He looked out at the garden. At all those people standing in the rows.
“So she made the garden bigger,” he said. “Every year. A little bigger. And every Saturday, she’d open it up. To anybody. Didn’t matter who. Didn’t matter why. No questions. No sign-up sheet. You just came and you took what you needed. And on Fridays, before sunrise, she’d load up the truck and drive boxes to the people who couldn’t come. The shut-ins. The old folks. The ones who were too proud to come up a driveway in daylight.” He glanced at June. “No offense, June.”
“None taken,” June whispered.
“She did that for forty years,” Dad said. “Forty years. Every Saturday. Every Friday. And then she got sick.” His voice went rough. “And the last thing she said to me, in the hospital, the very last thing she ever said to me, she grabbed my hand and she said, ‘Arne. The Fridays. Don’t you dare stop the Fridays.’”
