Free The Garden of Happy Endings by Barbara O'Neal Page A

children. “I’m sure you always do.”
    E lsa gathered the children just after one. Most of the debris had been cleared, and people were bringing dishes into the kitchen, a potluck arranged by the San Roque knitting club. “You guys hungry?” she said to the boys. “I need to get into the kitchen and help.”
    “I’m starving!” Tiberius said. “I could eat a horse!”
    “I could eat a horse and a cow,” Mario said.
    Calvin rubbed his belly. “I could eat a horse, a cow, and a
pig
.”
    Elsa laughed. “C’mon, guys. Let’s go get washed up. Not sure there will be any horses, but if I know this group, there will be plenty of pie.”
    Tamsin slapped her dirty gloves together. She had a smear of dirt across her forehead, and a sweaty ring around her neck. “I’m just going to run home and grab the salad I made. You want me to get anything else?”
    “Doughnuts!” Calvin shouted, poking a fist in the air.
    She laughed and put a hand on his shoulder. “You got it. I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”
    Elsa herded the children into the boys’ room and ordered them to wash up. After they came out and showed her their hands, one by one, they all trooped into the kitchen, where the knitting club was setting out the feast. “Not yet, young man!” one scolded Calvin as he reached for a deviled egg. “Let the adults get theirs first.”
    “He’s done an adult’s share of work this morning,” Elsa said, stepping forward. “They all helped. The adults are on their way, too.”
    “I’m sorry,” the woman said. She had a pair of rectangular blue glasses perched on her nose, and she peered over them. “Do I know you?”
    Elsa stuck out her hand. “I’m Reverend Elsa Montgomery. I’m running the garden project for Father Jack.”
    “Oh.” She shook hands limply. “The ex-minister. Not Catholic, though, are you? Something metaphysical or the like, isn’t it? Unitarian?”
    “Go ahead, kids,” Elsa said, putting paper plates in their hands. “Not ex, actually. I’m on sabbatical, and it’s Unity.”
    “Huh.”
    Elsa moved on, filling her own plate with the bounty—the eggs, of course, but this was a heavily ethnic community, Italian, Mexican, and African American, so there was manicotti and lasagna, tamales and a pot of green chile, pulled pork and lemon cake. By the time she reached the end of the line, her plate was bending in the middle. She sat down with the boys.
    Tiberius popped his eyes. “You gonna eat all that?”
    “Yes, I am,” she said. “Look at you.”
    “Yeah, but I’m a boy. Girls ain’t s’pposed to eat like that.”
    “Girls who work hard get to eat just as much as boys who work hard.”
    “My mama’s always trying to lose weight,” Calvin said, and slurped the meaty center from a tamale. “She don’t eat no meat and no sugar. She say they bad for you.”
    “Not my mom,” Mario said. “She cooks everything so good you couldn’t help but eat.”
    Elsa let their conversation flow around her, realizing it had been a long while since she’d been in the company of children. It was one of the things she missed about her job, the kids.
    One of the many things.
    Firmly, she clamped down on that line of thinking. She would eventually have to sort out her thoughts in order to be ready to go back when the board allowed it. But not today.
    Not today.
    T amsin drove to her house, thinking she might change her shirt as well as pick up the salad. She was sticky and a little stinky after the morning’s work. Her blood fizzed with the unfolding summer—gardens, gardens, gardens! A chance to create beauty in a very ugly spot.
    As she came around the corner, she was humming under her breath, so it took a long, long minute for her to comprehend something was wrong.
    Very
wrong.
    At first, it just didn’t make sense. There were several cars parked in front of her house, two more in the driveway. Two of them were patrol cars with lights blinking on top.
    Cops.
    Tamsin parked