The Welcome Home Garden Club (3 page)

“Someone has to mend the rift.”

She wondered what the housekeeper would say if she knew that Caitlyn had called her father from her hospital bed after she’d given birth to Danny to tell him he had a grandson and he’d hung up on her. “Or not.”

“Or not,” the woman echoed, and then without saying another word, she shut the door and clicked it locked.

Caitlyn heard the sound of her heartbeat in her ears, thudding hard and slow. A ripple of anger rolled over her. She didn’t know for sure whom she was mad at. The housekeeper, her father, or herself. She kneaded her temple with her fingers, felt a headache coming on.

She hurried down the porch steps, but stopped when she reached the sidewalk. Without even making a conscious decision, she did not head for the street, but instead pivoted and stepped around the side of the house.

The oversized barn, painted kelly green, squatted at the back of the sloping acre lot, surrounded by a thicket of aged oaks. Ignoring the apprehension that tightened her chest, she marched toward the barn.

What if he’d moved the carousel? Worse, what if he came home and caught her back there without his permission? He’d probably call Sheriff Hondo Crouch and have him arrest her for trespassing.

That thought was almost enough to send her scurrying back to the safety of her flower shop, but something kept tugging her forward. She reached the barn. A padlock dangled from the hasp. Was the combination still the same?

The lock lay cold against her palm. Caitlyn was startled to see that her fingers trembled as she dialed in the date of her birthday.

It was a great relief when the lock yielded, but gratitude swiftly gave way to cold feet. The barn was dark, the windows smeared with years of grime that let in only a small slant of morning light. The air smelled musty and sullen.

Quickly, she slipped over the threshold and pulled the door closed behind her. She hadn’t been inside this place for twenty years. In the silence, she could hear the whisper-soft ticking of her wristwatch. Somewhere in the neighborhood the sound of a hammer slamming into boards echoed.

The hulking shadows of carved animals sat stacked in rows. On the far side of the barn arced the curve of the wooden platform, dismantled into four sections. Steel poles, bound into bundles, were propped in the corner. The mechanized parts hung suspended from the ceiling or housed in bins. Oil stains dotted the cement floor. Her breathing was the only sound in the cramped space.

A trail of red splinters led her to the horse, his decapitated head dangling from a leather bridle. His sightless eyes staring into nothingness.

Caitlyn squatted beside the horse, tears bunching up in her throat. She reached out a hand to stroke the curling black mane threaded through with orange poppies. Paint flaked off on her fingers, sparkled like stars.

“Blaze,” she whimpered, and the past rushed up to slap her.

Even though she’d been only five years old when it happened, Caitlyn remembered her mother’s death with a clarity born from abject grief. Her mother, fair-haired Angelica, as lovely as her name—soft-spoken, kindhearted, full of laughter.

“It’s spring, Caity,” her mother had said, giggling, one Saturday morning. “You know what that means?”

Caitlyn had nodded, even though she didn’t.

“It’s time to start up the carousel.”

Back then, the carousel had been located in Sweetheart Park. It was a gift from the Grant family to the town of Twilight. Angelica had dressed Caitlyn in a frilly pink dress complete with a petticoat, pink butterfly barrettes in her hair, and pink patent leather Mary Janes. She had been so proud of those shoes that were so shiny that she could see her face reflected in them.

She and Mama had walked hand in hand to the park. The carousel was three rows deep, with fifty-three menagerie animals—including twenty jumping horses and another twenty standers, one gigantic lion perfect for siblings to ride together, six prancing deer, four ostriches, and two giraffes—and four golden chariots. The polished wood floor shone brightly in the sunlight.

The ride operator greeted them with a low bow as if they were royalty and ushered them into the carousel ahead of everyone else. “Right this way, Mrs. Blackthorne.”

A small crowd had gathered. Mostly other mothers with children eager to ride the carousel on opening day.

“You’re a Grant,” Mama had said to her. “You get first pick.”

Those words had made Caitlyn feel like a special princess. She recalled racing to the back and trying to climb aboard a red horse sculpted with a flying black mane.

Angelica had smiled and given her a boost up. “This was my favorite horse when I was a little girl,” she’d murmured. “I named him Blaze.”

