Chapter 15
The truth is, I’m getting a little tired of going through boxes of lost things.
I think because I’m feeling the fruitlessness of it.
Yes, Mabel wanted them seen and appreciated, and I’m honoring that, but it’s not lost on me—no pun intended—that in the end, most of them will just go back into the same box they came out of, so I’m not sure what I’m doing is changing anything.
With each item I examine, I really feel its lostness—I feel how it’s just floating around in the world not where it belongs, serving no purpose.
Feeling things is not my strong suit and something I often try to avoid.
As a newsperson, it’s a good trait, not getting emotionally sucked into every story—and I find it helpful in other ways, too.
I don’t get too emotional over romantic entanglements that don’t work out, which is always for me.
I also tend to suffer other general losses well—if a friend moves away or someone dies, I can handle it.
And when the dreaded cancer came calling, who was courageous about it? This girl. I have emotions of steel.
Except lately, it seems. Getting banished to Nowheresville, Kentucky, wounded me far more than Kevin ever intended it to, because it made me feel .
.. dismissible. And losing my hair has obviously bothered me a great deal despite the brave face I tried to show the public.
Now ... all this lost stuff. It evokes emotions in me that I didn’t even know I had.
Though maybe that seems healthy. Sydney always says she thinks I’m a little too tough. Kevin, conversely, is more like me, and we joke through our pain—it’s just how we deal.
Regardless of which way is the right way, though—if there is a right way—I’ve decided to take the day off from the lost and found.
Instead of digging into another box of someone’s lost history, I’m going to finally dig into the weeds in the flower bed out front.
I need an unemotional activity, and this fits the bill.
The weeds have bugged me since I arrived, and the property caretaker doesn’t seem to be doing anything about them, so I will.
Plopping my sun hat on and applying sunscreen, I step out into a bright sunny day, the summer country air humming with the sound of a lawn mower that means Matt is probably nearby.
I head to the garage and locate a wheelbarrow, a trowel, a pair of gardening gloves, and one of those little foam kneepad things gardeners use.
I feel very industrious as I push the wheelbarrow, filled with my other tools, to the flower bed. If Nancy could only see me now.
I’m down on my kneepad thing, trowel in hand, when the mower gets much louder, closer, rounding the front corner of the house—and when it suddenly goes silent, I glance up to see a look of alarm on Matt’s face as he comes rushing toward me. “Whoa, whoa, whoa! What on earth are you doin’?”
I flinch, blink—he’s gaping at me like I just pulled the pin on a hand grenade. “I’m digging up these weeds,” I inform him smartly. “They’re an eyesore, and I can’t take it anymore.”
I’m anticipating either praise for my help or remorse that he’s neglected the task—not the utter confusion I feel when he says, “Those aren’t weeds, girl. They’re snapdragons.”
“Huh?”
“Take a closer look at what you’re about to dig up there. They’ve all got buds on ’em, gettin’ ready to bloom.”
When I do as he instructs, I feel like an idiot. “Oh. I just thought ...”
“They reseed themselves and start growin’ in the spring, so it takes a while for blooms.”
I don’t know enough about flowers to really compute what he’s saying, so I reply with, “My mom always planted snapdragons when I was growing up, but she got them at a nursery every year.”
He nods and says, “They’re tender perennials.”
He might as well be speaking Greek. I look up helplessly from my kneepad. “Which means?”
“Mostly they’re treated as annuals in climates like ours, but in good soil, they can reseed themselves, and that’s what Mabel’s have done since she passed. Takes longer for ’em to blossom, but you get free flowers the rest of the summer.” He ends with one of his little winks.
“Hmm,” I say, still slightly embarrassed. To the contrary of my earlier smug thought, Nancy would be cringing in horror if she could witness what I almost did. “Well, I’m glad you stopped me.”
“You’ll be extra glad in a week or two,” he says. Then he retreats and fires back up the riding mower, soon traversing the space between our two houses in straight lines and around the trees that grow in between as I sheepishly lug all my gardening equipment back to the garage.
Heading into the house, I rehang my hat on a peg near the front door, eat an early lunch, then contemplate the long afternoon looming before me. I still can’t believe what I saw as weeds are actually going to be flowers. Some things take time, I guess.
