"The Flower Maker's Apprentice" by full_moon_forever

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4. December’s Eyes. 1983 This story begins and ends with the Dayberry family. Petite yet strong, they lived in a small rural town of Aster, which was about half an hour from the nearest city. They decided to raise their daughters, December and Jill, in an environment where they would learn to love nature. Aster would be the birthplace of their third child, who Mrs. Dayberry was pleased to know would be another girl.

5. Aster’s people were simple, and liked to know that they could live without modern technology on a daily basis. They held jobs that people in the city considered unimportant, but their jobs only added to the quaint feel of the town. As a worker got older, he or she tended to employ a younger worker as an apprentice of sorts, who would continue the business when their mentor died or was unable to work.

6. Cell phones were a rarity, and land phones were just as rare. People sent their children through the meadow towards the east edge of the town to deliver messages to their neighbors. Naturally, when December Dayberry moved in, the townspeople developed a grudge against her constant need for medical attention. She was more in the hospital than out, and it was due to a surgery that had the potential to fix her disease. Her family could barely pay for the heart medicines, let alone open heart surgery.

7. One night, the Dayberry parents tucked their daughters in before going to bed themselves. As usual, Jill woke up in the middle of the night, sure she had seen a monster in her flowery closet. She crept through the hall of her house and opened her sister’s door. She tiptoed in, like she did on so many nights when her imagination ran wild, and lost her breath.

8. Jill always thought that her sister’s heart disorder was curable, like the chicken pox she contracted in first grade. But on that night, her sister proved her wrong. December’s dead body was at an angle where Jill could see a thin layer encrusted blood covering her sister’s face. Her gray fingers held her chest, and her chestnut hair was dangling off the bed. Her vacant eyes stared at her sister, who let out a deafening scream. Throughout the funeral process, and indeed for the rest of her life, Jill Dayberry could never forget her sister December’s eyes.

9.

10.

11. The Time of Goldenrod. 2003

12. The flower arranger ran past her desk. It was four in the morning, but she was alert as usual, happy that someone else was there to talk to her. She had such an easygoing personality that her frequent customers found themselves spilling family secrets of all kinds to her. Her most recent customer, John Dugesia, was expecting the birth of his first child, a daughter who he was planning to call Amy.

13. “John!” the flower arranger flung open the door, seeing a man with seemingly new wrinkles in his relatively young face. “Did Natalie have the baby?”

14. He paused for a moment, and then mumbled, “Yes.”

15. “Then you’ll be wanting the flowers I chose for you. I picked them yesterday; they’re very lovely.” As she swung through the shop, she grabbed a dusty apron and slung it over her nightdress.

16. “Stop,” he tried to reach out his hand to pause the flower arranger, but she twirled past him, her apron barely touching the wooden floor. “Jill!” He yelled, and only then did the flower arranger stop and look at him, curiosity reflected in her minty eyes.

17. He was breathing hard. He swallowed exaggeratedly and finally bowed his head. “She’s dying.”

18. “Who’s dying?” Jill took in a harsh breath, steadying herself on the countertop and knocking over a vase of tulips.

19. “The baby, who else?” He responded with a scowl, attempting to hold his tears in.

20. “What do you mean? Why is she dying?” Jill gathered flowers in a flurry of petals. It had been her only way to calm shot nerves since her sister December’s death.

21. “We have to raise $40,000 for open heart surgery, and even if we do, I’m not sure her heart will do well in such a big city.” He opened his arms, as if to demonstrate the sheer naturalness of Asper as compared to the city. “She’s in the Critical Care neonatal unit, away from my wife, with almost no heartbeat except by machine. She has Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome.” Jill let out an audible gasp. As a small child, she had trouble pronouncing the lengthy name of her sister’s killer, but she remembered it well, even so many years later.

22. “Oh my god,” Jill moved her hand to her own heart, which was now beating much more than it usually did. John was looking at the floor, focusing his tear-filled eyes on the wood rather than on his troubles.

23.

24. “We can’t afford it.” He sunk to the floor, his nose nearly dusting the flower crumbles embedded in the wood. “We can’t afford it,” he repeated.

25. “Our only option is to give her up so she can possibly have a chance, but where are we going to find prospective parents with enough money in the time she has left to live? She could be dead now. I need to find parents who will let me and Natalie know how she’s doing and give her a happy, healthy home somewhere where she’s not going to get heart failure every five minutes from a passing car...”

