Audrey brushed her hand over the clouds of sweet alyssum spilling out of one of the pots. “I really didn’t know she could do this, not like this.”
“Now you do.”
For a moment, Audrey took her mother’s hand in a squeeze. “I guess there was a lot about me you didn’t know.”
“Daughters grow up and make their own. That’s how it should be.”
“I don’t know where I’d be if I hadn’t been able to come back and make my own here.”
“You were, and you have.”
“I know she may not stay, but … I hope the time we’ve got here, together, closes the distance. The distance is my fault.”
“Stop it.”
“It is,” Audrey insisted. “I should’ve done better. I had choices, and she didn’t. And I know she wouldn’t have come back here, to me, not to me, if she’d had a choice.”
“Like the lads from Liverpool said, all you need is love. Maybe I’d add comfortable shoes and an adult beverage after a long day, but love matters most. She loves you, Audrey.”
“She does. I’m so lucky she does. Morgan and I, we became different people apart from each other. Now we’ve got this time to, well, grow together like the flowers she planted. I’m going to treasure every minute of that time.”
“So will I. Why don’t we take a look in the shed before dinner, see what else we meant to toss away that girl can play with, since it makes her happy?”
* * *
Instead of heading home when he left the resort, Miles detoured to Jake’s. His friend lived on the edge of town in a compact two-story frame house with a small, covered front porch.
Miles had helped Jake build the deck off the back—and the pitched roof over it so Jake could grill year-round.
In Jake’s world, if it wasn’t takeout or delivery, it went on the grill.
When he pulled up, Miles noted the duo of hanging pots spilling something colorful above the porch rail. And that meant Jake’s mother had stopped by at some point.
Jake would water them, out of duty to his mother—and a healthy fear of her wrath.
As much at home there as anywhere, Miles walked up to the front door, and in.
He could see straight back to the kitchen, where Jake stood at the counter, slapping ground beef into a hamburger patty.
“Hey. Want a beer?”
“Now that you mention it.”
Miles opened the fridge, which held the beer, a quart of milk, Cokes, a jug of the mango juice Jake was inexplicably fond of, and a single lonely stick of butter.
“I just got in from breaking up a dispute over dog shit in Anne Vincent’s newly tilled flower bed. You know her?”
“No.”
“Avoid if possible. Convinced the shit had come out of her neighbor’s Pomeranian—that’s Gigi—Ms. Vincent scooped up the poop and proceeded to deposit it on her neighbor’s front steps. As witnessed by said neighbor’s eight-year-old son. That’s Charlie Potter.”
“Don’t know him either.”
“Charlie informed his mother—that would be Kate Potter.”
Miles took a seat at the counter, sipped his beer. “Still don’t know them.”
“The ensuing altercation, which involved shouts, hard language, some shoves, alarmed young Charlie enough to have him call the police.”
“That’s where you came in.”
“I was heading home. It’s on the way.” Since Miles was there, Jake started on a second patty. “Both women were—I’m going to reach back for the old-fashioned—het up. I can’t say I feared for my life, but I did fear I’d have to haul a couple of women in.”
“Not to mention the kid and the dog.”
“Not to mention. The one’s claiming Gigi doesn’t leave the yard unleashed since the one time last fall the dog slipped through and dug in the neighbor’s chrysanthemums. And the other’s going off about barking and pooping when out comes Charlie, holding the suspect.
“Grab the buns and that bag of chips.”
He gestured to the sliders and the deck before carrying the plate of patties outside to the already smoking grill.
“Now, while I do consider myself well versed in bullshit—you can’t rise to chief of police otherwise—I don’t claim to be an expert on dog shit. But it only takes one look at the size of that dog and the size of the shit to conclude Gigi’s innocence.”
The patties hit the grill and sizzled.
“Did you point this out?”