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“I don’t think you’re doing that right,” she says.
Her voice slams my heart back to the well of my chest, then coaxes it back to a normal beat.
“Well, look who’s here.” I toss the branches into the pile with the others I’ve mangled. “Little Miss Penny Rose.”
“Here I am… and here you are,” she says.
I can’t help but grin at her. “Here we are again.”
A small smile flits across her face, making her green eyes sparkle under the sunlight. “Did you miss me, Alex?”
“Like a toothache,” I tease.
“You’re still a bad liar,” she says, giggling.
“Haven’t seen you creeping around in a long time.” I turn to pull another branch. “Thought you moved away or somethin’.”
She takes three steps closer. “I wasn’t creeping. And it’s been over two years.”
“Damn, has it been that long?”
Nodding, she pulls a small strip of peeling paint from the side of the house and looks down at it, picking it apart with her fingers. “I was mad at you.”
I shake my hair out of my face. “Mad at me? What for?”
“Because you had plans on my birthday.”
“You’ve been holding a grudge for more than two years over that?”
Dropping the paint chip on the ground, she finally looks up at me with her lips and eyebrows all scrunched together in adorable anger. “Yes,” she finally says.
“Sorry, little darlin’.” I reach for another branch, but suddenly, she’s morphed next to me and has her hand on my elbow.
“You shouldn’t do it that way,” she says, eyeing the bushes like I’m about to murder them.
“What way?”
“Yanking them. You have to use the scissor things.”
“Scissor things?”
“Yes, they look like this.” She holds up her thumb and forefinger and chomps them together in front of my face.
“I know what they look like.”
Pointing to the shed behind the house, she says, “They’re probably in there.”
“Ya think so?”
She nods. “Yup.”
“Let’s go see if you’re right,” I say, knowing the pruning shears are in there exactly where Brianna left them.
We walk across the backyard to the old shed. A rusty antique planter with long-dead plants sits near the aging white door. I bought it for Bri at a consignment shop right after we moved here. Every year, she planted flowers in it that draped down the sides like little curtains. The shed was Brianna’s special domain—filled with all her gardening supplies and yard decorations. Inside, she hung twine across the ceiling and used miniature clothespins to hang Polaroid photos. She loved taking random photos, especially of me and of Cherry. A handful of them are of the three of us together. She’d hold the camera at arm’s length and quickly press the shutter button. In most of the pictures, we look perfect—smiling and happy.
But others are a haunting premonition. Brianna’s attempt to center us in the frame went wonky, and she’s cut off in the picture, with only her arm and shoulder or half her head showing. We used to laugh at them, but now they tear my guts out, seeing her suspended in time, half in and half out of life. The only time I ever go in the shed now is to grab a rake or shovel that I’ve strategically placed right near the inside of the door so I can grab what I need without having to go in.
But today, I venture inside. It smells damp and earthy, like fresh rain.
“Oh, pictures from olden days,” Penny says, tilting her head up to stare at them.
I don’t look at them. “They’re not old. The weather faded them.”
“I like them that way. That’s the snippers.” She points to the shears hanging on the wall.
Silently, I grab them. My fingers burn when they press into the soft indents worn into the red rubber grips. A leftover, imprinted ghost of my wife that hasn’t faded away yet. I still find them. Dents in pillows and cushions. Stray hairs in brushes. And the one I love to hate—the Brianna-shaped curve in her side of the bed.
Penny picks up a pair of small stone cherub statues and says, “You should put these in the yard. They’re so cute.”
They were Bri’s favorites. My chest hurts when I see the jagged line on the cherub’s arm that was broken during a bad storm. Brianna glued it back together. She also accidentally glued her finger to it and I had to gently pry it off while we laughed our asses off.
I wish I could’ve glued us together.
I swallow as Penny looks at me expectantly. “You can put them outside if you want,” I tell her.
Smiling like she won the damn lottery, she lugs the statues out to the front yard. After a few minutes of serious contemplation, she finally settles them in the mulch on each side of a small, round bush.
“There,” Penny says proudly, stepping back to stare at them. “Doesn’t that look so much nicer? They’re friendly angels.”
