The Garden of Happy Endings Read online

  Praise for the Novels of Barbara O’Neal

  HOW TO BAKE A PERFECT LIFE

  “Mothers and daughters are at the heart of this beautiful novel by O’Neal.… Highly recommended.”

  —Library Journal (starred review)

  “Absorbing … O’Neal’s tale of strong-willed women and torn family loyalties is a cut above the standard women’s fiction fare, held together by lovingly sketched characters and real emotion.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Envelops you like the scent of warm bread, comforting and invigorating, full of love and forgiveness and possibility.”

  —ERICA BAUERMEISTER, bestselling author of The School of Essential Ingredients

  “This book will have you smiling and crying and pining for an old love, or just a hunk of really good fresh-baked bread. I loved every single delicious bite.”

  —JENNIE SHORTRIDGE, author of When She Flew

  THE SECRET OF EVERYTHING

  “O’Neal has created a powerful and intriguing story rich in detailed and vivid descriptions of the Southwest.”

  —Booklist

  “Readers will identify with this story and the multilayered characters.… And with some of the tantalizing recipes for dishes served at the 100 Breakfasts Café included, O’Neal provides a feast not only for the imagination but the taste buds as well.”

  —Romantic Times

  “Barbara O’Neal has masterfully woven local culture, the beauty of nature, her love of food and restaurants, and a little romance into this magnificent novel.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  THE LOST RECIPE FOR HAPPINESS

  “The Lost Recipe for Happiness is a delectable banquet for the reader.… This book is as delicious as the recipes interspersed throughout an incredible story.”

  —SUSAN WIGGS, New York Times bestselling author

  “The Lost Recipe for Happiness is utterly magical and fantastically sensual. It’s as dark and deep and sweet as chocolate. I want to live in this book.… A total triumph.”

  —SARAH ADDISON ALLEN, New York Times bestselling author

  “Beautiful writing, good storytelling and an endearing heroine set against the backdrop of Aspen, Colorado, are highlights of O’Neal’s novel. A tale that intertwines food, friendship, passion, and love in such a delectable mix is one to truly savor until the very last page.”

  —Romantic Times

  “Will appeal to women’s fiction fans and foodies, who will enjoy the intriguing recipes … laced through the book.”

  —St. Petersburg Times

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  2012 Bantam Books Trade Paperback Original

  Copyright © 2012 by Barbara Samuel

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  BANTAM BOOKS and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Originally published in mass market in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., in 1989.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  O’Neal, Barbara

  The garden of happy endings : a novel / Barbara O’Neal.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-345-53446-0_01

  I. Title.

  PS3573.I485G37 2012

  813′.54—dc23 2011036881

  www.bantamdell.com

  Cover design: Belina Huey

  Cover images: © Cultura (woman and garden),

  © Justin Paget/Oxford Scientific (dog)

  v3.1

  Prologue

  MANY YEARS AGO

  The second time Elsa turned her back on God, it was raining.

  She had imagined that they would end their pilgrimage by walking from the Camino right into the Cathedral de Santiago de Compostela, which she had seen in pictures. It was one of the largest cathedrals in the world, and in her mind, the Camino was a red carpet leading directly to it.

  Instead, there was first a long slog through the city itself. It was pouring, a relentless deluge that soaked them as they walked suddenly on sidewalks instead of gravel, trudging through the large and thriving metropolis, complete with noisy cars, and planes roaring overhead, and the cacophony of thousands of people. After forty-three days of walking from one quiet hostel to the next, where the noisiest things in the world were roosters and frogs, the city jangled her nerves.

  Joaquin, her fiancé, was deeply quiet. They had begun the camino as a lark, one last adventure before they started graduate school, but it had become much more as they traveled, one foot in front of the other.

  They should have known better, Elsa thought, shoulders hunched in misery. She should have known better. The camino called you for a reason. Secretly, she had hoped to find some indication of the way to express her vocation. From tiniest girlhood, she had wanted to be a priest. That idea had been shattered when she was fourteen, but she had still focused on comparative religions as an undergrad.

  “Are you all right?” she asked Joaquin.

  He took her hand. “Yes,” he said, but his throat betrayed him, showing his Adam’s apple moving in a big gulp.

  At last they made their way to the square and into the vast, ancient cathedral. And there they stopped, dripping rain from hair and ponchos and packs, their mouths open in astonishment at the gold. Oceans of gold, mountains of gold. Gold slathered over statues and walls and candlesticks, gold enough to feed all the poor in the world for a century at least. Gold and adornments and Santiago overseeing it all.

  Joaquin walked to the altar and knelt, and she saw that he was sobbing, his shoulders shaking. He had always been deeply faithful; it was one of the things they shared in a world that was increasingly underwhelmed by the old practices. To give him time and privacy, she knelt and crossed herself and entered a pew. Pilgrims with dusty feet and grimy packs milled around, along with tourists in tidy skirts who had arrived by bus, going to kiss the saint. Some of them looked sideways at Joaquin, but not as many as you might have thought.

