“I probably liked old Amos better than she did,” Taryn muttered as she took the bromeliad to the back. “And she’s not calling Zoe names without there being consequences.”
Nana Irene’s tuna casserole was one of Taryn’s favorite dishes, and Anna Rose made it for supper that evening. Maybe it was because she thought Taryn was heartbroken over Zoe—but most likely it was because she liked it just as well as Taryn did. Still, that evening, the food had absolutely no taste. Taryn might as well have been eating sawdust or wet dirt. Even the sweet tea had no flavor.
“Are you sick?” Jorja asked as she took a second helping. “I remember when you used to scrape the bowl clean when Nana Irene made this.”
“Leave her alone,” Anna Rose fussed. “She’s missing her baby girl. She’ll be fine in a few days.”
“Imagine how Nana Irene misses us when we leave and don’t come back for several months at a time.” Taryn picked at the food still on her plate. “Or how much she misses our parents since they’ve all moved away.”
“I’ve been so busy living my own life that I never thought of how lonely she must be when we just pop in for a couple of days and thendon’t come back for months,” Jorja said. “She had us around all the time right up until we graduated from high school, and we only had Zoe in our lives for a couple of weeks. I’m so worried about her that my heart hurts. I can’t imagine how Nana must feel when we are gone.”
Clinton nodded in agreement. “She talks about y’all all the time. Maybe the real reason that she doesn’t want you to come over every day is because of what Taryn and Jorja just said. Six whole weeks of seeing you all the time and then, poof”—he snapped his fingers—“you’re gone.”
Anna Rose brought a box of Dilly Bars from the Dairy Queen to the table for dessert. “But our lives aren’t here in Shamrock anymore. I’ve got books to make, pictures to take, and places to see.”
“Life is where you make it,” Clinton whispered.
“What did you say?” Taryn asked, not quite believing what she’d heard.
He repeated the words. “I would never have thought about living here in Shamrock permanently. I wasn’t even sure I’d stay very long when I moved into the apartment. My original plan was to live in one place and help as many vets as I could, then move on.”
“What changed?” Taryn asked.
“I found that vets are more than willing to come to me. Word of mouth gets around quickly, and I’ve built up quite a list of those who need help from Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. The icing on the cake is that when I’m not busy with that job, I get to work in the flower shop with Irene and Ruby,” he answered.
Getto work,Taryn thought,nothaveto work. That’s the attitude I should have.
Anna Rose could almost feel the roots growing from her own heart and into the ground right there in Shamrock. When she left the town, she’d vowed she would only come back for short visits. Her folks had movedright after she left, and her grandmother was the only real tie she had to Shamrock. Someday, Nana Irene would be gone, and then nothing would draw her back to the small town.
The silence that filled the room as they worked on orders that afternoon was so thick that Anna Rose didn’t think it could be cut with a machete. She tried to picture what a photograph would look like if she could capture even one of the emotions that she and her cousins were experiencing.
Jorja’s would be a sapling tree in the winter, with snow clinging to the fragile limbs, because she was confused—not only about life but that day. She had prayed, but her expression told Anna Rose that her cousin was still struggling with whether Jesus would even hear her prayer after she had drunk a beer. Hopefully, when Jorja found herself, the picture would change into a lovely full-grown evergreen with daisies growing at its base.
Clinton would be a rock—strong, dependable, confident that he was doing good. But that day, a chip had been knocked out of the middle of it. Rebecca had taken a little piece of his heart with her when she went away with Zoe. In Anna Rose’s mind, she held the camera up to her eye and saw a before and after picture—one from that day and one from sometime in the future, when the rock was complete and solid again.
Does that mean Rebecca will bring the baby back?Anna Rose wondered as she looked over at the empty playpen.
Tears pricked her eyes when she glanced across the table at Taryn. She blinked the moisture away and pretended she was looking through her camera lens again. She saw a big heart, like the ones they had made for their valentine boxes as children. The heart was cracked down the middle. Not broken—just flawed, with a long, jagged crack. Then she heard the tinkling of the bell above the door and the vision disappeared.
“I’ll get it this time,” Jorja said as she slid off her barstool.
Anna Rose left the worktable and peeked around the doorjamb so she could see who the customer was. Then she straightened up andwhispered, “It’s Ora Mae, probably trying to get Jorja to help her with something at the church.”
“Sounds like she’s crying,” Taryn whispered back.
“She is,” Anna Rose reported.
“Oh, Jorja, my dear friend Amos is dead!” Ora Mae broke into hard sobs.
Jorja opened her arms and Ora Mae walked right into them. “He was my neighbor and such a good friend,” she sobbed.
Jorja patted her on the back and let her cry it out. “Linda was in here just a little while ago to order a plant for him.”
“Linda Sullivan and her daughter, Kaitlin, treated him so shabby. He told me ...” She paused and wiped her eyes on a lace-trimmed handkerchief that she’d pulled from the cuff of her long-sleeved blouse. “That ... that”—she hiccuped, making it hard for the cousins to hear—“when he took them watermelons, he felt like a homeless beggar. They made fun of him every chance they got and were embarrassed when he wore his overalls to church.”
“I’m so sorry,” Jorja said. “I didn’t know him very well, but he was always kind when I saw him.”
Ora Mae took a step back, sucked in a long breath, and nodded. “He believed in showing people his religion by living it every day—he never missed a single church service. I knew something had to be wrong yesterday morning when he didn’t meet me right on the front pew. His bibbed overalls and his shirt were always spotless and ironed, and he was clean shaven. I don’t know why his last living relative had to treat him like dirt, but she’s about to learn the cost of her actions. Like the good book says, you reap what you sow.”
