Grateful, Jeremiah needed no urging. He sank into that chair and opened up like box.
After dinner on Saturday night Lucy slipped out onto the back deck with her cell phone. She’d been dodging Meisha’s phone calls for two days—but it was time for her come-to-Jesus moment with her accountant. She just hoped her come-to-Jesus moment wasn’t going to cost her everything.
Taking a big breath for courage she turned and looked out over the decimated gardens that were overgrowing the backyard. It was surprising Sandra hadn’t made her way out there yet to set things right. It was probably next on her list.
1. Save Walter
2. Do a little gardening
Lucy was well aware her sarcasm was ugly. But at the moment it was all she had, thin armor to keep out the cold.
Without giving herself a chance to talk herself out of it, she hit Meisha’s number on her speed dial and prepared for the worst.
“This is Meisha. Sorry I missed you. Leave a message.”
“Oh thank God,” Lucy breathed, collapsing with relief against the porch railing.
“Hey, Meisha,” she said after the beep came and went. “I’m returning your calls. Sorry to be MIA, but I’m ready for the bad news. Call me when you get a chance.”
She closed her phone and watched a bird, maybe a hawk, she wasn’t sure, swoop along the ridgeline—riding the wind currents off the Sierras. Not a care in the world, that bird. Must be nice, she thought, totally aware that she was jealous of a creature with a pea-sized brain, but there you had it.
Envy didn’t concern itself with species.
Turning away she walked down the rickety steps to the garden of ruin. Up close it wasn’t nearly as bad as it seemed. At least, not to her non-gardener eyes. The strawberries were a lost cause, but the tomatoes just needed to be staked. Same for the peas. The lettuces were coming in and the feathery carrot tops were pushing their way up out of the dark soil. She had no idea if the other plants were weeds or vegetables.
But there was possibility here. A shot at redemption. These vegetables could be returned to glory; they just needed someone to care.
I could do it, she thought, though she had no idea how. No experience with…well, with anything but jewelry. How sad was that?
Since nearly the moment she could hold a pencil, Lucy had been drawing. It had been her only hobby, besides boys. But even boys couldn’t hold a candle to her love...her passion for art.
Her mother had given her a beading kit when she was eight, and it was like the heavens opened. When she was thirteen she saved all her babysitting money for a soldering gun and some real turquoise stones. While other girls were trying out for sports and cheerleading, she was buying silver wholesale and selling the cheerleaders her jewelry.
She ’d taken all her high school graduation money and gone to South America to study tribal jewelry design, and then to San Francisco to sell the pieces she’d made.
From there it seemed like it was all meant to be. Everything fell into place—the website, the orders from the boutiques in Los Angeles, finding the semiprecious stone importer. She’d started earning enough money that she got comfortable.
Oh, come on, she thought, laughing at herself. Comfortable? Hell, she’d gotten cocky.
It all just seemed...fated.
But never in that dreamy beginning did she take an accounting class. Or a business class. And in the end that was what ruined her. Ruined everything.
Well aware that she wasn’t the ideal candidate, but tired of feeling like a failure on all fronts, she looked at the garden of ruin and said, “It’s not like I have anything else to do.”
A hobby wasn’t a bad idea. Perhaps it was time to see if she could do anything in this life but make jewelry. Gardening might not be her first choice, but it was the option present.
She crouched to pull a weed.
And then another, but it was a parsnip, thin and ghostly. Far from ready for the light of day.
“Whoops.” She tucked it back into its home and tried again until she got it right.
Hours later the ringing of her cell phone dragged her out of a fitful doze on the couch where she’d fallen asleep with a heating pad against her lower back.
Who knew gardening was so damn hard?
The living room was shadowed, and she reached for her cell phone where it rested on the end table by her head, but the phone’s face was dark.
Which meant it wasn’t Meisha.
The home phone rang again and she lurched off the couch, groaning when her muscles protested the sudden movement. Holding her back, she walked through the dining area to get to the phone on the wall in the kitchen.
“Hello?”
The sound of a crowd and blaring music was the only answer. “Hello!”