The First Gardener (40 page)

After she had told Gray the story about who the girls’ father was, they knew they needed to do something. She had asked Grace to meet with them before leaving the mansion. Even though Gray had told her last night that he was no longer going to run.

“Did you want to talk to me?”

The tall woman hesitated at the entrance to the family room. Her gaze strayed to three large boxes beside the couch where Mackenzie sat.

“Come in,” Mackenzie said as warmly as she could to the stranger in her doorway.

“Thank you.” The woman’s words were also warm, though her eyes were wary. She stepped into the family room, the toes of her flats completely rubbed free of their brown faux leather.

“Please sit.” Mackenzie motioned to the other sofa. Grace sat down, and Mackenzie moved to sit beside her. Gray remained across from them. “Grace, thank you for spending the evening with us.”

A gentle smile swept over the woman’s thin face. She pushed away a strand of hair that had fallen by her left eye. “Your home is beautiful. We appreciate it so much.”

Mackenzie smiled. “I loved every minute of it.” She paused and gestured toward the boxes. “I had a little girl. She was so much like Suzy. And, well . . . she passed away last year. And Gray and I had never gotten rid of her clothes. Would you be offended if I gave them to Suzy?”

Compassion and a shared sorrow were immediately evident in Grace’s green eyes. “Oh my, that’s a lot of boxes.”

“Yeah, one is nothing but dress-up clothes. Maddie loved to be a princess.”

“My Suzy is certain she is Cinderella.” Grace’s countenance shifted. “It’s really sweet of you to offer, Mrs. . . . um, First Lady.”

“Call me Mackenzie.”

Grace reached down and pushed at the velvet cushion beneath her as if resituating herself. “Well, the thing is, we just don’t have nowhere to keep all that stuff.”

Gray finally spoke. “We’ve thought about that.”

“Yes. My mother’s friend Berlyn has a guest apartment that isn’t being used right now. It’s not huge or anything, but it would be a good place for you and the girls to get back on your feet. Her husband died a few years back, and if you have your license, she never got rid of his car, so you could use that. And we could help you find a job.”

The woman stood up quickly. Gray and Mackenzie stood too.

“No, no, this is too much. I mean, it’s really nice, but if you knew what my husband had done, you’d never—”

Gray and Mackenzie exchanged glances. “Grace, we do know,” Gray said quietly. “In fact, we know all too well what your husband did. But we also know that you and your babies had nothing to do with it.”

Mackenzie placed a hand on Grace’s shoulder. “We want to help you and your girls, Grace. They’re so smart. And so polite. And so sweet. You did that. Your influence, your parenting created these inquisitive, charming children. They came from you. And we just want to help you catch a break. Will you let us do that?”

Grace shifted from foot to foot. “I can’t do it for free. I’ll have to pay you something.”

Mackenzie nodded. “Berlyn already has some ideas for places you can get a job. Some of them are even within walking distance of her house. And the schools are good. We can get the children enrolled immediately.”

Tears surfaced in Grace’s eyes as the impact of the offer settled over her. “What can I say?”

Mackenzie wrapped her arms around her. “Nothing. Your babies did something for me last night that no one has been able to do. Please just accept this as a gift in return for the gift you gave me.”

Over the next hour, they piled Grace and the girls into Berlyn’s car and finally got all of them out of the house. Eugenia was the last to go, but that was because poor Dimples had gashed her head when she misjudged how far the front door was open. When the cut was bandaged and the circus finally left town, Mackenzie and Gray stood at the door and let out simultaneous sighs.

Mackenzie turned and started up the stairs. “We need to talk” was all she said.

Gray followed her to their family room. “What is it?” She heard the concern in his voice.

She sat on the sofa and tucked her legs underneath her. “I don’t want you to drop out of the race.”

The tension on his face eased. He sat beside her on the sofa. “Mack, I know you feel better, but there is still so much healing for us to do. We talked through all that last night. You are in no condition to rush anything here. We have to deal with everything that has happened to us. It’s been so much.”

She nodded slowly. “I agree. We need all of that. But if there is anything inside you that wants to run, I want to do this with you.”

He shook his head. “We’re too broken to be running a state.”

“Look, if what’s real doesn’t have the opportunity to reside in this house, then how can it reside in any other house in our state? We’re not perfect, and we shouldn’t act like we are.”

He dropped his jaw in mock astonishment. “What? You’re not perfect? I thought you were.”

She slapped at him. “I’m serious. We’ve been through a lot. We’re not superhuman, and people need to see that. They need to know it’s okay to hurt and to get help.”

“Well, we can’t work though this and be out on a campaign trail.”

She shook her head. “You can’t win an election without campaigning.”

“No, Mack. I’m not doing it. When we found out you were pregnant, we pushed all of that Maddie pain down and didn’t deal with it, and look where it got us. This is fresh and new, and we’re not doing that again.”

