“Jake is helping pay, and Noah is coming home from school,” she said. I could hear the faint, familiar clicking of her silver rings twisting against each other on the other end of the line. “You only turn fifty once. Wear something beautiful.”
Damon stopped by the door, his eyes lingering on my hands as I held the receiver.
“Who is that?” he asked.
“Lily,” I said, placing a hand over the mouthpiece. “She was just asking about the garden.”
He checked his watch, turned the doorknob, and stepped out onto the porch without another word.
I stood there listening to the hum of the old refrigerator, the cold paper towel still pressed against my thumb.
The wind in Oak Creek was cold that afternoon, sending dry brown sycamore leaves scraping across the asphalt of Main Street. I had three hours before the boys got home from their shifts, and my grocery list was already checked off.
I stopped in front of Evelyn’s Dress Shop because the window display had changed since Tuesday.
Behind the glass, on a pale mannequin with no face, hung a dress the color of deep moss after rain. It was silk, with a high neck and long sleeves that gathered at the wrists, catching the pale October light.
I looked at my own reflection in the plate glass, my faded denim jacket and the worn pearl earrings my mother had given me when I turned thirty.
