Page 132 of The Love Haters

She nodded and said, “We’ll snag you another one.”

But I shook my head. “Maybe it was for the best. I’m not sure flowers are for me.”

But Rue just looked appalled. “Flowers,” she declared, “are for everyone.”

We’d barely gotten started when we saw Cole, across the street, raise his arms in victory after handing out his last flower.

“It’s not a race, Cole,” Rue called.

“What do I do now?” Cole answered. “I’m all out!”

“Go get some more!” Rue called back. “We’re not done until we’re done!”

If it had been a race, Rue and I would’ve come in dead last.

The flowers were so unexpected—and so lovely. Person after person reacted with blinks of surprise, then bewildered acceptance, then shy smiles. Highly recommend if you ever want to spend an afternoon lifting people up.

While Hutch and Cole were trying to maximize efficiency, Rue and I wanted to maximize joy. “This is a dahlia,” Rue would say to a mom with a baby. “They were originally classified as vegetables.” Or, “This is a lilac. They’re from the same family as olive trees.” Or, “This is a peony. The plants can live for a hundred years—and outlive the gardeners who planted them.”

“This is my best day of the year now,” Rue said to me as we strolled along. “Isn’t that something? It started out as my worst day of the year. I’d walk along handing out flowers, wiping away tears before the boys saw. People must have thought I was crazy. But now, after all this time… it’s become a joy.”

Rue held out a lilac to a girl going by on a skateboard, who took it without slowing, calling “Thank you!” behind her.

“I used to dread it,” Rue continued, “but now I look forward to it. The flowers, the food, the big, astonishing tip for the waiter at the end. I always drink a glass or two of Robert’s favorite cabernet. I wait for it allyear in some compartment in my heart, thinking about how nice it will be to do all these things again. It’s good before, and it’s good during, and it’s good after.”

“Rue,” I said then. “Cole told me something about you when he first showed up.” I met her eyes to see if she could intuit what I meant. “And I’m not sure if I believe it. But maybe that’s only because I don’t want to believe it.”

I let that sit.

“It’s not a big deal,” she said. “It’s just a touch of heart failure.”

“Can you havea touchof heart failure?”

“It’s just stage one,” Rue said. “If I take good care of myself, I could last a long time—years! But it’s not technicallycurable. It will be the thing that gets me, that’s pretty clear.” Rue gave me a wry smile. “Unless a runaway bus comes along.”

“You told Cole,” I asked then, “but you didn’t tell Hutch?”

Rue nodded. “Well, Cole needed a kick in the pants. He’s always been a little too self-focused for his own good.”

“And Hutch?” I prompted.

“Hutch doesn’t have that problem. The opposite, in fact. He’s not nearly as invincible as he seems.” Rue sighed. “He had such a hard time after he lost his mom. He really struggled a lot.” She looked at me. “That’s why he hums all the time.”

“It is?”

“Have you noticed he does that?”

“Of course. It’s a whole thing.”

“I had a therapist friend who told me that humming was soothing to the vagus nerve.”

I shook my head, likeNot sure what that means.

“That’s a nerve,” Rue explained, “that calms and regulates your system. The vibrations of humming stimulate it. So does laughing. So do deep breaths. And gargling, of all things. So when Hutch was having a hard time when he was little, I taught him about all those things—but humming was the one that stuck.”

“That’s why he hums? To feel better?”

“It’s such a habit now, I’m not sure he notices he’s doing it. But that’s where it started.” Rue patted my hand.

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