Free Tending Roses by Lisa Wingate

it’s a two-hour drive to the airport, so I’ll be gone early.”
    “Promise you’ll be back before any of the family gets here. You know James’s jobs always run overtime.” Being left alone with Grandma was bad enough. I couldn’t face the idea of being there without Ben when the family arrived for Christmas.
    “I’ll be back.” He sat at the table, and I sat with him as he went on, frowning. “Stop worrying about them coming. It’ll be the same as always—they’ll fly in, make a little small talk about jobs, houses, cars . . . whatever, and then they’ll fly out. Aunt Jeane will take care of all the details, like she always does, and that will be the end of it.”
    I sighed, afraid he was right, afraid he wasn’t, and wondering why I cared. Things with my family had been hopeless for so many years now, I thought I’d learned to accept it. We weren’t at war, but we weren’t at peace, and mostly we just stayed away from each other.
    It seemed to matter more now that we had Josh and now that Grandma was one step away from a nursing home. “I was just hoping things would be . . . different,” I admitted, even though I didn’t know what I was hoping for.
    Ben scoffed, reaching over and rubbing my shoulder. “Don’t get your hopes up, Kate. Your dad’s too wrapped up in himself to care about anyone else, and I’ll be surprised if Karen even shows up at all. Neither one of them gets along with Grandma, and you know they both hate this farm. They’ve never made any secret of that.”
    “I know.” Something sharp twisted inside me. “I guess, once in a while, I just wish things were better.”
    “But they’re not.” He sighed, probably because we’d had the conversation before and he was tired of going over the subject of my family. His family was so unemotional, it made mine seem like a certifiable disaster. “Stop torturing yourself, Kate. Just forget about it.”
    “You’re probably right.” But I knew he wasn’t. No matter how much you want to cut your family out of your heart, you can’t. The bond is born when you are born, like an organ in your body. There is no surgery to remove it. When it is diseased, you live with a dull ache telling you that something inside you is not right.
    I rubbed my eyes as they started to burn. Then I stood up and walked to the window to look out at the little house. “I’m afraid Grandma is going to go off the deep end when they tell her they want to take her to a nursing home and get rid of the farm.”
    I heard Ben get up. “Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it. Maybe it won’t be as bad as you think. Maybe Grandma will like the idea of being in St. Louis close to your Aunt Jeane.”
    I sighed, shook my head, and turned from the window.

Chapter 5
    T HE clatter of pans awakened me sometime in the early morning. Opening one sleepy eye, I watched a squirrel trying to raid the bird feeder outside my window. The noise in the kitchen stopped, and I wondered if Grandma had seen the marauding squirrel and gone outside to chase him away. On one hand, she practically hand-fed the squirrels; on the other, she hated it when they got into her bird feeders. Like everything in her world, she felt they should know their place.
    Rolling over slowly, I reached for Ben, but realized that he was already gone. I dimly remembered him kissing me good-bye and leaving while it was still dark outside. The reality of him being away filled me with a profound sense of loneliness. I closed my eyes, knowing I was being childish, and trying not to think about it.
    A voice inside my head admonished me for being so emotional. It’s just postpartum hormones, Kate. Don’t be such a baby. Get your head together. He’ll be back in a few days. No point going off the deep . . .
    A strange, putrid smell assaulted my senses suddenly, cutting short my thoughts.
    “Eee www,” I muttered, my empty stomach rolling over as I stood up and slipped my feet into my house shoes. Whatever