26. “But I don’t get it. Why wouldn’t a hospital try as hard as they can to help you pay for her surgery? Surely they want their patients to survive?” She asked, with a small twinge in her voice.

27. “This hospital is almost bankrupt. It’s about to go out of business, and they figure they can save more lives by staying in business than by giving financial aid. So, we’re not eligible to receive anything. I guess we just need someone to help her...because I can’t bear to see my only child die...” He resumed his sobbing, and continued for a few moments.

28. “Well, I might not be a lovely and secure married couple,” Jill secured her fate in each syllable, “but I do have an opportunity open for an apprentice.” She flashed John a strong smile.

29. “But, Jill,” he fingered his bitten nails as he spoke, “You’re a flower seller, a single girl. Where’s a girl like you going to get enough money?”

30. “You haven’t met my...my younger sister. Now, John, may I help you or not?”

31. “Are you sure?” He asked, silently pleading. “I...I mean, it’ll be a major commitment. The money is just the beginning.”

32. “I’m positive.”

33. “Jill, you saved my—her—life,” he wrung her hand vigorously. “Natalie and I are going to be in the ER. I’ll try to reach you if she dies, but if you don’t hear from me, just try to get to the hospital as soon as you can.” He wiped his tears on a spare rose petal and started ambling towards the door. “And, by the way, welcome to the family, Jill.” With a clanging bell in his wake, he left.

34. As soon as he walked out the door, Jill hurriedly unlocked the rusting cash box where she put her business profits between bank trips, finding only about 700 dollars inside. Once the bank opened, she wiped out her business bank account for $10,000, and started to ask for loans.

35.

36. Jill’s younger sister Willow’s house was on a hill, not near the flat piece of land that Asper used as the marketplace. It was certainly a hike to get up there, but Willow had no need to be close to where Jill sold her wares on the weekends. Her only duty was to take care of their ailing mother, who above all else wanted to see her daughters as mothers, but neither of her daughters that lived to adulthood had ever married. Willow’s money came from a lottery prize she had won when she was nineteen, which was big enough for her to live the rest of her life quietly in her birthplace but not enough to move elsewhere and never have to work again. Whatever profits she made from odd jobs she did around the town went straight to a Hypoplastic Left Heart Surgery fund she started to honor the sister she had never met.

37. Willow was making a soufflé for her mother when she first heard the doorbell ring. As it rung again and again with more urgency, she dropped an oven mitt on her mother’s wicker armchair and opened the door.

38. “Jill! Fancy seeing you here on a workday. How’s it going?” Jill hugged her slightly, then pushed into the house and shut the door.

39. “Willow, I need money. It’s to save a child,” she panted, “who I’m going to adopt. Please, Willow, just loan me a little.”

40. “Are you sure about this, Jill? I mean, I know you’ve been considering it for a while, but...”

41. “Are you happy for me, or are you not?” Jill put her hands on her hips.

42. “Of course! Did you hear that, Mom?” Willow shouted as she ran through the house. “Jill’s adopting!” The old woman’s wrinkles lit up like a string of Christmas lights. She opened her deep blue eyes widely, as if merely hearing this news wasn’t enough, she had to see it as well.

43. “I need $19,300, Willow.”

44. Willow’s face fell with shock. “Why so much for one kid?”

45. “She needs open heart surgery to live. She has HLHS.” Jill was too distracted to look, and Willow was happy, because she could not contain a tear from rolling down her cheek. “I’ve already emptied my business profits and my cash box, I just need to take out a loan from you so I can pay for an innocent child’s life.”

46. “Her parents have no interest in this?” Willow’s eyebrows shot up to the top of her forehead.

47.

48. “They can pay $10,000, but they want a home for their child somewhere where she won’t have a heart attack from all the cars. You should have seen Mr. Dugesia’s face, Willow. And you—“

49. “Jill. This is about December.” Willow said, and the room instantly felt colder. “You know that she had no chance. You couldn’t have helped her.”

50. “But when I walked into that room, and saw all the blood, and her dead face, and Mom’s screams...” Jill lowered herself into a wicker armchair beside her mother.

51. “None of us could have done anything,” her mother answered. “Not you, not me. No doctor could have come in that room and fix everything. You’re forcing yourself to relive it, which I do fairly often, but you’re using a live child as bait for your imagination.”

52. “You think that’s all it is?” Jill stood up quickly, and put her hands on her hips. “You think I could just walk into my older sister’s room because I thought there was a monster in my closet and I discover there’s a monster in her room? You think I could see her eyes rolled into the back of her head and I don’t take personal responsibility?”

