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“Not nearly. They’re loaded. I didn’t have a chance to get the patio furniture out and cleaned up, but I can do that tomorrow.”
“I’d appreciate that, Morgan. I appreciate this.”
Still glowing, Audrey looked around. “I had no idea you knew how to do all this.”
“Nina taught me about plants. And when you’re on a tight budget, things like wire brushes, sandpaper, and paint are best friends. Anyway, I’ve got to get to work. See you tomorrow.”
“She looked so happy,” Audrey murmured.
“She did. She’s coming along. She’s a girl who needs to do, and she’s doing.”
Audrey brushed her hand over the clouds of sweet alyssum spilling out of one of the pots. “I really didn’t know she could do this, not like this.”
“Now you do.”
For a moment, Audrey took her mother’s hand in a squeeze. “I guess there was a lot about me you didn’t know.”
“Daughters grow up and make their own. That’s how it should be.”
“I don’t know where I’d be if I hadn’t been able to come back and make my own here.”
“You were, and you have.”
“I know she may not stay, but… I hope the time we’ve got here, together, closes the distance. The distance is my fault.”
“Stop it.”
“It is,” Audrey insisted. “I should’ve done better. I had choices, and she didn’t. And I know she wouldn’t have come back here, to me, not to me, if she’d had a choice.”
“Like the lads from Liverpool said, all you need is love. Maybe I’d add comfortable shoes and an adult beverage after a long day, but love matters most. She loves you, Audrey.”
“She does. I’m so lucky she does. Morgan and I, we became different people apart from each other. Now we’ve got this time to, well,grow together like the flowers she planted. I’m going to treasure every minute of that time.”
“So will I. Why don’t we take a look in the shed before dinner, see what else we meant to toss away that girl can play with, since it makes her happy?”
Instead of heading home when he left the resort, Miles detoured to Jake’s. His friend lived on the edge of town in a compact two-story frame house with a small, covered front porch.
Miles had helped Jake build the deck off the back—and the pitched roof over it so Jake could grill year-round.
In Jake’s world, if it wasn’t takeout or delivery, it went on the grill.
When he pulled up, Miles noted the duo of hanging pots spilling something colorful above the porch rail. And that meant Jake’s mother had stopped by at some point.
Jake would water them, out of duty to his mother—and a healthy fear of her wrath.
As much at home there as anywhere, Miles walked up to the front door, and in.
He could see straight back to the kitchen, where Jake stood at the counter, slapping ground beef into a hamburger patty.
“Hey. Want a beer?”
“Now that you mention it.”
Miles opened the fridge, which held the beer, a quart of milk, Cokes, a jug of the mango juice Jake was inexplicably fond of, and a single lonely stick of butter.
“I just got in from breaking up a dispute over dog shit in Anne Vincent’s newly tilled flower bed. You know her?”
“No.”
