Offed in the Orchids by Dale Mayer

Author:Dale Mayer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Cozy, Mystery
Publisher: Valley Publishing
Published: 2021-11-06T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

Quite a few hours later, Doreen had finished the laundry, cleaned up the kitchen, vacuumed, and generally taken care of the house that was sure to be hers for at least another year, when she turned to the animals. “Do you want to go visit Nan?”

Whether it was Nan’s name, the word go, or something else—like her tone of voice or body language—Mugs immediately started barking and racing around, looking for his leash. Goliath even appeared interested, as he sauntered toward her. Thaddeus hopped onto the kitchen table and started in with, “Thaddeus loves Nan. Thaddeus loves Nan.”

She smiled. “You and me both, buddy. You and me both.”

Then she gathered up all the animals, looked around the house bequeathed to her by Nan, and decided she should take Nan something. But she hadn’t bought anything, hadn’t made anything, and didn’t really know how to make anything, so that was pretty well the extent of what she could do right now. Shrugging, she headed out to the creek by way of her backyard garden, then stopped. She did have a dahlia with a beautiful bloom, so maybe she could make up a small floral bundle.

She raced back into the house, returned with garden scissors, and snipped off an open bloom and an almost-ready-to-open bloom. Then she grabbed some leafy greens from one of her other plants, just a few leaves to go around the edge. Back inside, she wrapped them up with a bit of ribbon. With any luck they wouldn’t look quite as homemade to Nan as they did to Doreen. With flowers in hand, she headed to Nan’s place.

At the corner she passed several people watching the river. Doreen smiled. “Good afternoon.” They waved and smiled back.

One woman said, “Oh, those flowers are just lovely.”

Doreen grinned. “Thank you. They are for my grandmother.”

“Lucky grandmother,” the woman said enviously. “That’s a truly beautiful bloom.”

“It’s a dahlia,” she said, “one from my garden.”

“Wow,” she said. “You must be quite a gardener if you can grow flowers like that.”

Doreen looked at the dahlia critically. As a dinner plate dahlia, it was huge, and it had a really strong stalk, so, in that sense, it was doing very well. “I did put a bit of work in the garden,” she said, knowing it was a load of crock because she hadn’t yet done a fraction of what she needed to do, but she was getting there.

“It’s truly beautiful.” The woman hesitated. “Listen. I know you said that you’re taking that to someone, but do you have any more that you could do up in a different bundle for them?”

Doreen looked at her in surprise. “Why do you ask?”

“Because I’m going to visit a friend, who just lost somebody very dear, and I haven’t yet picked up flowers,” she explained. “As I look at what you’ve got there in your hand, I think they’re the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Doreen immediately felt bad, wondering how could she give away the flowers she’d picked for her own grandmother, yet, at the same time, if anyone would understand, it would be Nan.

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