The Sinners' Garden

  “I can’t believe they haven’t fired me yet,” Heather said. “I never should have gone to the flea market today. Maybe I just didn’t get enough sleep.”

  “When your daddy was on the force, police cars got dinged up all the time,” Mom said. “You are getting yourself all worked up over nothing.”

  “I just backed into a dumpster between Mack’s and the pharmacy,” Heather said. “The car is brand new.”

  “That’s why they call them accidents,” Mom said.

  “It’s my fourth accident in the last three years alone,” Heather said, thinking about two accidents ago. It was the middle of winter and hers was the only car to slide off of West Jefferson and into a ditch. Hundreds of passersby seemed to get their kicks out of the bumbling cop who had to stand there and watch a tow truck pull her cruiser out of four feet of water. She could still hear them laughing.

  “You’re making a big deal out of nothing,” Mom said. “Besides, I have known Chief Reynolds since before you were born. I’d give him an earful.”

  Heather didn’t want to keep her job because of her mother’s and dead father’s relationship with the chief of police. In fact, she wasn’t sure she wanted to keep it at all, but opportunities for employment weren’t exactly falling off trees in Benning.

  “You want to go to church with me tomorrow?” Heather asked.

  Mom found her Wheel of Fortune channel, but it seemed the volume wasn’t quite cooperating. She was tapping at buttons and shaking the remote back and forth like she was trying to knock some good sense into it.

  “Oh, you just go and say a prayer for me,” Mom said.

  Heather could’ve mouthed the response with her. Mom hadn’t been to church in ten years, but Heather still asked her each Saturday night.

  “Let’s go for a walk tomorrow, then,” Heather said. “I want to talk to you about something.”

  A commercial for life insurance helped Heather get her mother’s attention. It was insurance just like the kind on the television, along with social security and a small percentage of her father’s pension, that allowed Mom to sit in the family room and watch soap operas and game shows for fifteen hours a day.

  Mom raised the remote and hit the mute button. It worked on the first try. “I could use a good walk. We’ll go right after Wheel is over tomorrow.”

  “Great,” Heather said, more than a little surprised Mom was up for leaving the house, not to mention missing the rerun of Jeopardy that was surely to follow.

  “What do you want to talk about?”

  Heather paused for a few seconds. It had never been a popular subject, the thing that had made them who they were.

  “About what happened to Daddy and Mr. Hart. But mostly about Daddy.”

  Mom laughed humorlessly, her good mood fleeing. “Maybe we should talk about why you broke up with Mr. Hart’s boy. You and Kevin would have made a beautiful couple and I wouldn’t have to be up every night worrying about you. You should have been a teacher, like you wanted to be.”

  Heather shook her head. If she had a dollar for every time Mom reminded her of her failed relationship with Kevin Hart or how she should have been a teacher, she’d be a rich woman. Or at least have enough money to go back to school and finish getting her teacher’s certificate.

  “Kevin broke up with me, Mom. You know that. And that was a long time ago.”

  “Follow your gut.”

  “What do you mean?” Heather asked.

  Mom pointed at the TV, which was still on mute. She had solved the puzzle a good thirty seconds before Vanna tapped on the T that completed both the phrase and the word GUT.

  “Did Daddy ever tell you about any of the religious things he and Mr. Hart talked about?” Heather asked.

  “Not really,” Mom said. “Hart was quite the Bible thumper, though. He’d been after your daddy to get to church for years. Why you asking?”

  Heather wasn’t planning on telling her mother about the sign-of-the-cross prowler. She also had no intention of sharing how the intruder had somehow pulled a question out from the very back of her mind . . . the very question she’d been painfully asking herself for years.

  Still, she needed to ask her mother.

  “Mom,” she said, already wanting—needing—the answer to be yes. She paused.

  “What is it, Heather?”

  “Do you think Daddy is in heaven?”

  “Oh, there you go again,” Mom said. “Drumming up the past. I’m not going to talk about this right now.”

  “Okay,” Heather said, thinking about the only real conversation she and her mother ever shared about her father’s death.

  Heather was a sophomore in high school and had just walked in the door from an afternoon pool party with the other Benning High JV cheerleaders. Her mom was sitting on the couch, watching the television, but the TV wasn’t even on. Heather remembered knowing something was wrong and then sitting next to her mother on the couch without saying a word. Mom just stared at the TV without blinking, and when Heather put her hand on her mother’s shoulder, Mom said it.

  “A bad thing has happened to your daddy . . . a really bad thing . . .”

  Mom had never quite made a comeback after that terrible day, and Heather wasn’t sure if she had either. But knowing if her father was in a good place had become a question she needed to answer, and not having anyone to talk to about it bothered her.

  Heather stood, disappointed that she didn’t have the gumption to press the matter further with her mother. Once and for all. But she also didn’t have time to push it now; she had to get back to work.

  “See ya, Mom,” she called, heading out the door to her car. The cruiser, the freshly dented cruiser, had been parked in Mom’s driveway for close to a half hour and her night shift was far from over.

