He nods. “My father was a trucker. Drove the Michigan andFlorida route. He stopped here, got my mom pregnant, and then left on the next assignment back south.”
“Tanner, I?—”
He comes closer and picks up the picture. “He came back a few times. It would be a couple times a year at the beginning. Then less and less. I know nothing about him other than his name is Richard and that he’s from Wisconsin. My mom won’t talk about it, and honestly, I never wanted to know. I never knew him to be mydad, you know. Dan was always my dad. I hardly remember a time in my life without him in it.”
“And Mayben?”
“Technically my half-sister. We both look like our mom, so nobody really knows, other than the Atwoods. Mayben didn’t find out until we were in middle school. She thought Richard was a distant uncle or something who would just show up randomly.”
I flip the picture over and, on the back, it’s scrawled,Richard and Tanny.
“Come on.” He stirs sugar into his cup, hands me mine, then motions for me to follow him.
“Where are we going?” I question but he slips his fingers into mine like it’s second nature and he simply nods forward as an answer.
First we feed the chickens and sheep, then we loop around some brush and trees before we are greeted by a small stretch of land lined in rows of flowers. All colors. All types.
“My flower garden,” he says, the pride unmissable in his eyes. “I started it when I first moved here and now, well it’s this.”
I step away from him, and I wander up and down the short aisles of flowers. I recognize the orange and pinks from Winnie’s bouquets. The milky pink peonies. And the red tulips. Even the all the yellow flowers. This isn’t like anything I have ever seen. With a woosh of the warm breeze, I turn back to Tanner.
“This is amazing,” I tell him. “You could turn this into abusiness. You could open this up, sell bouquets, fresh eggs?” I run my fingers along the tops of the flowers gently. “Field trips. Engagement pictures. Weddings. You could even sell some baked goods.”
He walks over to the little shed with a smile on his lips and brings out a basket and some shears.
“Go on.” He hands them to me. “Pick some.”
“Which ones?”
“Any of them and as many as you want.” He smacks my butt. “They’re all yours anyway.”
And I don’t hesitate. The hot sun beats down against my shoulders as I walk amongst the rows picking any color that feels right. There are purples, yellows, greens and whites. In theory the colors sound silly together, but in my hand they’re perfect. When I am happy with what I have, I walk back to Tanner and show him the basket.
“What’s that one for?” he asks pointing at the single pink daisy in the middle of the bouquet. It really is the only one that doesn’t match.
“They mean gentleness,” I tell him. “All flowers mean something. Roses of course mean romance. Yellow carnations mean unrequited love. Lilies mean innocence.”
“Pink daisies are love,” he says. “Tenderness.”
“Exactly.”
“They’re perfect. Come on. I’ll wrap them up for you.”
I follow him to the shed where he places the basket on the work bench. There’s a stack of brown sheets of paper and rolls of twine. He takes the mismatched blooms I picked and puts the chaos of the choices I made into some semblance of order. His fingers sort the stems like a painter with his brushes. When he rolls them up in the brown paper and ties them with the twine, they look as if they have all belonged to each other all along. He turns to hand them to me and his face loses its smile.
“What’s wrong?” His brows knit together as he wipes the few trailing tears slipping down my cheek.
I shake my head, stopping myself from apologizing. “Nothing. It’s never been like this for me.”
“What do you mean?
“This. Waking up together. Spending a day together. Just being together. I was really lonely for a long time.”
He pulls me into an embrace so strong that I know I could pick my legs up and he would still have me. There is nothing sexual about it, no hidden agenda. Just wanting to keep each other close. I realize right here that there is nothing I would rather do than just be in his arms, on this land for the rest of my life. For the first time in a dusty flower shed, I let myself believe that this could last. That my chaotic life could still be pulled together and wrapped up in brown paper and tied with twine and resemble something awfully beautiful.
“Come on.” Tanner threads his fingers into their place within mine again and drags me along.
“Where are we going?”
