Blind Shady Bend. Adina Sara

froze where she was, first from the sound of someone’s voice, and then with the shock of recognition.

      “Robin? Robin Till?”

      “How do you know my name?”

      “Robin Till” she said again, not a question this time, because she absolutely knew the answer.

      “Do I know you?” he asked and she took off her sun hat, pulled at her skirt. No time to check her t-shirt for milk stains so she leaned into the stroller for cover, and waited for him to approach.

      “Mr. Murray’s homeroom. Miss Hayne’s history. Just about every class in tenth grade. Thorpe and Till. I always sat in front of you. Remember now?

      “Callie? Callie Thorpe?”

      He was looking straight at her now and his eyes were bluer than she remembered. Robin’s egg blue, she was thinking, almost translucent with the light shining into them.

      He hadn’t changed much. Still looked like he looked in tenth grade, except for a shaggy beard, more like he forgot to shave, like he really didn’t care what he looked like. But he was cute, carried his cuteness like an innocent, like he had no idea. He hadn’t grown any. She didn’t think he was more than 5’8”. She tried to picture him back in their homeroom, always quiet, off to himself most of the time. No one she’d ever remember but somehow she remembered him anyway. He was a soft-spoken, shy kid, the kind that might have gotten bullied except no one noticed him enough to bother. Back then he didn’t have any muscles to speak of. That much certainly had changed.

      “What in God’s name are you doing on this property?”

      “Just picking some flowers. I live over there” and she pointed to the house across the road with the flowered mailbox and satellite dish and doublewide driveway.

      “YOU live there?” and she could see he was fighting back laughter. “How long you been living there and I didn’t know it?”

      “My husband bought it last year, right before the baby. I’ve been inside mostly, caring for her, but I started taking walks after we moved in, the air does her some good, and it does me too. What about you? What are you doing here?”

      “I live just over there, at the end of the road, last house down, with my dad. He’s lived there forever.”

      “Well, small world I guess.”

      “You probably shouldn’t be trampling around on this place.”

      “That’s what my husband tells me, but I don’t see why. Nothing here but a lot of weeds and quiet. Keeps me entertained since I’m home all day with the baby. It’s a great place to practice my gardening skills.”

      “You can’t make a mistake, that’s for sure,” he said, grabbing at a stray branch that nicked his fingers, drawing a dot of blood.

      “Maybe you’re the one that should be careful around here,” Callie quipped, prying the beginning of a smile out of him. “And what brings you on to this land?”

      “I thought I saw some activity when I drove home, fresh dirt in the driveway. I heard there might be a new owner here so I wanted to check things out.”

      A new owner. Callie didn’t like the sound of that at all.

      “Well it was just me. Making a mess. No intruders.”

      “Just wanted to be sure” he said, starting to turn back up the road, just like that, when she would have wanted him to stay a little longer.

      “Maybe we’ll bump into each other again.” Her words came out flirty, she could hear it, the singsong, and she bet he heard it too. “I’m home all the time” she added, like a dollop of spice, she just couldn’t help herself.

      Callie hurried now towards her house, the shakings of a million seeds stuck to her skin and clothes. The stink of Mountain Misery filled her shoes and the baby’s hair was shrouded in Queen Anne’s lace. She shook herself and the baby off on the porch, then swept all traces of her secret garden into Ralph’s neat little empty flower boxes, where they would be swallowed into the dark earth.

      8.

      SECOND FRIDAY OF THE MONTH again. That meant Wilbur would be coming, late as usual, only three hours of good light left. Wilbur, master rose pruner, according to him anyway.

      “Did they teach you this at your master rose pruning class?” I’d ask him, pointing to those molehills of cigarette butts he tucked around the bedding plants.

      “They’re loaded with nitrogen. The plants love them” he’d shoot back. Wilbur liked to play with me and I had to admit I liked playing right back.

      Wilbur had kept my hedges razor straight and my twelve prim and proper roses fed for more years than I could remember. “Needs more iron,” he would drone in his flat voice, peppered by a thin hint of disdain, “needs more iron,” as though that was my fault. I’ve never cared much for roses, too much trouble, and I would remind him that the roses were his idea. Not to mention the wisteria he had trained and trellised into almost gothic proportion. “Quality, not quantity,” he squawked, always having the last word.

      Wilbur and I had developed a well-worn flirtation, grounded more by our common love of absurdity than anything resembling attraction. He’d set his pruners down but kept the burning cigarette dangling from his mouth. “Coming, Madame Blackwell” whenever I called out for help lifting something or other. “Whatever your little heart desires,” he’d tease me but I ignored him.

      Goodness, I had ten years on the man, but smoke and drink and a lifetime of working in dirt had deepened his pores and made him look older than me. If you didn’t know better, you’d think we were a married couple, me barking orders “When’s the last time you fed the azaleas?” and him sniggering through the smoke of another unfiltered tip, “Last time you reminded me is when.”

      I looked forward to Wilbur’s visits. I’d offer him a glass of lemonade or tea which he always rejected, “thanks, got my own,” he’d tell me, unscrewing a thermos of rum and whatever he decided to mix in with it. Together we’d sit on the top step of my porch, after the sun finished the best of it’s beating, him chugging from his thermos, me sipping tepid lemonade, and we would discuss next month’s agenda.

      “I’m sick of the buddleia,” I’d belt out of nowhere. “I’m sick of it scratching the car when I drive up the driveway. What can you do with it?” He’d take a long swig, shake his head, “Whatever you want me to do with it” and I loved the sound of it, loved the way I could almost guess what wisecrack he’d come back with. After Ned, I never had much interest in men, and no regrets there. But sitting with Wilbur on the stoop of my house grousing about what was wrong with everything, felt like a kind of love to me.

      That letter from the lawyer came the day after Wilbur’s last visit, a month gone already, I remember because he’d left his trowel on the door step which he never does, and I noticed it when I opened the door for the FedEx man. Four long weeks and I found myself waiting on the doorstep when he arrived, like an anxious teenager, and without a word I led him to the back of the garage, where the remains of whatever Ray had left behind were stored.

      I’d forgotten about those boxes over the years but ever since I got the letter, I started thinking maybe there was a clue there, maybe Pa put some of Ray’s things away that he didn’t want me to see.

      “Is there something wrong, Madame B?” Wilbur could read my face, and I wondered just how well he did know me. Maybe better than I knew myself.

      “Wilbur, can you help me with these?” He reached for the boxes. They were too far back so he went for the tall ladder, barely snagging them with his fingertips and the bottom one slid out, light and fast, slipping past his certain grasp. Bits of balsa wood, some carved, shapes of wings, broken bird beak shapes, all mixed up with sea shells, hundreds of them, broken into sand, spilled all over the garage floor.

      “Where do you