Winnie chuckled, then shifted a bit. “She gardened a lot, didn’t she?”
I looked over at her in surprise. “How did you know that?”
“The garden out back.” Winnie glanced out the window to the dark beyond. “I can tell it was once very loved.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to push the pain down. Jade had adored that garden. She’d spent weekends out there with dirt beneath her nails and sunburn on her shoulders because she always forgot sunscreen.
After she died, I’d paid landscapers to maintain it for a few months, but it just wasn’t the same. Maintaining wasn’t the same thing as loving.
“She used to drag the kids outside with her,” I said softly. “CJ hated worms. Bianca kept trying to classify everything. Billie mostly ate the dirt.”
“That sounds about right.”
I smiled tiredly. “She planted those climbing roses herself.”
“The white ones?”
“Yeah.”
Winnie looked thoughtful for a second before asking, “Do you miss gardening?”
The question caught me off guard. “I…” I exhaled slowly. “I think I stopped letting myself miss things individually.”
Understanding crossed her face immediately.
And God, there it was again. That feeling that Winnie understood grief too well.
“You’ve lost people,” I said quietly.
She was silent for a moment before answering.
“Yes.” She folded her hands loosely in her lap while looking down at them. “My mother died when I was young. When I left home,” she said softly, “I believed I would return eventually.”
Something in her tone made me shift uncomfortably. “But you didn’t.”
“No.”
“What happened?”
She was quiet for so long that I almost thought she wouldn’t answer. “Life happened.”
There was so much weight packed inside those two words. I watched her profile in the dim bedside light. “You never saw them again?”
She shook her head once. “My father died while I was away.”
“I’m sorry.”
Winnie smiled faintly, though sadness threaded through it. “It was a very long time ago.”
Something about the phrasing snagged oddly in my brain through the haze of alcohol.
A very long time ago.
But before I could think harder about it, the room tilted.
Winnie must have noticed because a sudden, protective tenderness filled her eyes. “You should sleep.”
“Probably.”
