Chapter 5: What Eleanor Said
She folded her hands in her lap and looked at Justin the way a teacher looks at a student she has already decided is worth the trouble.
"I want to tell you something," she said.
"And I want you to listen before you start in with the 'I can't accept this' business."
Justin sat forward on the edge of the sofa.
"Yes, ma'am."
"I have a daughter," Mrs.
Patton said.
"Her name is Diane.
She lives in Millbrook, which is forty minutes from here, as I'm sure you don't know and have no reason to know.
She is fifty-three years old.
She has a good job, a nice house, a husband who plays golf."
She paused.
"She has not been to this house in fourteen months."
The room was very quiet.
The television murmured something in the background.
"I don't tell you that for sympathy," Mrs.
Patton continued.
"I tell you because I want you to understand what this summer meant.
Not in a general way.
Specifically."
She looked at the window.
Outside, the roses moved slightly in the afternoon heat.
"After Harold died, the yard went to pieces.
I couldn't keep up with it.
I hired a service for one summer and they sent different boys every week, none of them careful, and one of them ran the mower straight through the edge of the rose bed." Her voice tightened for just a moment.
"I sent them away after that.
I decided I would rather have the yard look terrible than have someone ruin what was left."
"I'm sorry," Justin said quietly.
"Don't be sorry.
Just keep listening." She looked back at him.
"This spring I was dreading the yard again.
I was trying to decide whether to put the house on the market.
Whether it was time to go somewhere smaller, somewhere managed.
Somewhere I wouldn't have to look at a yard I couldn't take care of."
She stopped.
"And then one morning in June, I looked out my kitchen window and there was a boy I had never seen, pushing a mower in careful lines around my lawn.
Going slow near the fence." She tilted her head.
"Do you know why I didn't come out and stop you that first day?"
"No, ma'am."
"Because you went around the roses," she said.
"Everyone else went straight through the edge.
You went around.
Without being told."
Justin looked at his hands.
"I watched you for twenty minutes," she said.
"And when you were done, you packed up your mower and left without knocking on the door or asking for anything.
And I stood in my kitchen and I cried.
Which I do not do easily and I am not ashamed to admit."
I pressed my lips together.
My eyes were stinging.
"So." Mrs.
Patton straightened in her chair.
"The money is not a payment.
I am not paying you for lawn work.
I am giving you something because I want to, and because you have earned it in a way that has nothing to do with mowing."
Justin looked up.
"What way?"
She held his gaze.
"You reminded me that people can still surprise you.
At seventy-nine, that is not a small thing."
Justin was quiet for a long moment.
Then he said, "Can I ask you something?"
"You may."
"Why did you call the police?
You could have just knocked on our door."
Mrs.
Patton's mouth curved.
It was the first time she had smiled.
"I didn't know which house was yours," she said.
"And I am seventy-nine years old and I have never in my life knocked on a stranger's door uninvited." The smile stayed.
"But I know Officer Darnell from the neighborhood watch.
I knew he would find you and he would make it feel official enough that you couldn't just say no and walk away."
Justin stared at her.
Then, very slowly, he started to laugh.
May you like
And Mrs.
Patton laughed too — a small, quiet sound, like something that hadn't been used in a while and was surprised to find itself working.