53. “Jill!” Willow interceded. “When I was seven, I assumed that every older sister died like December. You scared me so much that I woke up almost every night, in a panic, trying to find you and make sure you were okay.”

54. “Girls!” Their mother yelled. “I know this was hard for all of us, but do we really need to take on that burden again?” She faced Jill, her deep eyes looking remarkably dull. “I bless you for trying to help, but there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s just December, all over again.”

55. “Well, if that’s how you feel,” Jill grabbed her bag from the desk and tried to leave.

56. “Jill.” Their mother steadied herself, and stood. Even though she was shorter than her daughters, she commanded a strong presence in a room. “I know what you’re thinking. You want to think that if you give up everything you’ve worked hard for all your life to save this baby, your debt to the family will be repaid.” She sighed, “It’s not that simple. I once put my name on a list to adopt a young child with a heart defect. But when I got there, and saw the tiny boy in the arms of his sobbing mother, I left without a word. We still correspond. I went to his wedding on the day of your graduation, Willow. That’s where I was. But he had her eyes. Always, he had those deep blue eyes that looked almost purple in the sunlight.”

57.

58. Willow drew in a sharp breath. “And Mom, you were willing to give up my graduation for a random baby who reminded you of December? What about me, Mom? I’ve always known what it is—you hate me because I’m healthy. You hate me because I’m not like her. Right, Jill?”

59. “Leave me out of this!” Jill picked up her bag and started to open the door. “You solve this yourselves.”

60. “Wait, Jill.” Willow steadied herself, then stood, leaning on the counter. “I have my lottery money. If December had been alive when I won...my money would have saved her. I would have had to work, but at least I would have made a valuable contribution to my family.” She glared at her mother and continued, “I can’t see why, but if you really want to subject yourself to torture...”

61. “It’s not torture, Willow! It’s my life we’re talking about!” She lowered her voice, and looked into her sister’s brown eyes. “I need to move on, and this baby could help me.” Jill’s eyes filled with tears. “For me?”

62. “You’re my sister. I’d do anything for you,” Willow collapsed in Jill’s arms. After she calmed down, she wrote out a check for the full amount from her “December’s Spirit” fund.

63. “I’ll pay you back, Willow. I’ll put more money back into the fund once I earn it. And I’ll show you the baby, too. Show you how she can live.” And, with a last glance outward, Jill left, still muttering to herself.

64. In the taxi that the Dugesias sent for her the following night, Jill couldn’t stop picturing her new daughter. Did she have brown hair like December, Jill wondered, or maybe black? Or red or blonde? And She had heard John talk about his wife Natalie before, like when he was a customer a little over a year ago for their wedding bouquet of spring lilies, but Jill had never actually met her. This puzzlement took her through the half-hour ride, up to the hospital’s emergency entrance, where she flew in like a rocket.

65. “I’m here to see Dugesia. Baby girl.” She alerted a nurse, who led her to the intensive care nursery. A small, slightly gray baby was lying in a cradle. The machines pumping her blood only made her look smaller. Tubes were sticking out of her chest, and a heart-lung machine was recycling her blood and passing it through her body. “How soon can we do the surgery?”

66. Money passed hands, and five surgeons came to discuss the risks of the Norwood procedure, the first of three that the baby would have to endure to have a chance at survival. John Dugesia and his petite, brunette wife Natalie were there, but not involved in the discussion.

67. Natalie was huddled over sobbing in an armchair in the waiting room, and John was calling a law firm on a nearby pay phone, trying to arrange for a judge to come over and give Jill legal custody of the baby. He was slurring his words, and it took several tries at the sentence before he could get it out.

68. “They told me she has a 60% chance of survival...” he moaned at Jill when she awoke from her short sleep in the waiting room. “They asked us if we wanted her to die.” He choked, and then continued. “I said no...I said that she had someone who knew about the disease...who could care for her...”

69. The next morning, the baby was scheduled for the Norwood procedure. After checking her vital signs and the functionality of the heart-lung monitor, a nurse strapped the baby into a stretcher, and they put a sedating needle in. Jill sat in the waiting room, and remembered her sister’s dying face as she watched the baby leave the room, prepared for surgery, and possibly her death, without a name.

70. The scalpel moved through her milky skin, having no mercy on its softness. A cooling solution injected into her semi-formed heart stopped it, and two technicians sat by the heart-lung machine, which was adjusted for such a small body. The head surgeon prepared the Blalock-Taussig shunt that might save her life, and inserted it deftly into her tiny heart.

