Grace stared at it.
“The original stays with me,” Arthur said. “The copy belongs to the education fund.”
Grace looked confused.
“Why?”
“So when someone receives help from it, they know two women they never met once believed that another person’s future was worth protecting.”
Grace’s eyes filled.
“That sounds surprisingly sentimental.”
“I’m getting old.”
“You were old when I met you.”
Arthur laughed.
A real laugh.
The kind Annie and I almost never heard during those first months.
By then, the garden at Bellweather Avenue had fully returned.
Not to exactly what it had been.
Some of Eleanor’s plants were gone forever.
New ones took their place.
Arthur allowed Annie to choose sunflowers for the southern wall.
I planted herbs near the greenhouse.
Grace added daisies beside the old roses.
Arthur complained that the colors didn’t match Eleanor’s original design.
Then he helped dig the holes.
