Hello Love by Karen McQuestion

Author:Karen McQuestion
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3, epub
ISBN: 9781477824948
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Published: 2014-09-15T18:30:00+00:00

TWENTY-FOUR

The day after visiting Gram, Andrea came home to find a box from a florist propped against the door. She carried it in to the kitchen table and opened it to find a dozen red roses wrapped in plastic. The accompanying card had a traditional valentine heart split in two with zigzagged edges. Inside he’d written: My apologies for everything. Love, Marco. When they were married, this kind of thing would have healed a lot of hurts. Today, not so much. She ripped the card into a dozen pieces and then took the resulting handful of confetti and flushed it down the toilet. Anni stuck her head over the toilet bowl and watched with rapt interest, not really sure what was going on, but knowing this wasn’t the usual routine.

After arranging the roses in a vase, Andrea told Anni to stay, threw on her jacket, and carried them over to her neighbor Cliff’s house. She rang the doorbell with her elbow and watched her breath turn to fog in the cold air. When he opened the door, she didn’t wait for a greeting. “A present for you,” she said, thrusting the vase his way.

His face lit up with delight. “What have I done to deserve this?” he asked, opening the screen door and taking the flowers out of her hands.

“Just a thank-you for being your wonderful self,” she said. “I appreciate the times you’ve watched Anni and she loves you too.”

Cliff stuck his nose in the bouquet. “I’d invite you in, but I have company,” he said, grinning devilishly.

“That’s okay. I just wanted to drop off the flowers,” Andrea said.

“Cliff, who is it?” A petite gray-haired woman appeared at his side. “Oh, what beautiful flowers.” She cast a sideways glance at Andrea and then at Cliff.

Andrea, who had a knack for sizing up a situation, took in the scene. The woman was older but attractive, her hair cut in a shoulder-length bob, a nautical scarf tied around her neck, dangling gold earrings on each side. Cliff, still holding the flowers, regarded this woman with pride and she looked at him the same way. Andrea saw something at the edge of that look, something that said this woman was protective of Cliff and wondered who this woman bearing flowers could be. In that second she saw what should have been obvious—red roses meant romantic love. Probably not the best choice for thanking a neighbor for dog sitting. “I’m Andrea,” she said, filling the silence. “A neighbor. Just dropping off some flowers.” To clarify, she said, “A gift from my ex-husband. I didn’t want them around, but was thinking it would be a shame to throw them out. I thought Cliff might enjoy them.” That, she realized, was probably not the right thing to say. Now she’d admitted to regifting, and to having an ex-husband who sent her roses, which was fairly unconventional, if not completely weird.

But if all of this put her in a bad light, the woman didn’t acknowledge it. “What a lovely thing to do,” she said with an enthusiastic shake of her head.

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