71. As he stitched her sternum closed, the team of surgeons all held their breaths. And, suddenly, with the aid of the machines, her heart took its very first true beat, her right ventricle delivering blood to her lungs and all around her tiny body.

72. Jill Dayberry was the only one pacing around the waiting room, waiting for news of her beloved daughter. The Dugesias had gone home a few hours after their judge arrived, who had hurriedly declared Jill the baby’s legal mother in the emergency room. At about half past midnight, the five surgeons left the operating room, hardened expressions on their faces.

73. “How is she?” Jill ran over to the closest doctor.

74. “She’ll live. Her heart accepted the shunt, but we don’t know how long that’ll last. She’ll definitely need the other two procedures. The first one, she’ll need in five or six months, and she’ll be ready for the second one about a year after that. But she’ll definitely live, at least until the next surgery,” he said.

75. “There are some things we need to talk about, though,” the head surgeon motioned for Jill to sit in one of the leather chairs.

76.

77. “First, I want to thank you for the life of my daughter, Doctor...”

78. “Coleman.” He patted the bald spot on his black hair.

79. “Doctor Coleman. You’re truly a saint.” She shook his large, dark hand vigorously.

80. “I just do what I can,” he acknowledged, and then remembered that there were more serious things to talk about. “The baby will live as long as she is sedentary. That means no running, skipping, especially jumping. She can’t move that much or she’ll overexert her right ventricle and her heart will enlarge. She’ll lose too much blood.”

81. “But what can she do?” Jill asked rhetorically, thinking about the small girls that loved to frolic in the meadows of Asper before realizing that Dr. Coleman had spent the past hours of his life in extreme stress to ensure that the baby would live.

82. “She can live,” Dr. Coleman answered shortly, then took a bottle of Purell out of his coat pocket and started to wipe his hands. After a short awkward silence, he asked politely, “Are you prepared for taking care of this baby? She’ll need the two other surgeries, as my colleague said, and she’ll need to take pills and go to a pediatric cardiologist for regular appointments.”

83. Jill nodded, and craned her head to look for the baby.

84. He gave her a piercing look, and continued. “She’ll need to stay in intensive care for two weeks at least, until her heart is strong enough to risk the journey to Asper. Visiting hours are from 5-5:30 for the first weeks because she won’t be strong enough for a longer visit.”

85. “I wish you the best of luck,” Dr. Coleman patted her blanket with his large hand and stood up. “Miss...”

86. “Dayberry. Jill Dayberry.”

87. “Okay, Jill Dayberry.” He flashed a wide smile, revealing a perfect set of teeth. “Sorry, but I have an operation coming in.” He threw a pair of white scrubs over his outfit and hurried out the door.

88. “I have a daughter,” Jill mused as Dr. Coleman rushed out of sight. Settling in a squishy armchair, Jill prepared herself for the visiting time in two hours.

89. As soon as Dr. Coleman felt that the baby was strong enough, Jill took her out to walk along the paths of the hospital, looking for flowers. It was late summer, and the only flowers in bloom were goldenrods, long-stemmed golden flowers that were fragrant and charming. Kneeling to pick up a flower, she held it up next to the baby, who crinkled her nose and sneezed. She peeled back the swaddling to reveal the baby’s full head of golden hair, which had been

90. ignored in the fight for her life in the weeks before. “Goldenrod,” she whispered to the now-sleeping infant in her arms, “Goldenrod Dayberry.”

91. Goldenrod flourished in her new home, and after a few months, she was delighting everyone she saw with gummy smiles and looking gorgeous with her blonde hair down to her soft ears. Jill set up a crib for her in her store and in her home in the back to avoid having to move her too much. Business bloomed for Jill after she adopted Goldenrod; the baby was so enjoyable to be around that her customers found themselves buying more than they usually would.

92. When she was six months old, Dr. Coleman sent Jill a letter reminding her to bring the baby in for the second operation. Called the Bidirectional Glenn procedure, this would direct Goldenrod’s right ventricle to pump blood only to the body, and it would flow back to the lungs to be processed by the right ventricle again.

93. Dr. Coleman and his team removed the Blalock-Taussig shunt that they had put in place when she was a newborn, and marveled that her right ventricle could bear the stress of transferring blood to her entire body as well as recycling old blood. During Goldenrod’s two-week hospital stay, he

94. In April, when Goldenrod was eight months old, she was sitting in her wicker cradle, hugging her favorite stuffed animal, a monkey from her proud Aunt Willow, when the first spring customer entered.