“But—”

He held up a finger. He bit his bottom lip and turned his head slightly. She could tell he was thinking.

“What?”

He shook his head as if it were a crazy thought. “How about this? I’ll only run under one condition—no campaign trail. At least not the way we’ve ever done it before.”

“Then how do you propose to campaign?”

“You want us to be transparent and honest?”

She hesitated. “Yes.”

“Do you really? Do you really want to offer this state something it’s never seen?”

She really did. This time her voice was strong and sure. “Yes. I do. With you.”

“Then we’ll do one interview that can be aired on all the stations in the state. And we’ll do one commercial that can do the same. And we will simply be honest about everything. About this last year. About our pain. About our continued battle for our family. About my decisions for balancing the budget and why I made them and about the tragedy that was a part of it. That’s it. No bus. No road trips. No twenty-four-hour days and endless pummeling to our bodies or our minds. And if we win, we win. If we lose, we lose.”

She laid a hand on his knee. “Are you going to tell them what we’ve done for Grace and her kids?”

He didn’t hesitate. “No, there’s no need. People will think we’ve done it for publicity. And they’ve been through enough.”

“What if someone finds out?”

“I don’t care,” he said. “For the first time in my life, I truly don’t care what anyone thinks. I have lost my daughter. I almost lost my wife. They can have this house, they can have this title, or they can have a man who isn’t perfect but is committed to fighting for them. We’re going to share our stuff. All of it.”

She could tell by the look on his face that he was serious. “It’s not pretty stuff, is it?”

He threw an arm around her and pulled her close. “No,” he said, “but it’s ours.”

“Aren’t we lucky,” she said as she buried her head in the middle of his chest. He softly kissed the top of her head. And there was no place on earth she felt safer.

They canceled Gray’s scheduled press conference and set up the interview for the following Friday. Gray wanted to start meeting with a counselor before they moved forward. The state could wait or move on. Either was fine with him.

And on Monday morning, Joseph brought a beautiful bouquet of white tulips up to Mackenzie, along with a scrawled note. It was clear it was from Jeremiah.

Miz Mackenzie—ain’t gon’ make you go and search for what these here flowers mean. They be tulips, you good and well know. Be the flower of spring. And they mean “perfect love.” That be the only thing could do what been done ’round here. They mean “forgiveness” too, ’cause without it, can’t no healin’ ever really happen.

She ran her fingers across a silky white petal, grateful for both the flower and the man who sent it.

Chapter 55

Eugenia straightened her clunky gold necklace as she got out of the car. She’d told Mackenzie she would pick her up and take her to the rescue mission tonight, but first she had something to do. She walked straight out to the back gardens and found Jeremiah sitting under a tree, drinking bottled water.

She tossed a bag at him. “There. I had to go everywhere but Timbuktu to find those.”

His long fingers reached inside the bag and pulled out a box of navy-blue handkerchiefs. A big white smile stretched across his freckled brown face. “Well, I’ll be. You gone and found me some handkerchiefs I can sweat on.”

She huffed. “It’s ridiculous. I’ve never seen a man so adamant about what kind of handkerchiefs he needs. You’re worse than a woman.”

He pushed himself to his feet, then wiped dirt from his backside, holding on to the bag with his other hand. “Know why these be so special to me?”

She poked at a stiff blonde strand the breeze had rearranged. “I have no idea.”

“My Shirley bought me some right after we got married. Ain’t cared nothin’ ’bout ’nother color since.”

Eugenia had forgotten he had lost his spouse too. The loss was pretty fresh, like hers. She crinkled her brow. “You told me you used them because of the dirt.”

“That sure ’nough true. But ain’t why I first gone and got ’em.” He put a new handkerchief under his nose and inhaled long and deep. “Ah. Love me the smell a new stuff.”

She had no idea how often Jeremiah actually got new things. And seeing him with his nose against a fresh blue handkerchief, she suddenly felt a twinge of pain for how she had treated him. She looked at her gold watch and saw that she had to go.

“Well, enjoy,” she said, turning on her heel. “But you’d better get back to work because your Lenten roses look like . . . Well, I’m Southern and a lady, so I won’t say it, but it starts with a
c
and ends with a
p
.”

The snide comment seeped out of her as effortlessly as her hands could make a seven-layer chocolate cake. Sure, she felt a twinge of guilt over it—but only a twinge. And as she walked away, she heard him chuckle.

She didn’t let him see that she chuckled too.

Chapter 56

Mackenzie’s friends were waiting in the foyer of the mission after she came through the metal detector. It was the first time she had been back since she lost the baby. She had asked Eugenia to bring her.

“Mama, I’ve got to do the hard things or I’ll never do them again,” she’d said. Eugenia had agreed. So they were here—with some reinforcements. Eugenia had decided her friends needed to come too. She’d told them that they were getting old and narcissistic and needed to think of somebody else for a while. But she suspected they’d agreed to come because they were getting bored with Skip-Bo.