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the man!”
    Her mind made up, she climbed into bed. Picking up her cell phone, she texted Matt. Lunch tomorrow?
    She waited until he texted back. I’ll pick you up at noon.
    Kristy smiled and put the phone back on the bedside table. Satisfied, she burrowed down under her quilt and went to sleep.

 
     
     
     
     
    4
     
     
    Emma was kneeling on a gardening pad, digging up a bulb bed she’d put in the first year she had come to Casper. Bulbs lasted many seasons, but they did eventually need to be replaced in order to keep the bed vibrant. She’d chosen a base of tulips in a wide range of colors, with grape hyacinth and crocus planted only a few inches deep.
    Grace sat on a sunshine yellow Adirondack chair, one of many that ringed the fire pit area nearby. Emma had painted each of the bare wooden chairs a different color. The high, desert climate in which Casper was located brought vibrant springs. The wild rush of blooms was welcome after months of bleak and bare winters, but the dry days of summer quickly turned the landscape brown again. Emma compensated with bright colors in her outdoor pots, planters, and furniture.
    Emma sat back and surveyed her work with a satisfied smile. Then she spread a layer of chicken wire across the fresh dirt, covering it with a thick layer of mulch. Gathering her hand tools, she set them on a shelf in the gardening shed Jake had built for her at the far edge of the yard, and took a robin’s egg blue chair next to Grace.
    “I almost didn’t make it,” she said, putting her feet up on the stone rim of the fire pit.
    “Didn’t make it?”
    “Before the ground froze. You have to get bulbs into the ground at least a few weeks before it freezes or they’ll just rot in the ground.”
    “It’s quite a struggle, gardening here. I begin to think I’ve taken my California winters for granted.”
    “California was wonderful for flowers. My roses bloomed all year round and I had a geranium bush, not just the potted ones I have here. And bamboo. I had the most amazing shrub outside my townhouse called heavenly bamboo. I had a clump of butterfly iris that I just loved, though my bearded irises here are prettier and you can’t get lilacs unless you have cold winters.”
    “I never knew you were so enthusiastic about flowers.”
    “I’ve always loved them. My back yard, if you want to call it that, was a ten-by-ten square of dirt that was as full of as many flowers as I could grow. Here, I have nothing but space, but the conditions are harsh and the water — well never get Jake started talking about water rights in Wyoming.”
    “Since we’re talking of old times in California, I don’t recall you ever mentioning your family, Emma. Surely, your parents are still living?”
    “Oh yes. They’re in Florida. We started in Santa Barbara, but they moved to the Bay Area when my youngest sister started high school. They moved to Florida after she graduated.”
    “I didn’t even know you had a sister.”
    “Two sisters and a brother.”
    “How did I not know that?”
    “I don’t know. I guess I just never talk much about myself. What about your family?”
    “I had two brothers. I lost one in Vietnam and the other died a few years ago.”
    “I’m so sorry.”
    “My mother was devastated when Chuck was drafted. She was sure from that day until the day he died that he was never coming home. My father never understood the level of anger and hatred the nation had toward the men who served in Vietnam. Once when he visited my brother’s grave, he found it spray-painted with the words Baby killer .”
    “Oh no! How could anyone do that?”
    “People used to do things like that, and worse. They’d spit on a soldier walking by. They’d throw rocks through houses of people with blue star banners in the windows. I could understand the arguments against the war, but the vitriol leveled against men in uniform just took my breath away.”
    “You never married, Grace?”
    “No. There