  He was a little disappointed that the Benning Township Recreation Center didn’t have an alarm on its back door. But then again, he wasn’t all that surprised. If they couldn’t afford decent baseball equipment for the kids, there wasn’t much sense in paying to protect it from would-be thieves or other types of crazies who may show up in the middle of the night.

  He laughed out loud and adjusted the black ski mask he was wearing. It was way too hot to have the stupid thing on, but something about wearing it made him feel better.

  He glanced up at the window above him. It had only taken him a few minutes to shimmy through it, and once he was inside, he had quickly determined that the best way for him to bring the new equipment in was through the back door. The rec center was right in the middle of the park, so earlier in the day he had dumped all the equipment over in the woods and neatly covered it with branches and a camouflage tarp, knowing it would take him a few trips to get it all inside when he came back tonight.

  He opened the back door and gazed around the dark, heavily wooded park. Not a soul in sight. This was going to be too easy.

  Or is it?

  He could see headlights winding through the trees. He stepped around the corner of the building and waited as the car came toward him.

  He smiled. It was a police car.

  Maybe there’s an alarm . . . Maybe there’s a chance . . .

  The cruiser drove right by and made its way toward the other end of the park.

  Come back, he thought. Come back.

  EIGHT

  Judi lowered the leg rest on the old La-Z-Boy and glanced at the grandfather clock. She’d been up since four a.m. and if she went back upstairs, she wouldn’t be able to sleep. She put one foot up on the chair and wrapped her arms around her leg. Then she rested her chin on top of her knee before closing her eyes.

  Are things ever going to get better?

  She slowly began to rock back and forth, wondering if Rip’s idea of taking Andy for the rest of the summer was something she should consider. If anyone could ever bring Andy out of his funk, it would be Rip, and maybe it would be easier without her around.

  Judi stood and walked to the window, looking out into the darknes
s of the front yard. All she could see was her own reflection in the glass, and she noticed the shine in her eyes. She had been crying and didn’t even know it. She stepped back from the window, wiped at her eyes with the sleeves of her pajamas, and then she thought she heard someone talking.

  She turned around and listened, waiting to hear it again.

  She wandered into the kitchen and glanced at the small radio on the counter. That wasn’t it.

  And then she heard her name, but this time the voice sounded a little more familiar.

  It was Andrew.

  She took a step into the family room and faced the stairs, cocking her head toward the ceiling.

  “Andy?” she said.

  “Come here, Judith Ann.”

  Judith Ann?

  He sounded more like her father than her son, and Judi walked quickly to the stairs and made her way up to Andy’s bedroom door. It was open and he was sitting up in his bed with his eyes closed and his iPod in his hand. Only one of his earbuds was in and his head was perfectly still, his chin tilted up toward the ceiling. He was smiling.

  For a moment, she just stared. How long had it been since she’d seen her son that open? That happy and content? Forever, it seemed.

  “Judith Ann,” Andy repeated, his eyes still closed.

  “Why are you calling me that?” Judi asked.

  Andy opened his eyes and looked right at her. It seemed like he was in a trance when his smile faded.

  “I will forgive their wickedness and remember their sins no more.”

  “What?” Judi said, taking a little step toward him. A tiny finger of hope poked at her insides. He was talking to her and it was without hatred or sarcasm. But what was he saying?

  Andy squinted at her and shook his head like he had just woken up. The familiar look of hatred returned to his face. “What do you want?”

  Judi took a step back as if he had slapped her. “What did you just say to me?”

  Andy lay down and pulled the covers over his head. “Nothing! Go away!”

  She just stared at him, not really caring that he wanted her to leave. Had he been dreaming?

  “Fine,” she said, walking over and turning off the lamp. “I’ve just never heard you call me Judith Ann before. And it was good to see you smile.”

  “I have no idea what you are talking about.”

  “Fine. Pretend nothing happened. That’s okay.”

  He ignored her.

  She stepped back into the hallway. “In fact, I truthfully can’t remember the last time anybody called me Judith Ann.”

  Andy pulled the covers off his face and stared at the ceiling. “Truthfully? Maybe someday we will sit down and really talk about what truthfully means.”

  “Let’s do it right now,” Judi said, going back into his room and walking to the edge of the bed. She didn’t like his tone, but the fact that he was talking to her at all gave her hope.

  Andy sat up in the middle of the bed, as if to let her know sitting on it with him would be a bad idea. “Seriously? We’re really going to do this at four in the morning?”

  “Hey, you were the one who called me up here,” she said.

  Andy sighed and ran his hand through his long hair. He stared up at her. “Truthfully, Mom. You and the truth don’t even belong in the same room together.”

  Judi held her hands up in disbelief. “What are you talking about? I’ve never lied to you about anything, Andrew. Why would you say that?”

  Andy leaned toward her and pulled his hair back, exposing the scar on his face and neck. “Even about this?”

  Judi took a step back. It was almost as if he had shoved her. “What do you mean?”

  “I know why I look like this,” he said. “I know.”

  Andy didn’t know. They had all agreed it was in his best interest to never talk about that night. When he was little, he didn’t seem to care. But now, it was as if he really did know how he’d been burned. She paused and thought about it again. It was impossible . . . there was no way Andy could know how it happened. Did he blame her? For the burn? That she didn’t protect him on that terrible night?

