Ghost of Willow's Past by M. L. Buchman

Author:M. L. Buchman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Buchman Bookworks, Inc.
Published: 2015-08-26T16:00:00+00:00

5

Willow listened. It was harder, took more effort. No leaves, no branches, no trunk left. All that now remained of Willow ranged deep beneath the soil. The recent bite of the saw, the tearing of the stump both too painful to recall. But Willow still heard, still felt. He asked the ground to give up its heat and Amy and Dusty talked long through the cold day. It was warm only around that one lone bench in the Rose Garden.

# # #

“A friendly face, thank god!” Dusty was deep in packing boxes when Amy dropped by.

“How’s it going?”

He surveyed the damage. Bags of clothes for Goodwill lined one side of the living room. Bags of garbage lined the other. Boxes of books to take down to the used counter at Powell’s bookstore blocked the couch. He’d kept his father’s gardening books and the travel-picture books his mother had collected.

“Okay, I guess. I’m pretty much done. Anything that’s too hard, I figure that I’m just not ready to let go of yet. Thankfully, this place is really small, so there aren’t too many of those decisions.” There’d been hundreds, though it felt like thousands of them, but the passing three years had given him some time to deal with the pain of loss. He’d make sure to offer to help Amy, so that she didn’t have to face her mother’s past while the wound of loss still bled.

“I’ve sworn that I’m going to sleep in the big bed tonight, but now I don’t know.”

He watched Amy as she hung her winter coat on a bronze hook by the door and moved to inspect the progress he’d made. She moved as if this were a military inspection, he followed two steps behind. He could see by her nods that she approved of what he’d kept. Some things she inspected more carefully, those that fit stories he’d told yesterday, others that fit stories not yet told. It was a finely honed and much appreciated assessment. He felt better with each considered nod. Hell, he felt better every single minute they were together.

The master bedroom had a pair of walnut dressers, a small desk, and a queen-size bed with fresh flannel sheets and a faded quilt. Two of his mother’s oil paintings of the Rose Garden and a small collection of roses his father had pressed in glass hung on the otherwise bare walls.

She continued her silent inspection and led them into his old bedroom. He’d purged the kid crap long ago. Now it was mostly books and part of his old comic book collection. Some drawings he’d made that his mother had liked enough that he’d pinned them to the wall half a lifetime ago. They weren’t half bad, considering.

“Here.” She picked up the couple of dinged-up Frisbees he’d kept from his days of playing Ultimate and handed them to him. She also took the two pillows and added that to what he was holding. She moved about the room picking up odds and ends and piling them in his arms.

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