Love in Bloom by Arlene James Page B

unzipped the kit, prepared a syringe and then irrigated a wound on the calf’s underside, explaining his actions as he went along. The animal didn’t really put up much of a fight. Apparently it had been through this process several times already. Tate ended by giving the ungrateful beast an injection, then he waved Lily away, released the calf’s head and chuckled as it trotted to the bucket to feed.
    He and Lily walked to the fence. After helping her climb over, he passed the medical kit to Isabella and easily vaulted the fence himself. Lily and Isabella sat in the truck while Tate tossed bales of hay into the back before driving around to the corral in front. He cut the wire on the bales, and the three of them tossed the hay into the corral to feed the few head of cattle penned there for one reason or another.
    They scrubbed their hands at a spigot beside the barn, using a bar of soap inside a net hanging by a chain, and ate their burgers sitting on the tailgate of the truck while the sky darkened and the stars began to pop out.
    She said a quick, silent prayer of thanks for the meal, as was her habit, and took a bite. Now this, Lily thought, breathing deeply of the loamy smells of earth and animals and growing things, is more like it . While nothing at all like what she had imagined, this was somehow what she had been seeking when she’d filled out her grant application back in Boston. Strangely she finally felt that she was getting to know Bygones and Kansas. Or maybe it was that she was getting to know Tate and Isabella.
    “Grandma and Grandpa will be here with the fireworks soon,” Tate observed, after chugging the last of his water and recapping the bottle.
    “Time to strain the berry tea!” Isabella announced excitedly.
    They climbed into the truck and drove to the house. This time Tate pulled into the neatly organized garage and everyone got out. Isabella led the way, chattering all the while about the special tea that had been steeping all day.
    “It’s a berry special recipe,” she joked. “It come down in the family. We get the berries as soon as they’re dark enough. They grow practically on the ground, so you got to watch where you’re stepping, and when we get enough I boil ‘em up with the leaves. Daddy helps me. And we cook the sugar in until you can’t even see it anymore. When it’s not hot, we put it in the fridge, and then after a long time, I pour it through a piece of material. What is it, Daddy?”
    “Cheesecloth.”
    “Oh, yeah. I don’t know why it’s called that, ‘cause we don’t make cheese. We’re making tea, blue tea for Red, White and Blue Day! It’s tadition.”
    “ Tra dition,” Tate corrected patiently.
    “Yep. Tadition, from my grandma Hoyt to my mama to me. Daddy says it’s his favorite thing about the whole day.”
    Lily looked around her as they passed through a tiled back hall that opened onto the rear yard at one end and into the front entry, flanking the stairwell, at the other. Hooks bearing various outer garments lined the wall on either side of the door into the garage. A box bench, no doubt containing galoshes and other types of footwear, stood between the back and garage doors, its hinged seat painted with daisies. An old-fashioned milk can sat next to it, filled with umbrellas, a baseball bat and a scarred cane. The whole thing had a neat but homey feel to it. More telling than any of that, however, were the photos lining the opposite wall.
    All eight-by-tens in identical wood frames, they varied between photos of a chubby, bright-eyed, flame-haired infant and an equally bright-eyed, flame-haired young woman whose curls tumbled down her slender back in wild abandon, or were sometimes tamed into twin French braids that ringed her head and frothed into a riot of curls at her nape. The redheaded beauty yelled at a baseball game, petted a horse, laughed heartily, smiled dreamily, sat on a log, drove a tractor… The baby, no doubt Isabella, played with