I eventually return to the spare bedroom, resigned to looking at lost stuff, like it or not.
It’s starting to seem like ... my mission here.
So maybe I shouldn’t be trying to avoid it.
Though the first box I open contains a lost teddy bear that says To Liza from Mommy 2011 on its paw and nearly sends me bursting into tears.
That last part throws me. Oh my God, I am getting too wrapped up in the loss of it all.
Even if I know this particular item is affecting me because of Edgar, my own teddy bear.
Mabel is right—things really can be important, really can be the nearest path to lost loved ones or lost love period or just the past in general, and that’s okay.
But for heaven’s sake—2011. We have the internet now, people! Why didn’t whoever found this use the internet to seek out its home rather than mailing it off to Timbuktu?
I’m still fretting over the bear—like Edgar, he’s a quality, jointed bear, and was clearly meant as a keepsake for Liza—when I hear a banging on the back door and realize the mower has at last gone silent again. It sounds so urgent that I drop the bear on the spare bed and rush to answer.
I open it to find Matthew Cordray, hot and sweaty in a Dollywood T-shirt and old, gray “work pants,” as my dad would have called them.
I didn’t notice his apparel earlier, too caught up in shock and embarrassment, and he looks surprisingly good given this combo.
Still I say, “Dollywood?” with raised eyebrows.
He tilts his head and flashes a don’t-start-with-me look. “My girl likes the rides and it’s a nice place.”
I shrug. “Fair enough. Did you want something?”
He turns around, facing away from me, then cranes his head at a funny angle. “Is the back of my neck sunburned?”
“Yes,” I reply. “Most definitely.” It’s lobster red, in fact.
He spins back my way and says, “Thought so. Know why?”
“Lack of sunscreen?”
“Well, ya see, I got this hat I usually wear when I mow—straw cowboy hat, you mighta seen it before—but I made this deal not to wear it the rest of the summer, and it usually shades my neck, which I never thought about until I realized it was on fire.”
I purse my lips, feeling bad for him, but only slightly guilty. “Well, one has to think ahead and be careful about that sort of thing. Take it from the radiation queen. Do you have any sunscreen?”
“Somewhere,” he answers. “Guess my arms and legs get enough sun that I don’t usually burn.” Indeed, his arms look fairly tanned and just fine.
“Lucky for you,” I tell him, taking pity, “I have a ton right now. Wait here.”
Knowing I had to think ahead this summer, I packed several bottles of the highest SPF I could find, so I grab one from a bench in the foyer below the pegboard and return to the back porch.
When he sees the spray bottle, he says, “Help a guy out?” and turns again.
The request makes sense—I can see where it needs to go and get it there—but .
.. something feels weirdly intimate about suddenly being that close to him as I study his neck and spray on the sunscreen.
I can smell his perspiration, but rather than offending me, it reminds me of the way my father used to smell coming in the house after tilling the garden or repairing a car, and it strikes me as masculine, the scent of a man who works hard and fixes things.
“Hey, you busy right now?” he asks as he turns back toward me.
I’m a little taken aback, for multiple reasons, and instantly feel that a yes would sound silly, since how busy am I ever really? “Not ... especially.” It comes out with clear hesitation. “Why?”
“I think I know where we can get some blackberries.”
Huh? I’d already forgotten my brief urge to find some. “Where?”
He points in a vague southwesterly direction that tells me little to nothing. Not that a specific answer would have been a great deal more helpful to me. “I’ll grab a couple buckets from Mabel’s shed while you put on some long pants and walkin’ shoes.”
I balk slightly. According to the little thermometer on Mabel’s back porch, it’s ninety degrees out. “Why do I need long pants?”
“So your legs don’t get scratched up.”
I flinch. “This is sounding ... unpleasant.”
He just laughs and says, “Only if you don’t put on a pair of pants. And ...”
When he stops, I ask suspiciously, “And what?”
“Much as I hate to mention it, you should probably grab your giant hat, too, for the sun.”
Crap. The whole time we’ve been talking, my head has been bare—no hat.
I didn’t even think about it, but now I’m embarrassed because that’s just where I’m still at right now.
In a rush to change that, I choose the path of least resistance.
“Okay, back in five,” I tell him, then slam the door in his face.