The Wishing Garden by Christy Yorke

Author:Christy Yorke
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Body, Arizona, Contemporary, General, Romance, Tarot, Terminally Ill, Gardeners, Mind & Spirit, Mothers and Daughters, Fiction, Domestic Fiction, Divination, Love Stories
ISBN: 9780553580365
Publisher: Bantam
Published: 2000-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

TEN

THE DEVIL SELF-DESTRUCTION

Things did not start to go Cheryl Pillandro’s way until both her husbands were dead. The first thing she did was stop living in dumps. She moved out to the classy Tucson suburbs, leased a two-bedroom condo, and started reading novels. She cut off nearly all her hair without worrying that someone would turn over a table because of it. She didn’t just throw out her high heels and short skirts, which her second husband, Roy, had forced her to wear, sometimes at knifepoint; she took one of Roy’s knives and slashed the clothes to rags, then used them to clean out the engine of her car.

Without a man around, she never watched hockey or bought beer, which was a good thing, because the smell of Budweiser made her go cold all over. Sometimes, of course, she missed a man’s arms around her. She missed someone taking out the garbage and scaring off door-to-door salesmen and stumbling into bed at night. She missed that old sense of martyred superiority, when she had known that even if no self-respecting woman would look her in the eye, she was still better than the creature who drank too much and swung a mean right hook.

Now, she couldn’t date a man more than twice, or else he would find out he was too good for her. The men she went out with drank Cabernet and held doors open; they would never call again if they knew the things she had once stood for. What Roy had said fifteen years ago was true: He’d ruined her for anyone else. No other man would want her once he saw the marks Roy had left, once he knew the pain Roy had gone through to make her his.

Roy might have been right, but what he hadn’t reckoned on was that one day Cheryl would discover she didn’t need a man around at all. With her job at Dillard’s and the sale of her Phoenix house, she had enough money to pay the rent, even eat out occasionally. Why would she want a man choosing tacky restaurants, or getting violent over the color of her hair? As it stood now, she ate salad for lunch every day and hadn’t heard a cuss word in fifteen peaceful years.

Up until the time the sheriff showed up on her doorstep, Cheryl Pillandro actually thought her life might turn out fine.

“I’m Sheriff Merrill,” the man said. “I’m afraid I’ve got bad news about your husband.”

Cheryl walked back into her house. She picked up her water glass, then immediately spilt it. The sheriff took it out of her hands and went into the kitchen. He came back with a rag and the glass full of gin.

“Drink,” he said. When she finished it, he got her another, then sat down beside her.

“Your husband’s remains washed up from Wawani Lake last night. We’re doing an autopsy. We’ve already pulled the missing person’s report you filed fifteen years ago.”

She set down the glass and stood up.

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