My knees complained when I crouched, so I used a low stool.

Needing a stool did not mean I needed someone to take the garden away from me.

For a while, we talked about ordinary things: a school project, the elevator repair, whether the fence would need painting in spring.

Nobody mentioned the store’s November date.

I hadn’t learned its final outcome, and I wasn’t going to spend the afternoon guessing it.

When the last rose was planted, Brenda stood beside me with soil on the cuff of her coat.