The flowers arrived in a paper cup.
Tommy carried it carefully through the front door, holding it with both hands.
There were three yellow flowers inside.
They had long green stems and small petals that leaned in different directions.
One of them was already beginning to droop.
“Look what I brought.”
I set down the wrench I was holding.
“Those are some good-looking flowers.”
“They're for the shop.”
He walked toward the workbench, moving slowly so the water wouldn't spill.
Tiny came in from the back room and saw him.
“Those for Buddy?”
Tommy shook his head.
“Dogs don't need flowers.”
Tiny considered that.
“Buddy has never told me that.”
Tommy grinned.
Then he placed the cup beside the coffee pot.
“Where did you get them?” I asked.
“From the store with Aunt Helen.”
“Did she help you pick them?”
He nodded.
“She said my mother liked yellow.”
I looked at the flowers again.
“I remember you telling me that.”
“She liked yellow cups, too. And yellow towels.”
“She must have liked the color.”
“She said it looked like sunshine you could hold.”
I had no answer to that.
It was the sort of thing a person said once and never knew another person would remember for years.
Tommy looked at the cup.
“I wanted to bring some here.”
“I'm glad you did.”
“Can they stay?”
I looked around the shop.
There wasn't much that could be called delicate in Rex's Custom Cycles.
We had metal shelves, heavy workbenches, old tires, boxes of parts, and a coffee pot that had survived more neglect than any appliance deserved.
But there was a small space near the window where the afternoon light came through.
“They can stay right there,” I said.
Tommy adjusted the cup so it sat in the sunlight.
Then he stepped back to examine it.
“Looks nice,” Wheels said.
Tommy nodded.
“Yellow is my mother's color.”
Wheels glanced at me, then back at Tommy.
“Then we'll have to make sure we take care of it.”
Tommy looked serious.
“Flowers need water.”
“Good thing we have water,” Wheels said.
“And they need sunlight.”
“Also available.”
“And you can't pull the petals off.”
Wheels raised both hands.
“I promise not to pull the petals off the flowers.”
Tommy seemed satisfied.
Tank came over and looked at the cup.
“Three flowers.”
“One for each day?” Tiny asked.
Tommy shook his head.
“One, two, three.”
He counted them again with his finger.
“I just wanted three.”
Nobody asked him why.
Sometimes a child knew what he wanted before he could explain it.
We returned to work.
The flowers stayed beside the coffee pot.
Every now and then, Tommy glanced over to make sure they hadn't fallen.
He checked the cup after Tiny moved it to make room for a toolbox.
He checked again when Wheels nearly knocked it with his elbow.
By lunchtime, I began to understand that the flowers were not simply flowers to him.
They were a way of bringing something from his mother into a place where she had never been.
He was sharing a memory without having to explain every part of it.
When we sat down to eat, Tommy remained in his chair with his sandwich.
He took a bite, chewed carefully, and looked at the cup.
“Bear?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you think my mother would like this shop?”
I put down my sandwich.
“I wish I could tell you for sure.”
He looked at me.
“You don't know?”
“I never met her, Tommy. I can't pretend I know exactly what she would think.”
He nodded slowly.
“But I know what you've told me about her.”
“What?”
“You said she sang while making breakfast. You said she liked yellow flowers. You said she let you sit beside her when you were quiet.”
Tommy listened.
“Those things make me think she cared about the little things,” I continued. “And this shop is full of little things that matter to people.”
He glanced at the crooked chair.
“Like my chair?”
“Like your chair.”
“And Buddy?”
“Definitely Buddy.”
“And the drawings?”
“Those, too.”
He took another bite of his sandwich.
“Then maybe she would like it.”
“Maybe she would.”
He seemed content with that answer.
I had learned not to offer him certainty I didn't possess.
Children deserved honesty, even when the truth was that we didn't know.
Especially then.
After lunch, Tommy asked if he could water the flowers.
I found a small plastic bottle and filled it halfway.
He poured slowly, stopping when the soil around the stems looked damp.
“Not too much,” he said.
“That's right.”
“Too much water can hurt them.”
“Even good things can hurt if there's too much.”
Tommy looked at me.
I hadn't meant to make a lesson out of watering flowers, but he seemed to be thinking about the words.
“Like helping?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Sometimes.”
He put the bottle down.
“Sometimes people need help, and sometimes they need to do things themselves.”
“That's a pretty good way to put it.”
He looked pleased.
Then he carried the bottle to the sink and returned to his chair.
A little later, Helen arrived to pick him up.
She saw the flowers immediately.
“Oh, sweetheart.”
Tommy stood beside the workbench.
“I brought them.”
“I can see that.”
“They're for the shop.”
Helen moved closer.
“They're beautiful.”
“They need water, but not too much.”
She smiled.
“I'll remember that.”
Tommy touched one of the petals gently.
“They look like the flowers Mom liked.”
Helen's smile softened.
“Yes, they do.”
For a moment, she seemed uncertain about what to say next.
Then she knelt beside him.
“I miss seeing her buy flowers,” she said.
Tommy looked at her.
“You do?”
“Very much. She used to bring them home even when there wasn't a special reason.”
“She put them by the kitchen window.”
“She did.”
Helen looked at the paper cup.
“I remember the yellow ones she bought one spring. She put them in an old jar because we couldn't find a vase.”
Tommy's eyes widened.
“Mom had a jar?”
“We had several jars. Your mother believed almost anything could become a vase.”
He laughed.
It was a surprised little laugh, the kind that escaped before sadness had time to stop it.
Helen smiled through her own grief.
“Do you remember that?”
Tommy nodded.
“She said the flowers didn't care what they were in.”
“She was right.”
They stood together for a moment.
Then Tommy took Helen's hand.
“Can we buy flowers again sometime?”
“Yes,” she said. “We can.”
He looked at the cup one last time.
“Will they be here when I come back?”
“They'll be here,” I told him.
“And the chair?”
“Still here.”
“And the drawings?”
“Still here.”
He smiled.
“Okay.”
Helen walked him toward the door.
Before they left, she turned back to the flowers.
“Thank you for letting him bring them.”
I shrugged.
“They're good company.”
She nodded.
“I think they are.”
When the door closed, the shop felt quieter than before.
Tank came over and studied the flowers.
“Your place is getting fancy, Bear.”
“Don't spread that around. It'll ruin my reputation.”
Tiny brought Buddy inside for a moment, and the dog sniffed the air near the cup.
Tommy's flowers had become part of the shop.
They were a small thing, but small things were often how people made room for each other.
The next morning, I found the cup still standing in the sunlight.
One flower had drooped farther than the others.
I trimmed the stem, added a little water, and moved the cup away from the edge of the workbench.
I wasn't trying to preserve a symbol.
I was taking care of something a boy had brought us because it reminded him of his mother.
That was reason enough.
When Tommy returned that afternoon, he checked the flowers before he checked his chair.
“They're still alive,” he said.
“Doing their best.”
He leaned close to examine the petals.
“Maybe they'll last until Friday.”
“Maybe.”
He nodded, then went to sit down.
The flowers didn't erase his grief.
They didn't need to.
They gave him one more way to remember someone he loved while living the life he still had in front of him.
And that was something we could help him do.
Click here to continue reading: PART 20: By the Time the Yellow Flowers Began to Fade, Tommy Had Learned That Having a Place Didn’t Mean He Had to Feel Better Every Day
The Little Boy Behind the Window Had Lost His Mother, and None of Us Knew What He Was Waiting to Ask
Part 19 of 20
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