A/N: HAPPY NEW YEAR!! Hope everyone had a nice holiday season! I am back from vacation and come bearing new chapter! Hopefully those who have been following this fic will enjoy the latest chapter. Next chapter will be up with less of a wait time, I promise! Thanks to those who left reviews, it's greatly appreciated! As always, comments are loved, so let me know what you think of the fic!
Disclaimer: As usual.
By all rights, Kevin should not have been awake at the ridiculously early hour of half past seven on Saturday morning, particularly not after the fact that he'd lain awake most of the night before. And yet, here he was, awake and up and in an unsinkable mood. He could almost swear that there was a lingering taste of strawberry lip gloss and Coca Cola from kissing Mina last night still on his mouth.
When he came downstairs, Aunt Emmaline was just stirring, and this morning, instead of hanging back unless she needed him, he entered the parlour and pulled open the curtains to let in the sunlight before helping her into a sitting position. "Hey, Auntie. How are you this morning?"
"I'm wonderful," she smiled affectionately at him. "You seem to have slept well, dear. How was the game last night?"
"The game?" The game seemed secondary now in the wake of what happened after, and for a moment, he had to think about it. "Oh yeah, it was good. Ange Harmon hit the winning run. Junior demolished about half his body weight's worth of junk food. He brought me a plate and let me share his soda, which was nice of him."
Emmaline nodded even as she smoothed over her wispy white hair with one hand and rested the other on Kevin's in an affectionate gesture which mirrored Mina's the night before. "I'm so glad that you're happy-- starting to be happy, dear. It would have been selfish of me to have you come help if you got nothing out of it."
Kevin, normally undemonstrative and aloof, bent down and kissed her papery cheek. "I've no regrets at all for coming here for the summer."
She pinked and beamed up at him, and Kevin suddenly remembered her hospital appointment of yesterday. "Oh, did the doctor say how you were doing and such?"
"Right as rain, dearie," she answered, smoothing over her house dress. "He prescribed some more vitamins, and says that whenever I feel like I'm able to, I should start spending some more time outdoors, in the sunlight. It helps the vitamin D work, you know. For stronger bones. Maybe today I'll take him up on that. I've always liked to sit on the porch with the flowers."
"I'll get you some breakfast, and then we can go outside if you want," Kevin promised, and made a mental note to add reading up on Osteoporosis and hip fractures to the other things that he wanted to get done today. He was just about at the entrance of the kitchen when Emmaline's voice halted him.
"Did you end up getting home rather late, dear? I tried to stay awake, but I don't think I heard you coming in."
Kevin felt heat rising to his face and kept his head turned away. "Oh, yeah. I ended up walking someone home. Er, Mina Atherton. I guess she lives with Miss Penelope and them."
He could practically hear the smile in Emmaline's voice. "You were walking out with Mina Atherton?Yes, she's lived across the street for about ten years now. Willie and Charity adopted her when she was about six. She's such a sweet girl. Have you befriended her?"
He made a noise which could be taken for agreement and buried his hot face in the cool air of the refrigerator.
After breakfast, Kevin carefully wheeled Aunt Emmaline to her car and helped her into the passenger seat, and backed out of the driveway. Under her careful directions, he drove the Oldsmobile to the local greenhouse about ten minutes away. Pulling into a parking spot, he helped her onto a handicapped-accessible cart and together, they made their way inside.
Emmaline gave a smooth, slow-paced commentary on the various types of flowers they passed and the best ways to make them bloom, and Kevin stored as much of the information as possible in his head as he loaded the cart with flats of annuals and supplies of all sorts.
Their cart was almost full when Emmaline paused by a stand of flower seeds. Kevin stopped with her, and watched as she slowly spun the display rack and flowers of all shapes and colours revolved before their eyes. She stopped and reached up to one spot, where only a lone pack of seeds of the particular variety was left.
"Forget-me-nots," she said softly. "Your mother loved them."
Perhaps it was, like so many other things in life, where the first time was the hardest. Kevin found himself nodding rather than withdrawing into himself at the mention of his mother's name, of remembering her. "Let's buy them. Maybe we can see if they have any more in the back."
The two of them made their way towards the checkout counter, which was manned by a tall, buxom girl in a green apron and auburn curls pulled back in a ponytail. Forthright green eyes met Kevin's as she started scanning their items. "Good morning," she greeted them. "Did y'all find everything you were looking for today?"
"We were wondering if you had any more of these in the back," Kevin held out the single packet of forget-me-nots seeds and watched with not a little admiration as she hefted a fifty-pound bag of topsoil as though it were a pillow.
"Ah, those are the last of it, I'm sorry," the girl replied. "Forget-me-nots are really supposed to be planted in early to mid-Spring. They don't always bloom if you get them in this late in the year."
