I said thank you, and I meant it, and I got about as far as the door before I turned around.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Mm.”

“Do they know? The women who buy them. Where it comes from.”

Bev thought about it.

“Some ask,” she said. “Most don’t. What I tell them, if they ask, is that somebody grew it for twenty years and then let it go, and they usually needed the money.”