“Siblings? Cousins?”
He gestured for her to follow him. “No sibling or cousins, either,” he said as they entered the living room, which contained one Barcalounger, a positively ancient TV on which CNN was broadcasting with no sound, and a couch covered in plastic. On one wall was a cross-stitched picture of a wolf. That was the only ornament besides an end table, a lamp, and a remote control. On the end table was a newspaper, neatly folded. “What few friends we had drifted away over the years with Clara’s illness,” Mr. Gregory added as he slid into the Barcalounger and hiked the foot rest. “Please sit down,” he said, motioning to the couch.
Rachel sat on the very edge of the plastic. “I beg your pardon for asking this . . . but surely you aren’t going to bury your wife alone, are you?”
“A pastor will be there to officiate.”
“I mean,” she said gently, “anyone besides the pastor.”
He thought for a moment and shook his head. “Might be a neighbor or two will show up, but I really don’t expect so. Clara’s been bedridden for so many years,” he said, and it looked, from where Rachel was sitting, as if he was tearing up.
Her heart went out to him—she could not imagine how awful it must be to be so totally alone at the last stage of one’s life. A cold shiver ran down her spine, and she put a hand to her gut, wondered if this could be her someday, sitting in an empty house, living an empty life, being an empty shell of a person.
“Mr. Gregory, is there anything I can do?” she asked. “Is there someone I can call? Make you some tea?”
He shook his head. “I’m all right. Just haven’t had a chance to get to the market,” he said again, and stared blankly at the silent TV.
“Let me do that for you,” Rachel said eagerly, glad to have a way to help, and began digging in her purse for a piece of paper.
“I couldn’t—”
“Of course you could! Really, it’s no imposition. I was going to stop by the market on my way home anyway,” she lied. “Just tell me what you need.”
Mr. Gregory eyed her suspiciously. “You’d do that for me?”
“I’d be more than happy to do it for you,” she said, smiling as warmly as she could.
After a moment, he shrugged. “All right,” he said. “I really don’t need much. Maybe some bread and milk. And prunes. A big jar. You know, the one they have on the bottom shelf . . .”
Rachel found a Shaw’s Supermarket nearby, and with basket in hand, gathered up some staples, and then went in search of prunes. Not prune juice, but the actual black and squishy prunes in a jar. And no cans. Only a jar. Mr. Gregory was very adamant about that.
On the prune aisle, there were more varieties and brands than one could possibly imagine would be available for the lowly prune, so she picked up two competing brands, one jar in each hand, to figure out why that was.
So naturally, Flynn would choose that moment to appear out of nowhere and startle her out of her wits again. “Mind, you’re blocking the prunes,” he said from behind her.
Rachel jerked around, clutching the two jars of prunes to her chest. “What are you doing here?” she exclaimed breathlessly.
He grinned, held up a package of razors.
With a laugh, Rachel relaxed. “You know, I could really begin to believe you are following me around Providence.”
“Actually, I was going to accuse you of the same,” he said, and glanced at the jars she was holding, lifted one thick brow above the other.
Rachel looked down at the jars and felt her face flame. “Okay,” she said quickly, “they aren’t for me—”
“That’s quite a lot of prunes, isn’t it?
“These are for Mr. Gregory.”
“Who?” he asked as his smiling gaze roamed her face.
“Mr. Gregory. You know, the elderly gentleman from weaving class?”
“Ah.” Flynn nodded. “How could I have possibly forgotten?” He glanced at the prunes again, and lifted that brow once more. “It’s really none of my affair, but do you and Mr. Gregory have some sort of relationship I should know about?”
Rachel laughed, put one of the prune jars in her basket and the other on the shelf. “I hardly know the man. But his wife died—”
“His wife?” Flynn interrupted, looking just as confused as she had been earlier.
“I know . . . a wife,” she whispered. “I assumed he swung the other way,” she added softly. “Apparently, she’d been ill for a long time and finally died. And he hasn’t had a chance to get to the market, what with all the stuff he had to do, so I told him I’d come for him.”
Flynn’s cheerful smile faded to a soft one, and he casually reached up to push a curl behind her ear that had fallen over her eye.
Rachel’s blood immediately began to rush warm. “A-and,” she continued unsteadily, “he’s apparently a huge fan of prunes. Jarred prunes. No cans. And definitely no fresh prunes, because they are too tangy.”