  “Your accident was an accident,” she said softly, miserably. She stared at him for a long moment. “Is this why . . . Is this why you act like you hate me?”

  He didn’t say anything. A few more seconds passed and Judi wasn’t sure if she had really even asked him. But still, she wanted the answer. She wanted to hear why he’d changed. Hear it from him.

  There is no good reason for hating someone, she thought.

  There had been no progression, no warm-up event, nothing that had festered and grown until it popped. Just a simple flick of some cruel and mysterious switch that flipped on when he was eight.

  And that was it.

  Andy had gone from her lively little boy, her best friend, her little pal . . . to who he’d been for six years. Who he was now.

  But he couldn’t know what happened. They’d all promised. Sworn it.

  “Tell me,” she said. “I love you and deserve to know what I did that was so bad. Things were so good between us, and then one day, just out of the blue, they weren’t anymore.”

  “You really want to know?” Andy said.

  “Yes.”

  “This,” he said, pulling the hair off the side of his face again.

  She swallowed hard, looking at the scar. “What about it?”

  “It’s your fault.”

  “Why would you say that?”

  Andy looked at the ceiling and then his eyes settled back on her. She reached out and gripped the doorjamb as the same thought rolled over and over again in her mind.

  He does know. I failed to protect him.

  His hatred reminded her of Todd’s. And then more thoughts ran through her mind, the more familiar ones. How she failed at her marriage. How she had failed herself. How she had failed at everything.

  Andy was right.

  And then she said it. Her mouth moving without her thinking about it.

  “You’re right, Andy. It was my fault.”

  “Nobody said being a Christian was easy,” Pastor Edward Welsh said from behind the old desk in his office at St. Paul’s Church. He scratched at his graying beard with big hands that belonged to someone who should have swung a hammer for a living. Welsh turned his head slightly, exposing some of the ponytail that ended beneath his shoulders. “In fact, being a Christian can sometimes be a challenge.”

  “Amen,” Rip said, sitting in one of the two chairs across from the minister.

  Rip did his best to spend a few minutes with Welsh every Sunday morning before service. Though he couldn’t exactly put his finger on the cause, the men shared an invisible bond, and Rip appreciated Welsh’s guidance in keeping him on track in his new walk as a Christian.

  “And with it comes a great deal of responsibility,” Welsh added, pushing his thick, black-rimmed glasses back up the bridge of his porous red nose, the kind of nose that was normally found on heavy drinkers. “Why does it bother you that Andy thinks you are preaching to him?”

  “I think what he really means is that I lecture him.”

  “That’s what I figured,” Welsh said in a tired voice. He had just celebrated his seventieth birthday but looked closer to eighty. But Rip suspected that Welsh was one of those guys who’d always looked old. Welsh wasn’t afraid to poke fun at himself about it either. Little jokes about having worked on the ark or being a waiter at the Last Supper were among his favorites.

  “That’s what you figured?” Rip repeated, frowning. “I keep telling myself I want my actions to show my faith, not my mouth. But it’s tough.”

  “Sometimes we rush to judge others, or tell them how to lead their lives, because they sin differently than we do,” Welsh said and smiled.

  Rip smiled back. “I like that.”

  Welsh leaned forward and brought his hands to the sides of his face, covering road maps of broken blood vessels that littered his cheeks. “What do you think Andy thinks a
bout you, Rip?”

  “We are best friends,” Rip said. “At least we used to be.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question,” Welsh said.

  Rip thought about whether or not he really wanted to answer, but if there was anybody on the planet he felt safe with, it was Welsh.

  “I really don’t know,” Rip said. “Other than knowing I sold drugs most of my life, I really don’t know what he thinks of me. I just know he doesn’t care for my lectures.”

  Welsh patted his palms against the desk. “Nobody likes to be lectured, Rip. And just about everybody in town is aware of the fact that you are a former drug dealer and that you were in prison.”

  “I guess that’s probably true,” Rip said.

  “You still sell dope?”

  “Of course not,” Rip said, a little taken aback.

  “Then who cares that other people know what you used to do?” Welsh said. “We all screw up. All of us. And I really believe you want to be a good Christian. But at the risk of lecturing you, stay focused on doing the right things and you won’t have to lecture others. Focus on taking out the old parts of you and putting in the new. All of those bad things you used to do died with Christ, Rip. Let your behavior inspire, because that is where we can make the biggest impact as Christians.”

  “It’s hard, letting my past go,” Rip said. “I don’t know what I have to do to wipe that slate clean, but I just want people to know that I’m not that person anymore.”

  “God knows it and you know it,” Welsh said. “Don’t worry what others think—even Andy—and just keep doing your thing.”

  “My thing?”

  Welsh smiled. “That motorcycle you just gave to Andy isn’t safe.”

  “Yeah, it is,” Rip said, unsure of where the minister was heading with the sudden topic change.

  Welsh stood and pounded his fist on the table. “No, it isn’t!”

  “Yeah, it is,” Rip repeated with a frown, wondering why Welsh was acting so out of character. “I worked on it myself. I know the bike is all right.”

  “So then it doesn’t matter what I think about the bike?”