Tyler O'Neill's Redemption

But he bit back the words.

“Margot still raising orchids?” he asked, unable to look directly at his father without the help of much more booze.

“I wouldn’t know, son. Margot and I never discussed hobbies.”

Tyler stood and stepped onto the lush green grass, a miracle in the end-of-summer heat, and crossed the yard, his fingers touching the silvery green leaves of the trees. Soft. But not soft like Juliette.

“Hey, why the sudden interest in finding the gems, Ty?” Dad asked, following him across the grass. He stumbled a little, but righted himself with grace. Dad never could hold his liquor, but he was about the most gracious drunk Tyler had ever seen. Whiskey turned the old man into royalty. “This morning you could care less.”

“We’ve got nothing else to do,” Tyler said.

“You don’t believe me about the gems, do you?”

“I don’t believe one way or the other,” Tyler answered. And he didn’t. He didn’t actually care, either. At this point he was babysitter/bomb squad, and if the baby wanted to look for gems—what did it hurt?

“You aren’t excited about the money?” Dad asked.

Tyler shook his head. He had more money than he could spend in five years, and considering the way money rolled out of his hands, that was saying something.

But with this last win, he’d finally taken his brother, Carter’s, advice and talked to a money guy. Tyler got a nice little check every month from his investments.

Carter, he thought, the whiskey making him fond rather than irritated at the thought of his brother. Leave it to the Golden Boy to find a way to run a con on nothing.

Tyler stepped into the greenhouse, which was warm and humid, like breathing underwater. Plants lined a table, and more hung from baskets. No blooms, just the young shoots, green arrows out of dark soil.

Margot was starting over with her orchids and he had to wonder why. He took a sip and touched the soil in one of the baskets. Dry, but not very, considering Margot was on some cruise and Savannah was off falling in love in Paris.

Someone was watering the plants, and it could only be Juliette. Always Juliette.

He found the hose coiled in the corner and turned it on, finding the balance between a trickle and a flood, just like Margot taught him a million years ago.

“Orchids are particular,” she’d said, filling the hanging pan under a pink flower. “Some want water from the bottom, some want it from the top. Some want lots, some barely any.”

“Seems like a lot of work,” he’d said, pissed off at the world because he knew why he was here and that his mother was never coming back. He didn’t want to take care of the damn plants, he wanted to smash them. Break those little pink flowers into pieces.

“That’s why I need your help,” she’d said, looking right at him, right down to that twitchy dark place. She knew he wanted to wreck her flowers. Wreck everything. And still she wanted his help.

“I don’t know what to do,” he said, scowling.

“I’ll show you,” she said, putting the hose in his hand.

“You think the gems are in here?” Richard asked, digging into one of the pots, crushing the green bud with his big, fat, clumsy fingers.

“No, Dad,” he said, and flicked the hose at him as if Richard was a cat digging in a house plant.

“Hey! Watch it!” Richard said, bouncing away, bumping into a worktable.

“I don’t think the gems are here,” he said. Splashing a little water in each of the pots, he didn’t know which was which. Which, if any, needed special care.

He turned off the hose, flinging it back in its corner. The last sip of whiskey burned a familiar trail down his throat. An odd longing bobbed in his chest, an unvoiced wish for something he didn’t even understand.

I miss this place, he thought. I miss Margot and Savannah. I miss Juliette.

He thought of who he’d been, that boy with those bright green dreams pushing out of the rotten soil his mother had planted him in.

The thought, as soon as it was fully formed and poisonous, was plucked out. Destroyed.

Wishing for something different was a waste. These were the cards he’d been dealt, and if he didn’t like them—too bad.

He was Tyler O’Neill, born a card man, from a long line of con men and petty crooks. This was his life.

And the best thing he could do for Juliette Tremblant was to keep himself and Dad far away from her.

He tested the weight of the tumbler in his hand. Tossing it. Catching it. Fine crystal, it was so perfect. Better than a baseball.

The tumbler rocketed through the air—a perfect arc, catching the light at its zenith, splashing rainbows across the courtyard—and then smashed against the stone wall, fracturing into a million glittering pieces.

“Tyler?” Dad asked, his voice careful.

“I’ll start in the upstairs bedrooms,” he said, and headed back to the house.

CHAPTER FIVE

“WHERE’S THE BOY NOW?” Mayor Bourdage asked, sitting behind the giant desk in his office.

“I dropped him off at home,” she said.

The mayor tore open a packet of Alka-Seltzer and dumped it into the glass at his elbow, the water exploding into bubbles. The man looked decidedly gray.

So, she imagined, did Father Michaels, the wrestling coach and Lou Brandt.

The good old boys really tied one on during those Sunday-night poker games.

The mayor drained the glass in three large gulps and then wiped his face. “The kid looked like he’d gotten into it with a freight train.”