My Stepfather and His Friends novel · Chapter 4 of 24
Chapter 4: Her Mother's Garden
Owen called at nine on Sunday morning, as promised.
"I'm not calling to ask anything," he said. "I'm calling so you can tell me to stay away."
"Come to my mother's garden at four," I said. "Bring your glasses."
He was quiet for a second.
"Why the glasses?"
"Because you take them off when you're serious."
I heard him breathe out.
"Four," he said.
My mother's garden ran along the back fence, a long row of roses she had planted the first spring Warren lived here.
She'd called it her one extravagance.
Since the funeral, I was the one who watered it.
Owen came through the side gate in a plain grey shirt, carrying a paper bag from the bakery on Dalton Street.
"Cinnamon rolls," he said. "I didn't know what else to bring."
"You brought a surgeon's idea of a gift."
"Meaning?"
"Exactly the right amount for two people."
He looked into the bag, and then he laughed, and some of the stiffness went out of his shoulders.
We sat on the stone bench under the climbing roses.
The petals were dropping in the heat, pink and heavy, and one landed on his knee.
He picked it up and turned it over with two fingers.
"I need to say something first," he said. "Warren is my friend. I've known him twenty years, and I held your hand at that grave. All of that is true, and I've been telling it to myself every night since the wedding."
"Since the wedding."
"Yes." He took off his glasses and folded them. "I wasn't going to say it. I was going to let you sell this house and move away and never know."
"Why?"
"Because I'm the careful one," he said. "It's the thing I'm for."
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