CHAPTER 14
When I got home that night, the house was quiet in a way that made me feel a deep loneliness, but the garden’s silence had a velvety softness that had me sitting on my small patio, breathing deeply and wondering if I could just stay there forever.
Some of the tomato plants had already yellowed at the bottom, and the blackberry bushes looked a bit peaked, but, overall, the plants took every opportunity to burrow in and make my yard their home. My garden had a chance.
I was briefly entertaining the fantasy of success at the farmers’ market, my salsa a big hit, when I heard the siren. Since Jesse’s death, the sound of wailing sirens picked and prodded at my imagination like a dentist poking at a bad tooth. I wasn’t there when Jesse was taken, his breathing ragged and labored, to the hospital where he would pass before I arrived. I imagined being there, holding his hand, telling him to stay with me—the Hollywood version of a death scene, but I didn’t know any other. The only thing I was fairly sure of was that I could have said something to him, something meaningful, something other than Remember to pick up the dry cleaning, which were the last words I said to my husband of twenty-one years. It could have been worse—he could have stormed out after an argument, or we could have not said anything to each other at all—but it also could have been better. So much better.
The siren blared. It was getting closer. Some instinct, the sixth sense of one who has experienced tragedy, sent me walking to the front of the house just as a cop car cruised slowly down our block past the neighbors and, as my stomach sank to my knees, stopped directly in front of my driveway.
The siren cut off abruptly. Officer Leprechaun exited the vehicle with a nod to me and opened the back door. I recognized the boots that hit the pavement, the tattered jeans, the holey concert T-shirt.
Trey.
“What happened?” I didn’t know whom I was asking, but Trey didn’t answer, and focused his attention on the ground.
“I want to know what’s going on,” I said to Officer Leprechaun, but I moved toward Trey, protectively. “Was that siren really necessary?”
“I wanted to impress upon Trey the seriousness of his actions,” he said, and I wanted to extinguish the twinkle in his eyes with the hose I used for my garden.
“And those actions were . . . ?”
Officer Leprechaun glanced at Trey. “Shoplifting.”
“What?” It was my turn to bore a hole into Trey’s skull with my eyes. “Is this true, Trey?”
“Not guilty,” Trey said, but he wouldn’t look at me and instead stared at the house.
“The owner of Pizza City said he wouldn’t press charges if I spoke to you,” Officer Leprechaun said, with a note of something meaningful in his voice. What was it? Apology? Pity? Embarrassment?
Anger took over. I grabbed Trey’s chin and forced him to look at me. “What is he talking about? You stole some pizza?”
Trey didn’t respond. I thought about when he was a toddler and stuck a small rubber ball in his mouth. He had clenched his lips together and wouldn’t give it up until I’d pinched his nose and he had to open up to gasp for air. The ball had bounced on the floor in front of him and then into the toilet. The look on his face—horror, anger, astonishment—had surprised me. There was no fear. But now, now I saw the swirling mix of emotions in his deep brown eyes, and fear, well, that was front and center.
“What happened?” I asked again, but this time I tried to imply comfort with the words.
“I took the ketchup and mustard dispensers,” he said, voice monotone. “Someone saw me and called the cops.”
“That would be me,” Officer Leprechaun said. “I happened to be down the block at the coffee shop.”
Daisy’s Coffee Express was notoriously popular for its donuts. I swallowed my inappropriate laugh.
“I was going to bring them back,” Trey said. “I wanted to use them for an art installation.”
“We have ketchup and mustard in the fridge. Why would you need to take them from a restaurant?” I tugged on Trey’s sleeve, motioning toward the house. “Thank you, Officer. I can handle this now.”
“I’m sure you could,” the officer said, “but I told Richie down at Pizza City that I would have a talk with you, and I intend to keep that promise. Richie could have pressed charges, and that would have made a lot more work for me and a lot more stress for you, financial and otherwise.”
I noticed Mr. Eckhardt standing on his front steps, a look of disapproval directed toward us. I gave it right back, arching an eyebrow. I wondered what Officer Leprechaun would think of the clothes buried in the backyard.
“Let’s go inside,” I said tersely.
They followed me into the kitchen, none of us uttering a word. I put a kettle on and directed Trey to sit at one end of the kitchen table and Officer Leprechaun on the other side. I took the middle.
“You’re not a child,” the officer said to Trey. “Can you explain why you’d take something like that? Was it a prank?”
“Technically, I am a child in the eyes of the law,” Trey said under his breath.
I warned him with a kick under the table. “Then I’m going to treat you like one,” I said. “You’re grounded. You will also write a note of apology to Richie at Pizza City.”
Trey shrugged. “I did a stupid thing. People do that, you know.”
“Mistakes are different from conscious decisions to break the law.” Even Officer Leprechaun had to know that one wasn’t going to hit its mark. Sure enough, Trey snorted.
“Except for school, you are not to go out this week,” I said. “You’ll help me around the house and in the garden.”
“How’s that coming along?” said the officer, likely already bored by the domesticity of punishing a teen.
“It’s ridiculous,” Trey said. “She doesn’t know what she’s doing.”
The officer straightened in his chair. “If I still had a mother, I’d show her some respect.”
The teakettle went off, and Trey almost did as well. His jaw clenched, and tension rolled off him and gave the room a feeling of oppression.
“Go upstairs,” I said. “We’ll talk more later.”
The chair scraped against the floor with the force of him rising. Without sparing either of us a glance, Trey bolted from the room. I listened to him bound up the stairs. When he slammed the door, I felt the sound in my teeth.
“Teenagers,” I said, hoping that would shut down the conversation.