Tulips near the pond were blooming. Yellow and pink. The air smelled fresh, happy with the scent of flowers and her mother’s perfume, attracting the lazy buzz of bees. Organ music played from the speakers mounted inside the stationary part of the carousel.

Row, row, row your boat.

Angelica wrapped one arm around Caitlyn’s waist, and placed her other hand around the smooth metal pole for balance as the other mothers and children climbed aboard.

Excitement gripped her when the rotating platform lurched forward and “Row Your Boat” turned into “Roll Out the Barrel.”

Round and round the carousel went. Up and down, Caitlyn rode Blaze. She laughed and laughed as the breeze rushed over her skin, tousled her hair.

What magic!

The carousel whirled, picking up speed, going faster and faster. The tight grip her mother had around her waist loosened. Caitlyn started to get scared. She closed her eyes and clung to Blaze’s mane. “Mama?”

Her mother made a small, strangled cry.

Caitlyn’s eyes flew open and she looked over to see that her mother’s face was the color of paste and her eyes had rolled back. Angelica clutched her head with one hand and in the next instant plunged face forward onto the rotating platform.

“Mama!” she screamed.

“Roll Out the Barrel” kept playing merrily. Children kept laughing. Horses kept jumping.

Caitlyn tried to climb down to get to Mama, but her pretty little pink patent leather Mary Jane got hung in the stirrup. She flipped upside down, her petticoat in her face, her hair fanning out over Mama’s body, her ankle twisting in the stirrup, her arms flailing.

Blindly, Blaze continued to prance, yanking Caitlyn up and down, up and down.

Suddenly, everything halted.

The carousel ground to a stop. Blaze froze in midstride. The music died with a strangle. Caitlyn’s foot came loose and she fell to the platform beside her mother.

She peered into her mother’s wide open eyes. They looked so empty. Just like Blaze’s did now. Caitlyn reached out to touch her mother’s cold face. “Mama?” she whispered.

People were shouting, running. Some ran away from her, some toward her. A man grabbed Caitlyn around the waist.

“Mama!” she’d screamed, and kicked as the man carried her off. “Mama, wake up, wake up!”

But her mother never woke up. An ambulance appeared and two men whisked her away on a stretcher. Later, her father came and took her home to stay with the housekeeper, and then he went away again.

Late in the middle of the night, her father came back. Caitlyn had waited for him on the stairs, but he didn’t see her. He moved past her, headed for the back of the house. She followed him, but he stared straight ahead, not seeing her. He went into the barn and found an axe. He slung it over his shoulder and marched away into the darkness.

Caitlyn wanted to call out to him, but something stopped her. She crept silently behind her father as he walked up Ruby Street, headed in the direction of the town square and Sweetheart Park beyond. Underneath the bulbs of the streetlamps, she could see his face twisted in a scary expression.

The light from the full moon glinted off the gold trim of the carousel. The animals looked ghostly, unreal. Grass dew dampened the hem of Caitlyn’s pajamas. Fear rippled over her. She twisted a lock of her hair around one index finger and twirled it, while simultaneously popping her thumb into her mouth. Mama had told her big girls didn’t suck their thumbs and she’d been trying so hard to be a big girl, but Mama wasn’t here and her father couldn’t even see her.

Was she invisible?

Then Daddy did something horrifying. He stalked up onto the carousel platform, swung the axe, and chopped off Blaze’s head.

Caitlyn screamed, shrill and deafening.

“What are you doing here?” Her father’s brusque voice yanked her back to the present.

Caitlyn blinked up at him. She was sitting cross-legged in his barn in the dark, with Blaze’s head cradled in her lap. She probably looked psychotic.

She put the horse head aside, got to her feet, dusted her palms together. She hadn’t been to his house in eight years, but she saw him every day as he crossed the courthouse lawn walking to and from work. He always carried a walking stick. Not because he needed it to lean on, but because he thought it made him look stately.

In the beginning, when she’d first left home, she’d try waving at him, but he’d stared straight ahead, never meeting her gaze, acting like he hadn’t seen her. Then one day, she’d brought Danny with her into his courtroom, hoping to force her father to acknowledge her, but then Danny had started to cry and he’d had the bailiff escort her out.

