“Oh, nothing. You just look like you’re thinking about heavy things.”

She leaned against him. “I wish I could’ve met my mother.”

“Me too.”

“I just wanna know what she looked like, that’s all.”

“Well, I can tell you what she looked like.”

“You can? How? You never met her.”

Paul held her a few feet out from him. He observed her, then touched her cheek. “She was pale skinned, just like you.” He rested a flat hand atop Ruth’s head. “Probably about yay tall, with your eyes.” He kissed her on the hair. “And sweet.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do.”

“How can a mother abandon her baby? How can a mother just leave her child to . . .” She began to cry. Ruth slumped against Paul. “Oh, Paul, sometimes I just feel like I wasn’t wanted.”

“No, no, honey. That ain’t the way it was. That ain’t how it was at all. See, the truth is, you was wanted by so many people at once that God had to sorta pick the best man for the job. And since I begged so hard, I wore him down, you could say, and he finally gave you to me, just to shut me up.”

“Oh, stop it. That’s silly.”

“It’s the truth.”

“You didn’t ask God for me.”

He was silent for a few minutes, watching the dogs circle around Pete. Paul finally said, “When I was a young man, newly married, happy as I thought I’d ever be, I wanted a baby. We wanted a baby. We wanted one so bad we could taste it.”

“How old were you?”

“Twenty. We had a pretty little farm, a nice place, fresh eggs from the chickens in the mornings, a swing on the front porch. Was everything a man could want.”

“What happened?”

“We were so happy. Not just happy. We were the luckiest people on the planet. That’s how you feel when you’re in love. All our friends started having young’uns. Most my buddies wanted boys, but not me. I wanted me a girl, always wanted me a girl I could spoil. But things don’t always work out how you want.”

He stopped talking, and Ruth could hear him sniff his nose.

“What was her name, your wife?”

“Her name was Delpha Ann,” he said, leaning his head backward to take in the sky.

“Do you think my mother’s out there somewhere?”

“I don’t know, sweetie. But if she is, I know one thing’s for certain, she’s thinking about you right now.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because we never stop thinking about the people who leave us.”

Fifty-Six
Where Wildflowers Are

The woods were filled with flowers. Little yellow flowers. Millions of them peppered the landscape beneath the tall trees near the bay. Bright, golden flashes of color, scattered among the green, stretching as far as Marigold could see.