Page 37

Still warm.

Worth every shovelful of mulch.

“I’ll stop by next week and make sure everything survived,” I tell her.

“I know you will.”

By the time I pull into my driveway, the cookies are gone.

So is most of the dirt I managed to collect over the last three hours.

Well, not all of it.

There’s still mulch caught beneath my fingernails and a streak of dirt across my forearm that survived me wiping at it three separate times.

The last shift was a heavy one.

Some are.

Not because of one call, but because of all of them.

The kind of day where one emergency rolls straight into the next until twenty-four hours disappears before you’ve had a chance to catch your breath. Those shifts have a way of lingering, following me home long after I’ve clocked out.

I’ve learned not to fight it.

Sometimes the best thing I can do is keep moving.

Help somebody.

Fix something.

Dig a flower bed.

It doesn’t erase yesterday, nothing ever does.

But it reminds me there are still good things happening today.

It’s been four days since a wrong number lit up my phone, and I’ve spent pieces of all four texting a woman who quit feeling like a stranger somewhere around the second night.

Olivia.

We’ve texted back and forth every day.

I don’t know where this will go. I just know I’ve been watching the clock crawl toward this afternoon.

I climb out of the truck and glance at the time.

Eleven-thirty.

I’ve got plenty of time for a shower.

Then coffee with the woman who accidentally texted the wrong number four days ago.

The shower does the rest of the work, washing away the last of the dirt from Mrs. Jenkins’ flower bed along with whatever lingered from yesterday’s shift.

By the time I button my flannel, the only evidence of either is a pair of work boots drying by the back door.

I stop in front of the bathroom mirror long enough to run a hand through my hair.