Her father had made her feel invisible, so she’d stopped waving, stopped speaking, stopped trying to get him to have a relationship with his grandson. He’d shut them out of his life. It had been his choice. His treatment of her had made it uncomfortable for Caitlyn to stay in her hometown. But Twilight was in her very DNA, and she couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. So she’d stayed and made the best of things, even if it meant feeling the icy silence every time she spotted him on the street or in a store.

“I thought you were in court,” she said.

“Greta called me. The trial hasn’t started yet.”

“Greta?”

“My housekeeper.”

“She’s not from Twilight.”

“No. She’s of Czech descent. Her people are from West.” This conversation was so like her relationship with her father. Cool, impersonal.

Caitlyn had learned a long time ago that the best way to handle the judge was to state your case. Of course that usually meant having to accept no for an answer. “I came for the carousel.”

They stared at each other, the air tense. Dust motes rode the slant of light between them, showing cobweb veils draped over the wooden animals. In the distance a dog barked.

“The carousel is mine. Mother left it to me.” She fisted her hands at her sides. “I’ll get a lawyer if I have to.” The threat sounded so hollow. Probably because it was. Even if she had the money to hire a lawyer, no one in town would dare go up against Judge Blackstone.

Judge.

Whether it was a noun or verb, that’s how she thought of him now. Not Father, certainly not Dad. Judge. Because that’s all he’d ever done. Judge her ruthlessly when she’d been unable to live up to his impossible standards.

The judge plowed a palm down the length of his face and suddenly looked weary. “That won’t be necessary. You can have it.”

All the fight went out of her then. She hadn’t expected it to be this easy. Why was it so easy? She smelled a trap. What was she missing? Somewhere, there had to be strings attached. “You’re going to give it to me? Just like that?”

“All you had to do was ask. No need for trespassing and breaking and entering.”

“I am your daughter.”

“It’s been a long time since you acted like it.” He sounded so sad that it startled her.

In that moment she could have said something, could have taken a step toward him, put her hand on his arm, changed the way of things. But she did not. She was exhausted of trying to rebuild the relationship he’d so ruthlessly torn down. Apparently, in his mind, he was the wounded party. She was tired of shouldering all the blame and leery of getting rejected again.

“I’ll have a delivery truck bring it by your house in the next week or two,” he said.

Caitlyn nodded stiffly. “Thank you.”

He kept standing there, studying her, the four-foot gap between them as wide as Texas. Then without another word, he turned and walked away from her, just as he’d done the night he’d murdered Blaze.

J
udge Richard Blackthorne sat at his desk staring out the window at the flower shop across the street. For eight years, he’d sat here and watched his only child come and go. Watched her, but been unable to span the ocean between them.

He’d been appalled when she’d run away from home and married Kevin Marsh. The man had been twelve years Caitlyn’s senior and a widower. A nothing. His people less than ordinary. The only thing he’d had was the flower shop, and that had been mortgaged to the hilt. But Marsh had taken his daughter in, given her bastard a name. Many times over the years, Kevin had leaned out the door of his place of business, leveled a glare at Richard’s office window, and shot him the bird.

Marsh hadn’t had any class, but he’d had gumption. Richard could have slapped him with an obscenity fine over the finger, but he hadn’t wanted to stir the pot. God only knew what Caitlyn had told the man.

She probably told him the truth. That you tried to force her to get rid of Danny.

Richard took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes. In retrospect, that hadn’t been one of his smarter moves. Because of it, he’d paid a high price. Lost his daughter and the chance to know his grandchild. But he wasn’t going to admit that he was wrong. She was the one who’d made the huge mistake. Getting pregnant at seventeen by that scummy Gideon Garza.

Ultimately, he blamed that cursed carousel.

He should have torched the damn thing a long time ago. Why had he kept it all these years, stuck in the barn in his backyard? Rusting in the dark like some dirty secret.

It was a good question and he didn’t have an easy answer. He’d tried chopping it up, decapitating Angelica’s favorite horse in a fit of rage. He would have kept chopping if Caitlyn hadn’t screamed and shattered through his anger and grief.