I stood on the porch and watched him work.
He was fifty-three that summer, and he still had the build of the man I had married at twenty-six, though he moved differently than he had then, with the particular economy of motion that comes when a person knows their own body well enough to conserve what they need for the next hour.
He was out there until six in the evening.
When he finished, he came and stood beside me on the porch and we looked at it together.
He had planted the red and yellow flowers in a pattern that looked casual from the curb but that I could see, from slightly above, was not casual at all. The colors curved through each other in a way that caught the late afternoon light and made the whole small garden glow.I said: Roy.
He said: do you like it.
I said: why those colors.
He said: because those are the ones I always bring you.
