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I look at her hand.

Jessica steadies me without making a thing of it. She turns us toward her badly parked car, and I let her.

Behind us, the hospital doors open again.

I don’t look back.

birdie-birdie-birdie

The garden shop is exactly where it was this morning, though I have the strange feeling it should have moved. The gravel lot crunches under Jessica’s tires. A handwritten sign by the entrance announces hanging baskets, mulch, tomato plants, and Mother’s Day specials in red marker blurred slightly from last night’s rain.

I read every word twice.

Mother’s Day is this weekend. Renny always forgot until the Friday before and then made me send flowers to his mother as if the order were coming from both of us, even though she had never fully forgiven me for existing. One year she called to thank him and added, “Tell Paul I’m sure he helped.”

Renny told me this while laughing into a gin and tonic.

I wonder if they’re both laughing now, sitting together on a bench somewhere, looking down at my ridiculousness.

Jessica parks near the side entrance and turns off the car. Neither of us moves.

Through the windshield, rows of color sit under the wide shade awning: pinks, reds, oranges, purples too confident for their own good. A tabby cat sleeps on top of a stack of potting soil bags like a foreman who has retired but still likes to supervise.

Jessica says, “I can go in and get whatever you want.”

I shake my head.

“I’m fine.”

The second I open the car door, the air changes. It smells like flowers, fertilizer, and everything wet and green.

A bell jingles above the side gate when we step through.

Jessica grabs a cart and puts random flowers into it, maybe hoping I’ll protest.

The gravel shifts under my shoes. Renny hated this parking lot. Every year he complained that a business dedicated to beauty could spring for pavement. Every year I told him the gravel was part of the charm.

The geraniums are where they always are, arranged by color on long wooden tables. Red first, because of course. White. Orange. Salmon. A few variegated ones Renny would have called fussy before buying three.

They stand there in their plastic pots, bright and round and proud of themselves. They do not care that Renny is dead. They do not care that he would have chosen red and I would have lobbied for white before we compromised on something hideous.

They’re just here. Waiting.

My hand reaches out before I decide to move. I touch one of the leaves. It’s soft and fuzzy, with that strange peppery smell geraniums leave on your fingers.

Renny loved that smell. Said it smelled like summer arriving with lipstick on.

I bend at the waist. The sound that comes out of me is ugly.

I put one hand on the table. The wood is damp from watering. My palm slips, and a pot wobbles. Jessica catches it before it falls. She catches the pot, then me, though I have not fallen. Not technically.

“Paul.”

I shake my head, which is useless because there’s nothing to refuse.

The first sob is small enough that I think I can stop it. The second is not.

My body folds around it. I make a sound I would never make in public.