“We need to ask Grandma Ruth,” he said.
We drove down Elm Lane at two in the afternoon. The sky had turned the color of wet slate, and the wind off the cornfields was dragging dry oak leaves across the asphalt. Grandma Ruth’s small white cottage sat behind a row of overgrown boxwoods, its gutters sagging slightly at the corners.
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.”