  At last, he rose and turned to her. Elsa left the pew to meet him. He took her hand. His eyes were red from crying, and she had a terrible feeling. She thought of the way he had made love to her that morning, with both fierceness and tenderness, and a burning began in her heart.

  “Don’t say it,” she said, and backed away from him, closing her eyes, covering her ears with her hands. Water dripped down her back from her wet hair.

  “Elsa,” he said, and caught her hands. “Look at me.”

  She did.

  “I am going to be a priest.”

  Elsa stepped away from him, and looked up at Santiago, draped in gold. “All that way I walked,” she said, “and this is what you give me?”

  She spat on the floor and stormed out of the cathedral.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue: Many Years Ago

  Autumn

  Chapter One: Seattle, Present Day

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  March

  Chapter Five: Pueblo, Colorado

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen
<
br />   Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  April Showers, May Flowers

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Solstice

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Feast of San Roque

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: August 15

  Recipes

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Other Books by This Author

  About the Author

  SEATTLE, PRESENT DAY

  Chapter One

  Six days before she turned her back on God for the third time, Elsa Montgomery went to the harvest festival at her church.

  It was a bright orange Saturday in October, possibly the last sunny day of the year. She parked her car beneath an old monkey tree and let her dog, Charlie, out of the backseat. A long-legged black rescue with exuberant energy, he knew to mind his manners in crowds, keeping to her right side as they wandered toward the booths and tents set up on the lawn of the Unity church.

  Just as they rounded the edge of the fair, ducking beneath the low arms of a pine tree, Elsa caught the scent of rotten apples. For a moment, she thought it came from an earthly cause, an apple that had fallen behind the booths or lay in the thick grass, forgotten in the rush to get everything ready.

  There were certainly plenty of apples. Apples in baskets and apples in pies and apples floating in a tub filled with cold water for bobbing. Washington State was one of the premier apple-growing states in the nation, and local orchards had contributed heavily to the annual church festival.

  It took place on the second weekend of October, when the leaves in the Seattle area hung on the trees like construction paper cutouts in shades of red and orange and yellow, and the worst of the winter gloom had not yet set in. The church, a small and humble building that boasted the stained glass art of a now-famous former parishioner, sat unassumingly in the midst of an arts-and-crafts neighborhood, where the houses—and thus the land the church sat upon—were commandingly expensive even after the real estate debacle.

  The harvest committee rented booths to local farmers and craftspeople. It attracted a cheerful crowd of well-tended parents, their scrubbed children, and obligatory golden retrievers. The families played games and ate caramel apples and plumped up the church coffers better than any other single thing they did every year.

  Elsa loved the fundraiser. It had been one of the first things she had created upon her arrival here as minister nine years ago. This year, the sun was shining, but the air was sharp enough that she wore a pink wool sweater and a pair of jeans with boots. She’d left her hair, crazy as it was, loose and curly on her shoulders, and she walked along the tables that were set up outside. Tents were erected over them, just in case.

  As she moved down the center aisle, again she smelled the sulfurous odor of rotten apples. Insistent, dark. She paused, recognizing the warning.

  Something was coming. Something dark and wicked.

  She turned in a slow circle, looking for clues. Apples of ten varieties spilled out of baskets, along with pumpkins and squashes and piles of freshly baked bread. In the face-painting booth, Kiki Peterson carefully painted dragons on the face of a little girl wearing a fairy tutu. Next to them was a table set up to serve crepes made by Jordan Mariano, a vegetarian chef who attended the church. The menu offered roasted pumpkin and tomato crepes, apples and sugar, or classic chocolate and cream. Nothing seemed amiss. No one who looked out of place. No—

  “Reverend!”

  Elsa turned, still half seeking. A tall man dressed in khakis and a gold shirt strode toward her. He was a member of the finance committee.

  “How are you, George?”

  “You have a minute, Rev? I want to talk to you about the shortfall in fundraising last week.”

  “Let’s talk about that at the meeting on Wednesday, shall we?” She peered over his shoulder, seeking a possible escape. “It’s on the agenda—”

  “But I don’t think the committee is taking it seriously.”

  She touched his arm. “That may be, but let’s enjoy this beautiful day and talk about it on Wednesday.”

  “But—”

  “Excuse me.” She headed toward a bent old man sitting in the sunshine. “How are you, Eddie?”

  He turned his nearly blind eyes toward her, wispy white hair springing out in Einstein fashion around his head. “If I was any better, I’d already be in heaven.”

  She let him take her hand, and squeezed it. “Glad to hear it. How are the new digs?”

  “Fine, fine. I have me a cat and some television, so what more does a man need, huh?”

