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But Sally never responded because she needed the job to survive, and this motel was her only option. Even with the paycheck, she was barely managing to make ends meet. Both her body and soul had started to rot from the inside out. She could feel it. Persistent hunger, increasing anger, and sadness will do that to a person.
Jack was back, and he was married to Laura. As much as she’d tried to push down memories of that single night they’d spent together back when she was fifteen, she still hadn’t forgotten it. Sometimes she even longed for it, a feeling that filled her with shame. A funny thing about shame is that just because you feel it doesn’t mean you don’t occasionally want to revisit its cause.
She spotted Jack and Laura strolling hand in hand through the produce section at IGA grocery store, laughing together as they picked out oranges and pecans and added them to their already filled cart. They were the picture of wedding bliss, the epitome of everything she would never have. Sally hid behind the Royals candy bins and watched them until someone reported her to the manager, and she was asked to make a purchase or leave. Embarrassed, she walked out the door. She didn’t even have the chance to buy a loaf of bread, her reason for coming to the store in the first place. Distraction thwarts ambition, as she’d discovered that day when she lost out on dinner all because she couldn’t resist the urge to spy on Jack.
And then there was Paul.
He graduated from college last month and moved home, too, also with a new wife on his arm. He and Jack must have found them at a two-for-one sale because Paul’s new wife looked eerily like Laura. Which meant Sally was already predisposed to hate her. Maybe hate was a strong word. Maybe Sally merely disliked the new wife passionately on the grounds that the lady stole Sally’s only real friend from right under her nose. Granted, Paul left four years ago for college, and Sally hadn’t laid eyes on him until the moment he pulled back into the driveway of his parents’ old home. Paul got the home in the will after his parents died. God rest their terrible, judgmental souls. Along with the property and orchard and the old green building he was using to set up as a flower shop.
“Ford’s Country Garden’s,” the new sign read, and Paul and his wife quickly filled the greenhouse with orchids, petunias, snapdragons, and more types of tomato and pepper plants than Sally ever knew existed. She watched them unload the bounty from behind her kitchen window, then snuck over at night after the town was asleep to read the labels when curiosity got the better of her. After a week of watching and waiting, they opened for business and ushered in more people than this town had ever seen. No one but those who lived here had ever dared to come this close to her house without tossing an insult or a stone. Sally found the visitors fascinating, if a bit weird. People who spent so much money on things they could grow from their own seeds puzzled her, as most forms of frivolous spending did.
People who hit on employees when they had wives waiting at home puzzled her too. Sally snapped open another sheet and kept her back to her boss.
“You hear me, Sally? You need a man to take care of you, tell you how the world works.”
She’d reached the point. The place where she couldn’t take listening to all his quips without responding. It was a vague insult, but she was tired of pretending his intent to harm wasn’t hitting its mark. She turned at the waist and leaned against the mattress.
“And how does it work, Mr. Van Dorn? Do you want to fill me in, since you’re the only man here?”
The man grew visibly flustered. He’s the kind who likes to dish it out with no accountability. So, she pushed further, determined to make him face up to some. “Would you like to show me how the world works right here right now, or would you rather wait until later? Like maybe when I make it up to the second floor down the hall at the back?” She stared at him hard without blinking, her meaning clear. To blink would show weakness, and she felt fierce. Defiant, even. Like she held a whip in her fist and was one crack away from using it.
Her boss cleared his throat, his face growing red. “What are you implying, young lady?”
She crossed her arms. “I’m not implying anything at all. I’m merely quoting you. So, what’s it going to be? Here or upstairs?”
For one second, she pictured him striding across the room to strike her. Instead, he visibly shrunk back, caught in a tangled web of his own making. His gaze skittered to one side and then the other, then fixed on her. He smoothed out his vest, realigning himself and his composure.
“It won’t be either one. Just get your job done and be quick about it. I didn’t hire you to dilly dally around all day.”
She didn’t say that while she had already changed the beds and cleaned the surfaces of seventeen rooms in this dump of a motel, he had followed her from room to room just to watch her work. In the month since she started working here, he had wasted more time than anyone else, taking a regular paycheck for nothing more than trying to finagle a hookup.
She didn’t have to say anything else. Her boss turned on his heel and left, taking his red face and short temper with him. She wasn’t naïve enough to think he was finished with shadowing her, but the momentary peace left her breathing easier. She didn’t see him again during her remaining five-hour shift, not even when she clocked out and climbed into her papa’s old Buick Roadmaster for the short drive home. His usual routine was to watch her from behind his office window, believing himself incognito despite his hefty frame and unmistakable outline. That night his window was blessedly devoid of a shadow. Good riddance. Sally was quickly learning that people weren’t worth the effort it took to think of them.
But the plants…once she made it home, they called to her. She had no choice but to heed their beckoning voices. Everyone knew talking to plants was what helped them thrive. Maybe a little of the conversation would rub off and help her as well. Plants couldn’t insult, couldn’t assume the worst. If tended to with kindness, plants merely grew taller until their blooms made them beautiful.
“You’ll go into some fancy garden, I guess,” she said, standing in the middle of the Ford’s greenhouse examining a tomato plant. “Where some rich sap will forget to water you, and let you die, then give up and go buy their vegetables from a roadside salesman.” Maybe these weren’t the kindest words to help a living thing thrive, but time had made her a believer in the truth, ugly as it was. “But you’re sure pretty now, Mr…Arkansas Big Boy,” she said, examining the label. “Someone’s bound to think you’re the best thing that ever happened to them.”
“Why, thank you. Though I haven’t been called ‘Big Boy’ in a long time.” A man’s low voice said from behind her. Sally startled and spun in place, both shocked and relieved to see Paul standing in the greenhouse doorway. He looked older, much more handsome than she remembered. A flood of memories came rushing back when she connected with the amused gleam in his eyes—Paul winning at cards, Paul tucking warm blankets around her shoulders, Paul holding her hand while they walked across this very field late at night. Her face flamed, but she didn’t care. Paul was here, the same Paul she remembered.
A squealing laugh burst from her lips, so sudden it took a moment for her to realize it came from her. How long had it been since she’d laughed? “You’ve never been called ‘Big Boy’ in your entire life.”
Paul shrugged. “I’m offended by your assumption, even if it is true. But if you weren’t talking to me, who were you talking to?”
“I was talking to your plants. Specifically, this one.” She held up the tomato plant in question, the one with the flattering name.
“Did it talk back to you?”
“Not as much as its owner.”
Paul laughed, smiling at her like he had finally found home, and they both knew it. “It’s good to see you, Sally.”
Her smile faded, but the one in her heart dared to flutter just a bit. Paul was literally the only person in this life or maybe even the next who had ever uttered those words to her. Even after the long-ago death of it by his mother’s hand, Paul’s friendship still mattered to her. It gave her hope where she otherwise had none, and a person without hope is a person who slowly ceases to exist.
“It’s good to see you too, Paul,” she said, and it was true. “How’s marriage treating you?”
She watched for it, the glimmer of enthusiasm a young man of his age normally can’t help but emit when talking about a new bride, but Paul only cleared his throat, his gaze darting to the side.
“It’s treating me okay.” His words felt like a lie, though Sally couldn’t fathom why. “It’s sort of the reason I came in here to see you. Sherry doesn’t take too kindly to people being on our property unless they’re buying something.”
