Dead Flowers | H.S.

Chapter Twenty-One

"And it will have a sun room."

"Beside the veranda."

"There will be a mud room, too. Somewhere to stamp our feet after planting, harvesting, growing, plucking."

My teeth sunk into my trembling lower lip. My eyelashes darkened the light of day.

"It can be old or new, I don't mind."

We had been sitting in his snowy driveway for a little under ten minutes, sinking into our seats, moving our knees next to each other, watching our breaths cloud before us, singing the last notes of a Fleetwood Mac song. My heart was quiet, his breathing was loud. His eyes watched me and my fingers traced his.

The house Harry had grown up in was made of bricks, red, sturdy, stacked into a two story home with lots of windows and one door at the front. The front yard was small and had two trees that towered over the house. The driveway was even smaller-Harry had to park across the street. There were lights on in the house, shadows behind the curtains, street lamps on the curb.

Silently, we both moved, synchronized. Harry pushed me from the door with gentle hands when I reached for the bags in the backseat. Then we were walking up the icy stairs, Harry close behind me, shivering with some sort of excitement. I thought about Harry when he was young, bounding up the concrete steps with Wayne hot on his tail, both soaked to the bone from the river. Perhaps they had run into the house covered in scales from a fresh catch, perhaps they had been asked to dry outside in the sun before they were allowed to come inside and watch television.

Just before my knuckle touched the glass of the front door, the heavy green door that was worn as it was tall, swung open. There stood a woman that was only a few inches taller than me, a woman with Harry's chestnut hair, with an apron tied around her navy dress, flour strewn across her prominent cheekbone with haste. She looked into my eyes, smiled warmly, showed me where Harry had found his dimples, then glanced at Harry.

"You two left me in suspense," she said, opening the glass door and letting us into the house. It smelled like Harry-like warmth, like love, like home. "Gossiping in your car like school girls."

I smiled, couldn't keep my eyes from her thick figure. Harry's mother was stout, fingers worn and arms thick with muscles that raised and lowered whenever she moved. Her hair was not curly like I thought it would be, but it was his hair color, freckled with gray strands.

"Alright, love," she started, taking her hand off Harry's cheek while he settled our bags somewhere behind us, perhaps in another room, "let me get a good look at you."

His mother took my hands in her warm ones, so dry from baking. She held onto me tightly while she surveyed my being, carefully looking into my eyes before she looked down at my sweater and bell bottoms, touched my long hair, pressed thumbs to my cheeks.

"Ain't you a beauty," she said warmly, pulling me in for a hug. Then, when her lips were close to my ear, "Harry won't shut up about you."

I turned to smile at Harry, but he was no longer in the entryway. It was his mother and I, standing, holding, touching each other for the first time. She was so much warmer than my own mother-I wanted to hold my head to her chest.

"You've been taking good care of him," she whispered once more, eyes pouring into mine, "he tells me all about the girl he met at the record store, the one with a sash in her hair, with eyelashes dark as coal and eyes as bright as the stars."