Chapter 20 - TULIPS FOR THE LIVING
The marble was spotless. Nothing remained of the red tulips Arthur had dropped that night.
But he still remembered the sound of the flowers hitting the floor.
Evelyn waited beside the staircase in a soft blue cardigan. Malcolm had set two chairs and a small table near the windows. No photographers, no caterers, no audience.
“Open it,” she said.
Inside the wooden box were the dried petals from Arthur's bouquet, pressed between sheets of tissue. Evelyn had saved them after the police cleared the foyer. Beneath them lay a new letter, written in her uneven but familiar handwriting.
Arthur, that night you lost someone you thought you knew. I nearly lost you because I kept too much hidden. You stepped between cruelty and someone who couldn't stand. After that, you learned to stand beside people your father had wronged. I'm proud of the second choice as much as the first.
“We keep trying,” Evelyn said, smiling through tears.
The doorbell rang. Maria and Daniel Navarro stood on the porch with a covered dish. They had come to talk about a neighborhood tutoring program Daniel hoped to start. The restitution trustee had approved a final payment on Maria's claim that spring, but she was there because she'd accepted Evelyn's invitation—not because the family had bought her company.
Behind them stood Lauren Keene, visiting Dallas for the weekend. She held a bundle of yellow tulips.
“These were my father's favorite,” she told Arthur. “He used to plant them outside the shop.”
They ate in the dining room after all, with Evelyn insisting that everyone take seconds. There were awkward silences, then laughter when Malcolm dropped a spoon.
Later Arthur carried the yellow tulips into the foyer and set them in a simple glass vase. The front doors were open to the evening air. Evelyn came to stand beside him.
“Do you still think of that night?” she asked.
“Every time I walk through here.”
“And what do you see?”
Arthur studied the flowers, then the people talking softly in the next room.
“I see what I almost lost,” he said. “And what we still have time to make right.”
May you like
On the table, beside the yellow tulips, lay a plain envelope containing a letter from one more family ready to talk. Arthur picked it up and went back to join the others.
This time, he was ready to listen.