It seemed very important, somehow, to have these bloom. "Do you have any tips, then? ... Lita, is it?" He glanced at the nametag pinned on her chest and remembered something suddenly. "Wait a moment. Did you happen to make cinnamon pretzels for a Little League game that took place yesterday?"
The green eyes widened, then crinkled as she laughed. She did not have a light, airy giggle like most girls, but a full, throaty laugh. "Guilty. I don't think I saw you at the game, and I usually notice cute guys."
"Great pretzels," Kevin mumbled, feeling a bit embarrassed by her "cute guys" comment. "I was sitting with a little kid who told me that you pitched for your high school team and didn't coach Little League like your boyfriend did because you were too busy studying culinary arts. He seems to have the 411 on everyone within a twenty-mile radius, not to mention the appetite of a starving trucker."
Lita laughed again and slung a bag of mulch back into his cart with a smooth movement of her well-toned arms. "Something like that. Your source is well-informed. You don't sound like you're from around here."
"I'm from New York," Kevin answered as she scanned the last of the items. "Visiting for the summer." He recalled something else that Junior had told him, and nodded at the elderly woman watching their exchange curiously. "Auntie here lives across the street from your friend Mina."
"I see," Lita's mouth curved up in a knowing sort of smile as she bagged the smaller gardening tools. "Well, for your forget-me-nots, you should keep them very well watered, and in partial shade. Let them re-seed after they bloom, if they bloom, and they'll grow again next year. They're a bit invasive, so it's best to use them as ground cover along a wall rather than try to contain them in a bed of finite size." She handed the seed packet back to him. "No charge on them."
"Are you sure?"
"They're the last of the batch, and may not bloom at all, and we're welcoming here in the South," she answered matter-of-factly. "Aside from those, your total's $63.89. I'll help you take it out to your car."
She flagged down another cashier to take her post and followed Kevin and Emmaline out to the parking lot. When they arrived at Emmaline's car, Lita told Kevin to help his aunt into the seat and pop open the trunk, and efficiently bundled everything away before he could do much more than settle Emmaline in. By the time he had settled into the driver's seat, she was already striding back into the greenhouse, though she gave them a friendly wave at the door before stepping inside.
When they returned home, Emmaline made a picnic-style lunch and took it to the porch, and together, she and Kevin ate roast beef sandwiches and cole slaw and washed it down with tall glasses of iced tea. After lunch, with her instructions, he pulled up the weeds crowding along the walls and tilled the soil.
At an unhurried pace, Kevin spent the whole afternoon working on the garden, sowing the seeds for the forget-me-nots, planting down beds of annuals, trimming hedges and mulching the soil. Following Lita's suggestions, he picked an area shaded by the magnolia trees to plant the forget-me-nots and watered it thoroughly.
He was just about finished and rinsing off his grimy hands with the garden hose when Mina emerged from the front door of the house across the street. He called out for her without planning to, and then vainly wiped his hands on the legs of his jeans.
"Hey, Kevin," she greeted him as she crossed the street. Long bare legs tanned pale golden brown paused at the mailboxes at the edge of his yard. As she took her mail, she smiled, and there was something diffident in her gaze. "How are you today?"
"Good," he answered, reaching her side. "I'm kind of dirty right now though... been gardening."
"I see that," she grinned. "It's real nice of you to do that for Miss Emmaline. She's always been so fond of her flowers."
That reminded him that there were so many things about her that he still didn't know. "What are you doing this evening?"
"Little League practice after supper, but that'll be done by half-past nine," she answered, giving him a sidelong look. "Yourself?"
"I... I still wanted to talk to you. That is, if you don't mind." His request was quietly made, not quite polished, and he wished that he was more certain around girls.
She tucked the mail under her arm and shut the mailbox, and gazed back up into his face. Her smile was still there, and her eyes were soft and warm. "Wait for me after the practice, and we'll talk after I make sure that the kids get home."
He reached for her hand, and she didn't seem to mind that his fingers were still slightly muddy. "I'll walk them home with you, and we can talk afterwards."
Her smile grew at that, and she nodded. "Okay. I'll see you tonight."
He watched her dash back across the street before going back inside. Aunt Emmaline, whom he'd wheeled back in about an hour earlier, was humming along with the golden oldies radio station as she washed greens for a salad. She glanced over and smiled when he came in. "Are you done, Kevin?"
He washed his hands in the bathroom before entering the kitchen, and took down a bottle of vinaigrette from a high shelf in the pantry for her. "Not quite. But I think I made a good start."
"Yes, indeed," Emmaline said quietly. "You'll get there by-and-by."