95. Jill catered to her customer easily, loving the start of the new season. Goldenrod’s deep blue eyes followed her mother everywhere, and she smiled a toothy grin with her five new teeth when the customer came to the counter to pay for a bouquet of purple lilies and gave her head a pat.

96. When the customer was leaving, Jill shouted “Thanks!” after her, and was about to shut the door when she heard a barely audible voice saying “Fanks.”

97. “What did you say?” Jill ran over, and picked up the baby, twirling her a little but not too much. “What a prodigy! You’re brilliant!” She smothered her with kisses, only to put her down when the doorbell rang to admit another customer.

98. It was two months later when John Dugesia came in for his monthly visit, played with Goldenrod a bit (she had recently adopted the habit of shrieking “Kangie Woo!” whenever

99. anyone entered Jill’s store), and announced that he was the father of a healthy boy and he was coming to buy Natalie flowers.

100. By the time Goldenrod had to have the Fontan procedure, she was a year and a half old. She lived as simple a life as could be lived and made up for her lack of motion by constantly talking, which she mastered easily and very early. The final procedure involved Dr. Coleman restructuring her heart to allow the blood from the body to go back to the lungs and get pumped out again. Her right ventricle was posing as an entire heart, and her physical activity was even more limited because of the new risk of arrhythmias, but Jill knew that her daughter was a survivor, even though her mother was still unable to acknowledge her as a true grandchild.

101. On the day of Goldenrod’s release, three weeks after the Fontan procedure, a maternity doctor delivered a letter to Jill, inviting her to come to a room. She carefully pushed Goldenrod’s temporary wheelchair up the elevator and into the floor where so much had happened in the year and a half prior.

102. As Jill opened the door, a small boy ran out. He had dark brown hair, and was wearing a blue shirt with a fire truck on it. He looked up at Goldenrod, who was sitting about six inches above him and staring down at him with her typical curious look. “Hello?”

103. “Hi,” the little boy answered, and stared up at Jill and Goldenrod before a very familiar hand seized him back into the room.

104. “Well, if it isn’t John Dugesia.” Jill put her hands on her hips and stared at him. “Long time, no see.”

105. “Jill. Sorry I haven’t been by to visit in so long. It’s just...well, you know as well as I do.” He stopped abruptly, still holding the little boy by his shirt. “Run along, Tom,” he dismissed the boy, who ran into the hospital room and sat in the visitors’ chair, playing with a puzzle. John knelt down to look at the little girl in front of him. “I haven’t seen her in forever. So this is...?”

106. “Yes, Goldenrod. Your daughter.” Jill answered shortly, and Goldenrod pushed her hair out of her face and looked up at her, her eyes filled with pitiful wondering.

107. “Mama? But you’re my mama, not him or the lady inside. Why, Mama, why?”

108. “We’re both your mamas,” she said, for lack of something to say, and then added, “But his wife is the mama who made you, and I’m the mama who loves you.” Both adults simultaneously started crying, and Goldenrod freed her hands from her mother’s grasp and started patting her back.

109.

110. “Do you want to see your other mama?” Jill asked when she had calmed down, and she picked up Goldenrod and put her in the bed next to Natalie, where Goldenrod immediately started patting the fuzz of hair on the blue bundle in Natalie’s arms and whispering to it. The Dugesias smiled falsely throughout the visit, and by the time Jill and her daughter left the room, there was not a dry eye in it.

111. When Goldenrod turned five, Jill decided to let her help pick flowers. One of the other women that lived nearby would always be in the fields, watching Goldenrod and the other little girls, who all loved to frolic in the meadow. Goldenrod had to sit and pick flowers in a small radius around her, and she stayed on task, but she loved to watch the other little girls run around and skip in the flowers.

112. Before long, the new spring season started, and Goldenrod was acknowledged as the flower arranger’s apprentice, as it was something she was good at and could do without overexerting herself. With Goldenrod learning the ins and outs of the craft under the guidance of another woman in the town, Jill could throw herself deeper into her work, but she missed Goldenrod every instant she was away.

113. The first day of summer started out normal, with wedding bouquet requests surging as the traditional marriage times approached. One morning, Jill suddenly stopped talking about her flowers when she heard a scream echo across the meadow. Dropping the vase, scattering rose petals all over the bride-to-be of the day, she rushed out to answer the call of the little girl she had never heard scream.

