Wedding Belles by Haywood Smith

Author:Haywood Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group
Published: 2008-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

14

You can take your troubles with you when you go to work in a garden, but

you can’t bring them back. Somehow, they always end up buried there.

— LINDA’S BUBBIE

The present. Saturday, April 1.9:45 A.M. Muscogee Drive, Atlanta.

WITH CALLIE’S ENGAGEMENT party looming less than a week away, I needed some serious attitude adjustment, and thanks to Linda, I had plenty of garden therapy to accomplish it. The day before—despite the fact that Easter (the safe date for planting in Atlanta) wasn’t until the middle of the month this year—a warm, long-range forecast from the weatherman had prompted her to drag me up to the wholesale nursery in Alpharetta to buy our showy red dragon leaf begonias. No picky tea roses or all-white gardens or leggy perennials for me. Despite the shade that would cover my flower beds when the trees leafed out, I like my flowers bright and hardy and prolific, even though that means replacing them every year.

Now, on this sunny morning, I looked forward to getting my gloves into the loamy soil and beginning something beautiful that didn’t have anything to do with my daughter’s totally inappropriate choice for a husband.

So I started the month of April wearing old clothes, brand-new flowered garden gloves, and no makeup, on my knees in the cool soil of my back-yard flower bed. The corkscrew augur on my cordless drill gave me a sense of power as I whipped out the planting holes and added half a handful of time-release fertilizer into each one. Once the plants were snuggled in and mulched, then watered with StartUp, they would grow lush and spectacular. Until they did, their neat rows gave me a sense of order and control.

With Beethoven’s Fifth playing on Second-Cup Concert from my vintage portable radio, I savored the morning sun on my back and lost myself within minutes in the soothing ritual of planting. So, half an hour later, I never heard a thing before I was jumped from behind and snatched to my feet as a black satin bag covered my head. The drawstring on the bag tightened only enough to keep me from seeing my assailants.

It was just like those nightmares where somebody ambushes you, and you can’t move or even scream. I froze in shock as my attackers taped my wrists together.

Duct tape! Duct tape means death!

What the hell? This was Atlanta, not Baghdad! But it was happening, and happening to me!

Chicken Little had an aneurysm on the spot and expired without a single dying doomsay.

Adrenaline finally kicked in, and I screamed bloody murder and started fighting for my life, butting one of them with my head and landing a healthy kick on another.

“Ow! Quit that!” Diane’s voice entreated, “or the neighbors will think you’re really being kidnapped. It’s only us!”

Relief, confusion, and fading panic warred for control of my mind. I stopped fighting and tried to gain my balance on the mossy grass. “Are you crazy?” I hollered through the black bag. My fight-or-flight response shifted from terror to fury.

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