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

crookedly at the high curb and slammed out of the car, crying, “What happened? Is someone hurt?”
    No one paid her any attention. She hurried toward the front door and came face-to-face with a man in a black suit and that little squiggly thing going from his ear down into his coat. Black sunglasses masked his eyes. He carried a box of papers and files. Behind him came a man awkwardly carrying a computer monitor. Post-it notes were attached to the side, and she recognized that it was the computer from the family room.
    “What are you doing?” Tamsin cried. “Stop right now!” She lunged for the cord, trying to grab it. The man easily swung away from her. There were others behind them, and she heard the staticky sound of a conversation on the two-way radios. “What do you think you’re doing?”
    “Step aside, ma’am. Official police business.” He pushed by her.
    “Stop! These are my things!” She grabbed his arm. “Stop!”
    Again he yanked away as if she were a ghost. “Sheriff. A little help here.”
    A man in a brown uniform took her arm, not ungently. “I need you to step out of the way, ma’am,” he said in a rumbling voice. A broad-brimmed khaki hat shaded his face.
    Tamsin hauled her arm out of his grip, spying another man carrying more things. She ran toward him, planted herself on the steps of the porch, and pointed. “Put that back! It belongs to my daughter!”
    “Sheriff!”
    “Give me a minute, ace.” The brown-uniformed man held up a hand. “Let me talk to her.”
    “No!” Tamsin cried. “I don’t want to talk to anybody!” Adrenaline pumped into her body and she made a running tackle at the man on her porch, wresting the box away from him and diving back into the house. She smashed into the body of another giant bug-eyed man and dropped the box, spilling Alexa’s school papers and notebooks all over the floor. She cried out in frustration, tears running down her cheeks as she scrambled to gather the mess, keep all this history
safe—
    She was suddenly and forcefully hauled to her feet by hands on either side of her. Two big men picked her up and carried her outside, kicking, crying, trying to wrest herself out of their grip, until they dumped her on the lawn.
    The sheriff had handcuffs in one dark fist. “If you don’t calm yourself, ma’am, I’ll have to arrest you for obstruction of justice, and that’s just going to make a bad day worse.”
    She suddenly became aware of a cluster of neighbors standing on their sidewalks, watching her. The grass beneath her bottom was wet, soaking her jeans, and she was as snotty-nosed asa two-year-old. Lacking anything else, she used her sleeve to blot her face. “What’s happening? Why are they taking all of my things?”
    “Are you the lady of the house?” he asked, and flipped open a notebook. “Thomasina Corsi?”
    “Tamsin. Yes.” She stood up, watching men carry out box after box of her belongings. Rage and terror boiled in her chest, insisting she do something,
anything
, to stop it, but she forced herself to cross her arms and stay put. “How can they do this?”
    “Do you know how to reach your husband?”
    “He’s on a business trip in Europe, changing locations nearly every day.” She crossed her arms, suddenly feeling a cold shadow move over the top of her head as she thought of all of the days he had been out of touch. “I have an email address for him.”
    “No cellphone?”
    “He doesn’t like to carry a cell in Europe. He says the roaming charges are too expensive.” She shivered. “What
is
all this?”
    “Your husband is being indicted on criminal charges related to a Ponzi scheme,” he said. “I’m afraid we have orders to seize your house and everything in it.”
    She heard the words, but they made absolutely no sense. “What do you mean? I
live
here. I need to go change my clothes and get some food for the church potluck. My sister is waiting for me.”
    “I understand. But I’m afraid you