She was out in the side yard, kneeling on a blue foam pad next to her rose bushes. She wore a faded canvas jacket and yellow gardening gloves, a pair of rusted shears in her right hand as she clipped the dry, brown stems.
“Grandma,” I said, walking up the grass so I wouldn’t startle her.
She rose slowly, her joints popping under her wool slacks. She adjusted her wire-rimmed glasses, squinting against the flat grey light before she recognized us.
“Eric, Noah,” she said, her voice trembling slightly as she smiled. “You boys should have called. I don’t have any of those ginger cookies you like.”
“We don’t want cookies, Grandma,” Noah said, his voice clipped.
I stepped closer, tapping my index finger against my right knee. “We were just at the library. We read the newspaper from October of nineteen ninety-eight.”
Grandma Ruth’s hand went to her collar, but she wasn’t wearing a coat with a high neck, so her fingers just hovered near her throat. She looked at the shears in her hand, then down at the pile of dead rose branches on the grass.
