Wife by Design

“Yep.” Grant grunted as he lifted a stack of about ten stones and carried them over to Darin, who took them one at a time and placed them, at different angles, on top of one another.

“This is how we’ll place them when we build the wall,” Darin said. “See how they form this circle…?”

Pointing with his right hand to the more defined edges of the somewhat flattened stones, Darin gave her a brief rundown of the job ahead.

“Looks like you’ve got that part covered,” she told him, and then moved toward the loaded-down trailer in the yard beyond the garden. “I’ll help carry,” she said.

Grant stopped, hands on his hips, and stared at her. “You are not going to lift river rock.”

“Not as many of them at a time as you are,” she agreed. “But I want to help. This garden, it’s over and beyond our agreement. And I have a free hour.”

She wanted to spend time with Grant. It didn’t make sense. She didn’t want a relationship with him. Or anyone, in a partnership sense. But knowing he was there…

His presence drew her.

And so, ignoring his objections, she spent the next forty-five minutes carrying rock.

* * *

GRANT WAS PULLING weeds from a flowered border along the sidewalks between the bungalows later that week when he heard someone behind him. Darin was due out of therapy soon and they were going to put in an hour on the garden before heading home to an increasingly rare night of pizza, beer and college basketball.

They both had twenty bucks in a pool of tiered picks, a fantasy game set up by a buddy of Darin’s from college.

A buddy who still included them in sports pools but rarely came around anymore.

Maddie stood there, holding the hand of the cutest little kid he’d ever seen.

“Why you pullin’ flowers, Mister?” All curly hair, chubby cheeks and questions, the child had a babyish lisp that made her a little hard to understand.

“I’m not pulling flowers,” he told the toddler with a nod and a grin at Maddie—the woman Lynn had introduced them to that first day. The woman who shared her morning therapy sessions with Darin.

The woman who’d been abused but was now a full-time paid employee of the Stand.

Lynn hadn’t mentioned that the woman had a daughter.

But then Lynn hadn’t talked about any of the Stand’s residents on a personal basis. Or former residents, either. Other than to mention that Maddie was a full-time employee.

“See these flowers—” with one finger, Grant touched a fragile yet velvety yellow petal “—they’re colorful. They were planted on purpose to be here because they’re so pretty to look at.”

Letting go of Maddie’s hand, the little girl bent at the knees to put her face within six inches of the flower. As though she was studying it.

“Preetty,” she said, clearly mimicking something she’d heard before.

“These things—” he picked up a couple of stalks from the pile he’d been amassing on a small tarp at the edge of the sidewalk “—are not pretty,” he said. “See how it’s kind of prickly on the edges? It wasn’t planted here. Its seeds blew in the wind and if we let it stay it will use up all of the food and the water that the pretty flowers need to grow and then there would only be these ugly things and no pretty flowers.”

He was no more used to children than he was to battered women. But she was such a serious, cute little thing.

And then she giggled and looked up at Maddie. “Mister said the pretty flowers eat food.” She sprayed spit as she said the words, laughing.

“They do eat food,” Maddie said, her words a bit forced, as if she’d had to work hard to make them come out.

He wondered again if Maddie might have suffered some kind of brain injury. It was discomfiting, being around so many women who were there because they’d been injured, and yet not knowing, or being in a position to ask, what specific damage had been done to any of them.

Maddie seemed to have come off worse than most.

And she had a daughter? That was rough.

“Do pretty flowers eat macaroni?” the little girl said with another chuckle as she continued to squat next to him.

“No, it’s not like food we eat,” Maddie explained, her words slow, but seemingly just right for the child who looked so trustingly to her for guidance. As a child would a mother. The toddler wouldn’t understand yet that her mother struggled more than normal. “It’s called nutrients and I don’t know all what’s in it but ground comes with nutrients.”