  He was eighty-nine, suffering from terminal cancer, asthma, high blood pressure, and crippling arthritis, but he put his love in things beyond himself, and that kept his spirits high. “I’m glad to hear it. I’ll be over to see the new place sometime this week, and we’ll say a blessing. How’s that?”

  “Wonderful.”

  A trio of girls in plaid shorts and T-shirts swirled over. “Reverend Elsa, we made you some dragonfly wings!” The smallest of the trio held up the tissue-paper-and-coat-hanger wings, pale purple with green and purple glitter. Their faces, too, had been painted with dragons. She looked over to Kiki and winked.

  The teenager smiled. “I can paint your face, too, if you want.”

  “Oh, that would be so pretty!” the smallest of the girls said. She took Elsa’s hand and pulled her toward Kiki and the face-painting booth. “Please, Reverend Elsa?”

  Elsa capitulated, and let them pull her down into the chair, their cool little fingers and hands touching her arms, her shoulders, her neck. Someone pulled her hair away from her face, gently, pressed it to her temple. “I’ll hold it so you don’t get paint on it.”

  “Thanks, Alice.” She gave the tiny redhead a kiss on the wrist.

  Alice wiggled happily. “You’re welcome.”

  Charlie slumped onto Kiki’s foot. “Do you want a dragon or a rose or something else?” Kiki asked.

  “I don’t know. What do you girls think it should be?”

  “A flower!”

  “A dragon!”

  “A castle!”

  Kiki laughed. “A castle? How about a unicorn?”

  “Oooh, yeah!” Alice traced a spot on Elsa’s cheek, the touch as light as gossamer. “Right there.”

  “Can I fix your hair?” Davina asked, tilting her head sideways. “I have a brush. I’ll be careful so Kiki doesn’t mess up.”

  “I won’t mess up,” Kiki said. “I can do this in my sleep.”

  “Sure, then,” Elsa said. “You can fix it.”

  Kiki dipped her brush into a pot of iridescent white paint. Her extraordinarily long brown hair, straight and glossy, fell in a silky wash over one thin shoulder and she tossed it back. “Ready?”

  “Ready.” Elsa closed her eyes as the liquid touched her cheek. The little ones fluttered their hands through her hair, and one hot plump body leaned into her, probably sleepy. The child suddenly bent over and rested her head in Elsa’s lap. Gently, Elsa touched her back. The pink bubble gum smell of girl wafted around her.

  “You’re going to be such a good mom,” Kiki said. “You’re so patient.”

  “She’s not married!” Alice said, standing on one foot. “You have to be married to have a baby.”

  Kiki smiled, a twinkle in her dark blue eyes. “Well, then she needs to get married.”

  Elsa gave her a rueful grin in return. Kiki’s mother, Julia, had been trying to matchmake Elsa for months, one very nice man after another, but so far, there had not been a single second date. Julia said she was too hard on men, that Elsa needed to relax a
little, but what was the point in that? Why spend your life with someone who wasn’t just right?

  Except … she wanted children. She’d always wanted them, at least four, maybe six. It was beginning to seem as if that might not happen. She was thirty-eight, and running out of time. And as much as she loved her work, the congregation, and the children of others, she would really mind if she didn’t have a child of her own.

  This, please, she said, a soft prayer sent out above the heads of the sweet-smelling girls, whose hands touched her, patting her hair, painting her face.

  This.

  It was only as she stood up that she again smelled the reek of disaster, deeper now, worse, like bloated fish. She swayed.

  “You okay, Rev?” Kiki asked.

  Elsa touched her arm. “Fine, thanks. Tell your mother I’ll see her tomorrow.”

  “I will.” Kiki screwed the lid of the paint back on. Blue stick-on stars decorated her fingernails. “I think she’s lining up a new one for you.”

  Elsa shook her head and left, putting a hand over her upset stomach. She made her way through the crowd and walked into the church, to duck into the haven of her office. She closed the door, as if to leave the threat behind.

  It was a small room, with a single window overlooking the grass and trees and a square of earth planted with chrysanthemums. The décor reflected her simple tastes, with airy white curtains that blew on summer breezes, and only a trio of simple photos on the walls, all in a line, memories from her travels. Glastonbury Tor, pointing into a dark heavy sky from the top of an English hill; a shot of a mile marker on the Camino de Santiago, with an abandoned boot on top of it; and a shot of an old man painting a canvas by the sea.

  Below the photos stood a small altar table with a pillar candle and a vase she filled with fresh flowers. Today, they were striped pink and white carnations, and their peppermint aroma lent a sweetness to the air. Elsa lit a candle, asking for protection, for goodness to blow this miasma away. She asked for insight to assist those who might need her, and patience, and stillness.

  When that was finished, she picked up the phone and dialed Joaquin, her oldest friend, who had once been her fiancé. He answered on the second ring. “Father Jack.”