When she got out, she did not go to her door. She came around to the trunk, and she stood there with her hand flat on the lid.
“Carolyn,” she said. “I need to ask you something about Dale.”
“All right.”
“Did he ever tell you why he put the red one on the end? By the sidewalk?”
I thought about it. “He wanted a red one at each end. He liked things to come out even.”
She shook her head. Her eyes were red around the rims.
“I went out there for a bottle of something. I told the old man I had a rose going brown at the bottom and was there a spray for it. He asked me where the rose was. I told him. And he took his glasses off and he said, ‘That’s Dale’s walk.'”
I had to put my hand on the fender of her car.
“He remembered all of it. He said your husband came in last April with a drawing on the back of an envelope and bought eleven roses at thirty-two dollars apiece and paid cash, three hundred fifty-two dollars, and counted it out twice. He said Dale told him he’d never planted a thing and to talk slow.” She swallowed. “And he said Dale asked him which one had the best smell. Mr. Pruett told him Mister Lincoln, there’s not a red rose that smells like it. And Dale said, good, then one of those goes on the end by the sidewalk. Because that’s the one she’ll walk past coming home from church by herself, and he wanted you to smell it before you got to the door.”
I had not known that. For fourteen months I had walked past that rose every Sunday at noon, and I had not known it was put there for me to walk past.
I could not say anything. Vicki did not make me.
After a while she said, “He told me there isn’t any spray. He said a dog going in the same place every morning is like pouring the fertilizer on straight out of the bag, every day, in one spot. It’s the salt and the nitrogen. It burns the roots. He said once or twice, a rose shrugs it off. Every day for two months, it’s done for.” She looked at me. “So it was fertilizer. I was right about that. I just had no idea what I was saying.”
“No,” I said. “I didn’t either, or I’d have told you.”
“I asked him what it would cost to make it right. He said thirty-two dollars and a shovel, same as last year, he hasn’t gone up on roses.”
She opened the trunk.
There was a Mister Lincoln in a black pot, with three fat buds on it and one bloom open, dark as a cherry. There was a bag of planting mix. There were two bags of cypress mulch. And there was a shovel with the price sticker still on the handle.
“I didn’t own a shovel,” she said. “I do now.”
“Vicki, you don’t have to.”
“Yes I do. Don’t be nice to me about it. You’ve been nice to me for twenty days and it about killed me.” She hauled the pot out and set it on the driveway. “I’m going to dig the hole. I’m going to do it myself. I only need you to tell me where.”
Specialty: Quiet Comebacks & Personal Justice
David Reynolds focuses on stories where underestimated individuals regain control of their lives. His writing centers on measured decisions rather than dramatic outbursts — emphasizing preparation, patience, and the long game. His characters don’t shout; they act.