Page 5 of Smoke and Roses

“Who else would it be? Gary would’ve left you a bill.”

She’s right. The hardware store owner would definitely bill me for his time.

I gasp, “Now the bell makes sense. Travis fixed it when he carried the flowers out there. But the door, I don’t know when he would have done that…”

“Okay, tell me everything,” Helen says, grinning. “Screw talking about arrangements, what does he look like up close? One of the girls at work says he’s scary.”

“He’s not scary.” I chomp the muffin, my cheeks still flaming as I swallow. “He’s tall.”

“Tall… and?” Helen waves a hand impatiently.

“Really tall. And he has these damn forearms.” I set the muffin down. “I don’t know what they’re feeding them in the Army, but it should be illegal. He picked up that bucket of snapdragons like it was a coffee cup, and I had to go stick my head in the cooler for a minute.”

Helen shrieks so loud that Betsy Morris, walking by outside, stops on the sidewalk and looks in the window.

“Stop it,” I hiss.

“I’m sorry, but I’m having a wild vision of this big, mean-looking guy with flowers and you having a hot flash with your tongue on the cooler floor. It’s playing like a movie in my head.”

I roll my eyes and finish my muffin. And for some reason, I don’t shut up.

“He has gray eyes,” I add, because apparently I can’t stop now. “Gray like smoke. There’s a scar on his left arm that goes up under his sleeve. He doesn’t try to hide it, and he takes his coffee black, and he’s got the kind of mouth that you wonder about.”

Oh my God. I just said all of that. Out loud. To the bank girl. Who knows everyone in town.

I put my face in my hands. “I’m thirty-four years old. I’m too old to stick my head in a cooler over a man’s arms.”

“Nobody is ever too old for that,” Helen says solemnly. “Don’t deny yourself that, Lindsey. Enjoy it.”

The bell rings behind her. Both of us straighten up like we’ve been caught doing something.

It’s Hank Simmons. He’s here for his yellow rose, the way he is every Friday at one. Except it’s nine-thirty.

“You’re early, Hank,” I say.

“Couldn’t sleep. Thunder kept me up.” He takes off his hat. Hank’s eighty-one, tall and stooped. He’s a retired sheriff’s deputy who still stands like he’s wearing a gun belt. “One yellow rose for June, if you’ve got it.”

“I’ve always got it.” I wrap it for him. It’s one of the roses that came in this morning, just for him.

“Did you see the smoke?” I ask.

“Yep. Saw it.” He looks out my front window at the column rising over the ridge to the north. Something passes over his face that I don’t understand. “That’s the old Hollister place.”

“That’s what dispatch said. Travis got paged out a little after five.”

“Hollister place,” Hank says again. He’s still looking at the smoke.

“Hank? You okay?”

“Fine. Fine.” He picks up the rose and puts his hat back on. “You take care of yourself, Lindsey. You hear me?”

“I always do.”

He goes out. Through the window, we watch as he stands on the sidewalk next to his old truck, looking at that smoke, for a full minute before he gets in.

“That was weird,” Helen says. “I hope he’s okay.”

“Maybe there’s some kind of memory up there at the ranch. He misses June.”