114. “Miss Jill! Miss Jill!” One of the other village girls came running into her house, panting. “There’s a fox in the meadow! It’s drooling yucky stuff and runnin’ at Goldenrod! She’s runnin’ real fast, trying to get away! Help!” Jill scooped up the screaming child, practically throwing her back down in her house in front of the rather bewildered couple, and started running as fast as her feet could take her to the meadow.

115. There was a fox lunging after Goldenrod, looking like it was moving in for the kill. It appeared that the supervising adult and the other girls had run away when they saw the fox, so it had focused its attention on the only human in the area. Goldenrod was screaming, her voice undulating with each small bump she ran up and down. Jill accelerated, dashing across the grass, not caring about stepping on flowers or looking out for burrs.

116.

117. Jill caught Goldenrod in her arms as she gasped, her tiny hand clutching her chest. She pressed her mouth to her knee, and began to rock back and forth. Jill threw a rock at the fox, which pierced its side. As soon as the dead fox fell, she knelt down again to her daughter.

118. Goldenrod’s heart was beating very fast, and she was rolling in the grass, unable to see. A slight grayish tint was spreading to her extremities, and Jill remembered the name of the horrible end her sister suffered: sudden cardiac death.

119. “December, help me!” Jill yelled at the sky, but there was no response. The clouds seemed to be staring down at her with blank, unseeing eyes coated with a thin layer of blood.

120. Goldenrod sat up, coughed up a glob of blood, and said coherently, “I love you, Mama.” Then she fell against the grass, limp.

121. “‘Ask, and it shall be given you; seek; and you shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.’ As Matthew said, those who ask truly of Heaven receive their due and even sometimes more. Today we remember the dearly departed Goldenrod Olivia Dayberry,” the priest started, “The flower maker’s apprentice.” Jill stopped in her tracks, hanging on every word of the priest who knew very well that she arranged flowers but did not have the power to make them. “Many of you know that December Dayberry and her niece Goldenrod shared a similar fate. They both succumbed to the same heart disease, and they were both saved by the Lord and by the efforts of Miss Jill Dayberry here. So I believe that Goldenrod was not the apprentice of Jill Dayberry, but the apprentice of the good Lord who put children down on this earth to do good, and there’s no one who could have done any better to cure this family’s pain than Goldenrod, even if it was only for a short while.”

122. Jill clutched onto Dr. Coleman, sobbing into his shoulder; he stroked her hair, tied up in a black handkerchief. Her dress was long, slim, and drenched from the dew she had knelt in and the tears she had wept. The grave was dug in the meadow, next to a patch of new summer goldenrods. And she tried to scatter petals on the newly minted grave, but couldn’t.

123. She sank to her knees, touching the earth with her lips and stroking the golden petals of the goldenrods, even then scared she would forget the feeling of Goldenrod’s touch. She watered the grave with tears, and only left when Dr. Coleman lightly pulled her to her feet and escorted her back to her lonely house. She thought he was the last one to leave, as he stayed the night and

124. ensured her well-being until he had to leave for work. But the real last one to leave was unseen, returning to Heaven with a new apprentice.

125.

126.

127. Heaven. 2053

128. Jill the flower arranger lived to a very old age. When her fingers trembled too much to pick the flowers of the meadow and place them in a neat order, all she could do was sit and watch the little girls running in the field, and remember Goldenrod.

129. She died of a heart attack, in her home, during the night. She was discovered dead by her apprentice, Doreen Coleman, the next morning and was buried next to her only child. They were the only two people to be buried in the meadow, which was dedicated to their memories.

130. When she arrived in Heaven at last, there was a young girl waiting for her. She had dark brown hair, a strong smile, and deep eyes. The last time she had seen those eyes, they could only be described as lackluster, devoid of life. But not this time—December’s bright blue eyes were shining, casting beams of light onto a distant cloud.

131. December pointed to a cloud in the distance, which got brighter and seemed to bloom as Jill focused her eyes on the rapidly moving dot on top of it. December stretched to put her hand on her sister’s shoulder, and together they watched the cloud bounce under a pair of small, bare feet.

132. They saw a little girl, in a slender white pinafore gown, goldenrods blooming in the seams. Her long golden curls were crowned with a garland of May flowers, and her bright eyes shone as she skipped throughout the world, scattering fibers of love and tender care woven into the shape of flowers. And she dropped her petals and ran, toes barely scraping the heavenly earth, as the flower arranger came into a long-awaited hug with the flower maker’s apprentice.

133.

134.

135.