“Mrs. Davis?” she said, standing up. “I’m Leticia. I’m your home health nurse. I’ll be here every morning for the next six weeks. Dr. Chen arranged it.”
I looked at Joyce. Joyce looked at me.
“I can’t afford a home nurse,” I said.
“It’s already paid for,” Leticia said. “The whole six weeks. He said you’d say that.”
Malcolm came by that Friday. He brought a bag of groceries and a bouquet of yellow roses.
Not from a florist. From the grocery store. Wrapped in plastic, with the price tag still on. $12.99.
“I wasn’t sure what kind you liked,” he said. “Sarah said yellow.”
“Sarah talked to you?”
“She called me,” he said. “Wednesday. To apologize. And to say thank you for telling the truth.”
I didn’t know what to say. I put the roses in water in my kitchen.
We sat on my porch swing that afternoon. The rain had stopped for once. The cherry tree in the backyard was bare, and the air smelled like wet leaves.
