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Nodding to the plant material, she answered Kenzie. “You know the drill, flower girl. Though you’re not obligated to help.”
Having done arrangements and bouquets for ten years alongside Helen, Kenzie filed easily in line. “Jackson took the kids out to the Storm Café for ice cream. I get a grown-up time-out, and this is the perfect way to spend it.”
Chuckling, a passing wonder drifted through Helen’s mind about what Kenzie’s mother thought of her daughter motheringfourchildren. She prayed those sweet kids were used by God to make an impression on the cold woman’s closed heart.
Helen finished her first bundle with a decorative pick of felt gingerbread men pulled through the middle. With a few bits of rearranging, she examined the fistful of green in her hand and, satisfied, took it over to the stem cutter anchored at the end of her wooden table. With a quick hard cut, she trimmed the stems and then wrapped the base with a thick rubber band. Finally, she slid the bundle into a paper sleeve and placed the final product in a waiting bucket of fresh water.
One down, twenty-four more to go.
“You know, Jackson thinks you should have canceled this order.” Kenzie lined up her gathered bundle with the stem cutter.
After the sharpwhack!of the blade sounded, Helen met Kenzie’s gaze. “I didn’t want to.” Every one of her boys had suggested that very thing. No, notsuggested. Very nearly demanded.
Men.
Then again, she’d been overbearing to Kevin, so perhaps that was just desserts.
Helen shook her head and rolled her eyes. “As I informed Matthew last night, when he tried to bully me out of helping Lauren with the two-foot trees later today, I am not a wimp. Not some fragile doll they need to put in a glass cabinet. I’m doing fine—and so is Dad.” Kevin had reminded her so just the evening before.
Kenzie chuckled softly. “I think sometimes they forget that you raised seven boys.”
“Exactly.” Helen started on the next bundle. “Seven rambunctious, ever-hungry, and always-into-everything boys. What do they think I would do with my time anyway? Sit and stare at Kevin? He would absolutelynotappreciate that.”
“That would be . . . weird.”
“Very. And as handsome as he is, quite boring. And as I mentioned, he’d get annoyed. He’s already irritated that he can’t drive nails and cut boards with Tyler, and just last night he insisted I let him have coffee. Decaf—that was the deal.”
“Uh-ho. Is he getting antsy?”
“Antsy and, frankly, a little grumpy.” Helen winked. “But I called the doctor today, and he’s cleared to go for a twenty-minute walk every day. We’ll start this evening.”
One after the other, they both chopped the stems and wrapped their bundles, and then, as if on autopilot, started on the next pair. They did the next set in silence, and then Kenzie spoke again.
“I’m glad I get to see these things,” she said.
“What things?”
“The everyday things with you and Kevin. That way, when I get annoyed with Jackson because he so over the top most of the time, I can rest assured that it’s normal and we’ll be okay.”
“Jackson? Annoying?” Helen snorted. “I cannot imagine my sweet baby boy is ever annoying.”
Chuckling at Helen’s sarcasm, Kenzie nodded. “But in all seriousness, if I didn’t see you and Kevin sometimes go crossways and recover, I wouldn’t know that it was okay. To this day my mom swears marriage is a trap and could never really work in a way that a woman could be happy. It’s good to see that’s not true.”
Pausing after she placed a new bundle in the bucket, Helen reached for Kenzie’s arm. “And are you happy?”
The smile on her face was all the tell needed. “You raised a good one, Mama Helen. Seven of them, I think.”
Hadn’t been just her raising those boys, and she and Kevin certainly hadn’t done it perfectly. There had been many times over the years, in fact, that they’d desperately prayed for crop failure when it came to things they’d sown into their children.
Kevin’s alcoholism from their early years. Her propensity to worry and be a control freak. Just two of many examples.
Kenzie turned to begin another bouquet bundle. “This year is forty for you two, right?”
“It is.” Plucking up a bough of fir, Helen paused to inhale the fresh fragrance of clean forest. It smelled nothing like the bouquet she’d carried forty years ago—a small bundle of leather leaf green, baby’s breath, and three red roses that Kevin had purchased, likely at a grocery store, the day before their wedding.
She shook her head and breathed out a tiny laugh.
“What’s funny?” Kenzie asked.
