I wasn’t replacing my mother or pretending the loss didn’t matter.

I simply wanted to stop noticing an absence every time I passed a mirror.

Frank waited at the curb.

“Nine hundred and sixty,” I told him as I climbed into the truck.

“That will buy a lot of dirt.”

At the nursery, we chose four red climbing roses suited to the cold.

The ground had not frozen yet.

The clerk explained how to plant and protect them, and Frank listened as carefully as I did.