Officer Leprechaun studied me for a moment. “That doesn’t explain much.”
“Don’t you remember being that age?”
“I didn’t go around stealing condiments.” He softened his comment with a smile. “Richie wasn’t going to press charges for something so trivial, but he’s known Trey awhile. He’s worried.”
I am, too, I wanted to say, but I didn’t know this man very well, and our family’s grief was private. It was ours. “I know you hear this from every mother, but my son is a good kid.”
“I didn’t think otherwise, but even good kids act out when life isn’t going their way.” He took a sip of tea, winced at the heat, and then blew over the top of the mug. He wasn’t going anywhere. He was also waiting for me to say something.
“My husband died two years ago,” I blurted. “I thought we were doing okay, but maybe we’re not.”
I waited for the usual questions: How did he die? How old was he? Are you doing okay? But Officer Leprechaun simply nodded. I waited another moment, but he didn’t respond, didn’t encourage. He was probably really good in interrogations. His patience made me want to explain, to tell him that what he was seeing wasn’t really us, but a temporary us, brought on by stress and missing the person who made the family work. But then I thought death was permanent, so I couldn’t say that honestly. The stress would always be there. The missing, too.
“Can I take a look at how the garden is doing?” he said after the interminable silence.
“What?”
“I’d like to see what you’ve done out there since the village threatened to shut you down.” The twinkle was back in his eye, and this time I didn’t want to put out that light.
When we walked onto the patio, I tried to see the garden through the eyes of someone who hadn’t seen it struggle to survive every day. It had a haphazard look, like thirty gardeners had come in and done their own thing. The overall effect was messy and disorganized, but I could see some improvement, some growth.
“It’s getting there,” he said kindly. “Don’t know if those tomatoes will make it.”
“They will,” I said.
“Confidence is a good fertilizer.”
“Are you trying to say I’m full of shit?”
He laughed. “Nothing of the kind.”
We walked around, my pride growing as I realized how hard the plants were working to take root. They wanted to flourish. They wanted to live. “It’s a lot of work, but I like it.”
“My grandmother had a kitchen garden, but not as big as this one. Still, she always had a lot of produce left over to share with the neighbors. What do you intend to do with all your bounty come August?”
Suddenly shy, my deal with Mykia seemed like a pipe dream. I didn’t want to tell him about my salsa enterprise, but then I didn’t want to seem unfocused either. I cleared my throat. “I’m going to make salsa and sell it at the farmers’ market. Hopefully. I just need to learn how to can without giving someone botulism.”
He knelt down, knees and cop gear groaning, and studied the tomato plants up close. “Gonna still be a while until these are ready,” he said, pointing to the now plump green tomatoes.
“So I have time to learn,” I said.
He peered up at me, squinting into the sun. “What are you doing on Sunday?”
“What?” I choked on the word.
He stood. “I have the day off. My grandma taught me how to can. It’s easy, and I could teach you in an afternoon.”
It was like a wintry wind swept through the backyard. My hands went cold, and my heart . . . was he asking me out? I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about dating. Actually going through with it was another matter entirely. The feelings it brought up—guilt, worry, guilt, sadness, guilt, fear, guilt, and a heart-stopping, gut-clenching excitement—were uncomfortably strong. It felt like cheating. It felt undeniably wrong.
“Paige?”
But this man, this ruddy-faced bear of a man, seemed sweet. Maybe it wasn’t a date? Maybe he pitied me and wanted to help out the poor widow?
“Don’t overthink this.” He smiled, the mind reader.
I looked away. “I’m just mentally checking my schedule. I think it’ll work.”
“Good. Just keep in mind . . . the process is messy.”
“Noted.” The thought of another man in my kitchen made my stomach lurch.
He walked me back to the patio. “I don’t have any children myself,” he said before leaving. “But I’ve seen plenty of teenage boys in my time on the force. He’s a good kid, but sometimes circumstances make sure that doesn’t matter. I know you’ll keep an eye on him.”
“Always,” I said as Officer Leprechaun got back into his cop car. He made a U-turn, flicking the siren on momentarily as a goodbye. Breathing deeply to quell the little earthquakes erupting inside me, I went in to see to my son.
Later that night, I shut off all the lights in the house, checked the locks, and watched the green lights blip on the fire alarms. Safety was never guaranteed, but there were a few things I could control. Then I checked on Trey. His door was shut, but a thin strip of light underneath it told me he was still up.
“Yeah?” he said when I knocked.
“Can I come in?”
“No.”
Just as I had when he was younger, I weighed the cost and benefit of accepting his rejection or pushing past it. My anger at his immaturity paled in comparison to my worry for his state of mind. Do I leave him to his own thoughts or try to add my own to his musings? Grief made regular, run-of-the-mill worry completely irrational. The mind skipped to worst-case scenarios because of the realization that the worst could actually happen. Was Trey depressed? Would he harm himself? I flung open the door.
He sat on his beanbag chair, his copy of The Lord of the Rings open and facedown on his lap. Some kids used food for comfort, or drugs—Trey used Tolkien. Tears streamed down his face.
“Oh, honey . . .”
“I told you to go away! Don’t you respect anything?”
“I’m sorry. I—” As with so much lately, I had no idea what to do.
“You’re right. I shouldn’t have taken those things,” he said, voice listless, as his attention turned to the window. “And I’ll stay in all week. I’ll help you around the house, but I will not help you with that garden. It’s just as stupid as me stealing the ketchup bottle from Richie. Those plants are going to die, and we’ll be left with a big mess. It just doesn’t make any sense. I’m admitting I did a stupid thing. Can you?”