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otherwise? They were nothing but innocent flowers that she’d lovingly cared for. What was the matter with her?
    She let go of the wheelbarrow and slumped against the side of the chicken coop; all the venom evaporated, replaced by awful pain. The last of the sun peeked through the pines at the edge of her property, making long, slanted shadows. How William had loved those trees. When they first met he’d regaled her with stories of running through the forest, playing cops and robbers and war and other little boy games. He’d spent most of his life looking at the trees sway in the Alabama breezes.
    The old barn cat, Piggy, appeared, purring and pressing against Lydia’s legs. “Oh, Piggy, I hate this.” She knelt and then sat on the hard ground. Piggy climbed onto her lap, resting his rather large head (Birdie said he had the face of a pig, thus the name) on Lydia’s knee. Lydia caressed him absently. Piggy purred louder. Something scurried, probably a lizard or mouse, and Piggy jumped as if possessed by the devil and ran toward the sound. Sighing, Lydia rose to her feet and brushed the back of her skirt with her hands.
    She left the flowers and the wheelbarrow and William’s trees, walking across the yard in his boots until she was inside and seated at the piano. She could play How Great Thou Art from memory. Her fingers knew it and so many other hymns, just like her legs knew walking. She didn’t sing along like she did when she played at church, but as she played the last refrain, William’s rich baritone seemed to fill the room.
    Afterward, she whispered the Twenty-Third Psalm and walked over to the shelf where her special things were displayed: a silver vase given to her by her mother when Lydia graduated high school, framed baby pictures of the girls, her mother’s formal tea set, and the Tyler family Bible. She turned to the Bible’s front page, where William’s mother had written:
    William Benjamin Tyler. Born December 10, 1882.
    Using her best pen, she filled in the date of his death: June 10, 1928 . She sat in the parlor as night swallowed the last of the light, gripping the Bible between cold hands, unable to think of a prayer to ask of God. She could think only, why, why, why? Then, William’s voice:
    Sweetheart, go to bed.
    She left his boots by the front door. In their bedroom, she slipped into her cotton nightgown and took the pins from her hair, letting it fall around her shoulders, shivering despite the summer heat. The feel of her hair about her shoulders always made her feel young, like the upstate New York farm girl she once was. She’d come to Atmore fifteen years ago to marry William, bringing with her nothing but the clothes in her suitcase and leaving behind the promise of a career as a concert pianist. She was eighteen when she married the thirty-year-old William Tyler. Who she was before she was his wife was a dim memory, like the faded photograph of her at sixteen, put away now in a neglected drawer.
    In the mirror, she examined her reflection, wondering if the last several days had changed her. No, it was the same face as the one William kissed only days ago. She touched her cheek, thinking of that last kiss, wishing she’d held his touch for a moment longer, had kissed him properly like when they’d first been married. If only she’d known to say a final goodbye instead of taking for granted his promise to return for lunch.
    She undid her dark blonde hair from the braid she always wore and began to brush it. One hundred strokes will keep it shiny, her mother always advised. Thick, it reached the middle of her back and was crimped from being in the braid so that it appeared to have movement, like a wheat field swaying in the wind. It was her eyes, her mother once said, that made her pretty. Framed by thick lashes, they were a light blue that looked like a hazy sky one day and the blue of a tropical sea the next. Her mother had said to her the day before she left for university,