Free More in Anger by J. Jill Robinson

nice from the living room and bedrooms. Improvements were still under way. Tom spent one Sunday digging a large hole for what he said would be a lily pond. He mixed cement in a wheelbarrow, and worked away until past dark, and Pearl was cross with him for being late for dinner.
    On the Saturday, the day of their departure, Pearl drove them into Vancouver, taking Ruby to her piano lesson and Laurel to a ballet lesson. The two youngsters had been dropped off at a babysitter’s, and how they had cried and carried on, saying goodbye to Gramma and Grampop! They had hung off her legs, hopped up and down—what a scene! Opal herself had found it hard not to join them with her own tears.
    After the girls’ lessons, they had a light lunch on the sixth floor of the Hudson’s Bay before Pearl drove them to the CPRstation, where she had let them out at the front doors and left them to fend for themselves with their luggage. Their train didn’t depart for another four hours, so they had plenty of time. They could have had one more hour of visiting, but Pearl was clearly glad to be seeing the backs of them. “We’ve been visiting for a week ,” she exclaimed, as though she’d survived an ordeal. Not only that, she added, but she really had to get back to get Tom’s supper on.

    That afternoon, Opal had finished planting her glads, and now she surveyed the patted earth outside the dining room window with satisfaction. The hardest work was done; she could simply wait until she saw green shoots poke through the earth, as the plants began their work making the tall, strong stalks. When she held the bulbs in her hands each spring, she was amazed and awed each time at God’s handiwork. How could such an unremarkable-looking brown, wrinkly, rootlike thing produce such spectacular flowers?!
    Now she had changed out of her gardening clothes and straightened up the bedroom. She could smell supper cooking in the kitchen. She’d asked Audrey, their new girl, to have their meal ready for six. Maybe she was going to work out after all. Now that girls no longer lived with the people they worked for, Opal had found them less reliable, more likely to be late arriving and doing their work, though never late when departing. Audrey would be changing into her street shoes and slipping out the back door at the earliest possible moment.
    Right before dinner, the florist delivered Opal a lovely rose corsage, a Mother’s Day gift from May. How happy its arrival had made her! She would ask Mac to help her pin it on when he came down for dinner. What a perfume it had! She would wear it to church in the morning. What a fine daughter May was! She never missed an important date, and she never failed to write or telephone every week. Thank goodness for one daughter with a heart and a conscience. Opal’s mouth tightened into a straight line. She hadn’t heard from Pearl. Or the granddaughters. In fact, there hadn’t been a word from any of them for ages, not for Mac’s birthday last month or Mother’s Day now. What was the matter with them?
    This morning Audrey had helped Opal carry the bulbs up from the basement, and before he left for an afternoon golf game Mac had helped her prepare the soil, turning it over with a gardening fork. It would be a while before she saw signs of growth: the weather all week had been chilly, and looked to continue that way for a while yet. This morning, before she had gone outside, there had been rain, and then as she finished and was coming back in the house, some snowflakes had started falling. In May! Well, you never knew in this climate. Now, though, as she turned to go into the dining room for dinner, she saw that the sky was clear and there were stars coming out.
    Opal took her place at the table and waited for Mac. She was hungry. Her hands fidgeted in her lap. The telephone hadn’t rung once today. Well, perhaps tomorrow. After supper,