is impressive,” Beth said, reaching out to touch a blooming spear of foxglove.

“Don’t touch anything.” He pointed the hook of his clippers at her, and she snatched her hand back. “Plants’ll kill you if you don’t know what you’re dealing with,” he said. “And I’ll just use your body for fertilizer.”

In the silence, he almost felt terrible for saying such a thing. But what could one expect of an old man who’d been cast off, used, and dragged to the brink of death by God and by people at least three times by his reckoning?

Beth was looking at him with a gaze that seemed like pity, which only angered him further. He picked up a pot and turned around, looking for some other place to set it so he wouldn’t have to watch her.

“I’m very sorry for what Dr. Ransom did to you,” she offered.

“She couldn’t do anything to me that wasn’t already happening. I was a dying man.
You
, on the other hand—I’m not at all sure yet what kind of witch you are.”

“Garner,” Dotti scolded.

“Miracle worker, then, if labels matter,” he said.

“They don’t,” said Beth. “I have a gift that I can’t explain, a gift that’s not even mine to control.”

“And I have a healthy liver, and nothing to credit for it. For all I know it was those wicked plants Cat gave to me. A few alkaloids, a little zygadenine—”

“Don’t be mean, Garner. The girl healed you.”

“Mean?” Garner snapped, twisting to point his clippers at Dotti now. “Do you know how cancer is treated? By pumping a body full of poison, Dotti. Who’s to say Cat didn’t do the trick? How can a person even know the difference between what’s good or bad anymore?”

“Oh, you’re full of hooey, old man. You went up there to Mathilde’s church looking for your miracle, and now you’ve got it. Why are you whining?”

“You think
this
was what I wanted?”

“If you didn’t want your health, what did you want?”

“A relationship with my
daughter
! I don’t have anything else that matters.”

“Well, you won’t be able to convince me that you wanted to
die
,” Dotti said. With a huff she sat down on the bottom step of his stairway, effectively blocking his escape, should he plan to make one. “I know you better than that.”

Garner pouted and slammed his pot down on a table.

“Trey told me you and Dr. Ransom were very close,” Beth said.

“Closer than I was to my own daughter.”

“I can understand why you’re so angry.”

“You can, can you? How old are you?”

“Twenty-two.”

“And do you have kids, a child who trampled your love for her? No? Then don’t tell me you understand. Why did Rose send you?”

Beth cleared her throat. “She didn’t. She doesn’t know I’m here, or she would have stopped me from coming. I came to ask you for help.”

“All the help I have to offer is available online. You have a headache, a stomachache, a toothache? Take the little self-quiz and my website will direct you to all the products you need.”

“Not that kind of help,” Beth murmured.

“Oh—yes, I forgot. You have magic fingers. You don’t need my help.”

“I—my mother—needs money,” Beth said.

“You have money?” Dotti’s voice was full of surprise.

Garner turned around now to stare at Beth. The weight of the clippers seemed to make his shoulders stoop. “What for? School lunches? Daddy can’t afford to feed you?”

He regretted his attitude and reveled in it at the same time. This was what happened, he thought, when pain could no longer be soothed, when all the medicinal therapies in the world fell short and all that was left were questions. Even when he was at death’s door, it wasn’t Rose who came to him, but a granddaughter he’d never met and didn’t care about. Was his daughter so proud after all these years? Was his life worth so little to her?

Beth ran her fingers down the stalk of a bushy, woody plant so that the fine green needles broke off and released a pungent aroma.

“Don’t touch it if you don’t—”

“Rosemary,” Beth said, crushing it between her fingers and holding it up to her nose. “My father died a week ago. It was my fault that he died.”

Garner wiped his fingers on his apron. How long ago was it that he had hoped for this announcement? The wish belonged to another man, in another life. Now he could summon only a fatigued kind of grief, and the curious question of whether Rose was suffering the way he himself had suffered when his wife ran away.

Yes or no, Rose didn’t seek his consolation.

“Your fault, your problem,” Garner said. “You’ve got the magic. You figure it out.”

Beth brushed the broken herb off her hands and turned away from her grandfather. An emptiness welled in him at the sight of her back—a gaping hole that had once been filled with the fear of a terminal illness, with the hope of a family reunion before his death. Now, both fear and hope were gone. It was not the end he’d envisioned.

This must have been the way Mathilde Werner Wulff felt in the hours that she lay bleeding to death, slashed open by the claws of a mountain lion, thinking about her unreachable husband and the children they’d never have. The only difference was that Garner knew he’d never be rescued.

“I have two brothers,” Beth said. “Levi is named after you—his middle name is Garner. He hates the ranch too. You have that in common.”

A namesake. The first tangible evidence that the Rose who’d lived in his mind for a quarter of a century was not the same Rose who actually walked the earth. What did it mean?

“Danny is fifteen, gentle as a calf. Smart as a stock horse. He could memorize the Latin names and all the properties of all these plants within a day. Keep you talking about what you love for weeks.”

This idea stirred the ashes of Garner’s heart like the breath of God on embers. No one but Cat had ever taken such interest in his work—no, not even she, now that he saw through the lenses of hindsight. Dotti more than Cat, in fact. A smart boy. The son of Rose couldn’t be otherwise.

Beth had come around the table and now stood beside him without touching him, standing in the gap between their hearts without forcing him to look at her.

“Families go on, don’t they?” she said. “You pass along the good and the bad even if you don’t mean to. But mostly good, I think. You grow all these plants because you want to help people feel better, don’t you? You learn their secrets, you use that knowledge for good. I was going to be a vet, an animal healer. Maybe I got that from you.”

“You were going to be?”

“My father had that in him too—not the veterinary skills, but the goodness. I think you would have liked him if you hadn’t misjudged him so badly. All he ever wanted to do was help people get through life with their heads up. He gave them everything he had—kindness, trust, and this beautiful place to live, good food, the chance to do hard work so they can sleep on their satisfaction at night. I don’t really understand why you objected to it. Isn’t it the same thing that you’re trying to do with all this?” She indicated all the healthy greens and colorful blooms.

“It isn’t safe or smart to surround a woman and her children with maniacs.” The argument lacked his usual passion.

“These ‘maniacs’ have never caused a fraction of the trouble you and I have caused to the people we love most.”

“I’m not to blame for anything!” Garner objected.

Beth’s momentary silence caused him to feel childish and stupid.

“You offer a type of mercy to people who need it,” Beth said. “That’s all my parents and I ever wanted to do. And Danny too. Levi . . . well, I don’t know. Maybe he needs someone like you to help him figure that out. But now
we’re
the ones who need mercy,
I
need it. And I don’t have the resources. God gave me this . . .
gift
, but it can’t pay the bills. Would you please do it for my mom, if not for me? For the sake of everything that is good about that ranch—I’ll agree to anything. Name your terms.”

“I can’t,” he said, and he saw Beth’s confidence falter.

“Levi has already made plans to sell the property to a developer. These men who need the ranch most will lose their home, their livelihood. What I’m asking for isn’t entirely for us, do you see? It’s for them too.”

Garner cleared the knot out of his throat. “They won’t be the first to face that kind of hardship.”

“Mom will lose everything.”

“I’m sorry.” His heart filled with sincerity and his eyes brimmed with disappointment.
Any ending but this one, God. It would have been better if you’d let me die
.