The Widow’s Window Box
The geraniums were the first thing Miriam Holt noticed every morning. She would stand at her kitchen window with her tea going cold in her hands, watching the light move across the lane, and those window boxes at Hawthorn Cottage opposite had been as reliable as a clock for eleven years. Dorothy Fossett had watered them on Tuesdays and Fridays without variation. The blooms were always a deep, almost arterial red, the soil in the boxes dark and damp at the edges on those two days, pale and powdery by Sunday.
Dorothy had been in the ground for three weeks. The geraniums should have been dead.
They were not. They were immaculate.
Miriam set down her mug on the draining board and watched Mr. Fossett cross his front path in his overcoat, head down, collar up, the way a man walks when he believes no one is looking at him. He carried a canvas shopping bag and did not glance back at the cottage. The window boxes glowed red behind him in the weak October sun.
She put on her cardigan.
The village shop was a ten-minute walk down the lane, and Miriam arrived just as Peggy Draper was unlocking the door. The bell above it gave its thin, reedy jingle.
“You’re early,” Peggy said, pulling on her apron strings.
“I wanted to catch you before the rush.” Miriam took a basket from the stack. “Tell me, has Mr. Fossett been in much since the funeral?”
Peggy straightened a row of tins with the flat of her hand. “Every single day. Which surprised me, I’ll be honest. I had him down as the sort who’d let himself go to nothing. But no. In for his paper, his milk, his bread.” She paused. “He bought tulip bulbs last week.”
Miriam looked up from the cheese counter.
“Tulip bulbs,” she repeated.
“For spring planting, I’d imagine.” Peggy shrugged. “People grieve differently.”
Miriam bought her bread and a tin of sardines and walked home slowly, thinking about tulip bulbs and immaculate geraniums and the way Mr. Fossett had not once looked back at the cottage that his wife had kept for thirty years.
She had almost reached her own gate when she saw the woman.
She came round from the side passage of Hawthorn Cottage, wearing a waxed jacket that was slightly too big for her and carrying a green plastic watering can. Fifty, perhaps. Good boots. Hair pulled back with the practical indifference of someone used to being outdoors. She went directly to the window boxes and began to water them with the focused attention of someone following an obligation rather than expressing a fondness.
Miriam stopped walking.
“Good morning,” she said, over the low wall.
The woman looked up without startlement. “Morning.”
“I’m Miriam. From across the lane. I was a friend of Dorothy’s.”
Something shifted in the woman’s expression, a slight tightening around the jaw. She set the watering can down. “Patricia Wren. I’m a neighbour of Derek’s. From before.”
“Before?”
“Before he moved here.” Patricia picked up the can again, turned it slightly in her hands. “We’ve stayed in touch.”
Miriam looked at the window boxes. The soil was dark now, water pooling slightly at the edges of the terracotta. “Dorothy planted those geraniums when she and Derek first moved in. She was very particular about them.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“Has Mr. Fossett asked you to tend them?”
Patricia set the can down a second time. The metal base rang faintly against the flagstone path. “He asked me to look after the cottage for a few days. He’s gone to his sister’s in Shrewsbury.”
Miriam nodded once. “Of course.” She smiled pleasantly and walked the remaining steps to her own gate.
She spent the afternoon in the churchyard, which was a habit of hers that her sister had always found morbid and Miriam had always found clarifying. Dorothy’s headstone was new, the white marble not yet dulled by weather, the engraved letters still deep and precise. Miriam read the dates. Dorothy had died on the third of October. She had been sixty-one years old.
Then Miriam walked to the vestry and asked Reverend Albright if she might look at the parish register. He was used to her requests and asked no questions, only brought her the tea she hadn’t asked for and left her to it.
She found what she was looking for in under four minutes. A marriage entry. Derek Fossett and Dorothy Wren. November, 1993.
Dorothy Wren.
Miriam closed the register carefully and aligned it with the edge of the table.
She went to see Constable Hargreaves the following morning. He was young and inclined to be patient with her, which she appreciated. She told him what she had seen. She told him about the watering can, the tulip bulbs, the waxed jacket that was slightly too large. She told him about the surname.
“Patricia Wren,” she said. “Dorothy’s sister. Who has apparently been staying at the cottage. Alone.”
She told him about the will, which she had not yet confirmed but had every reason to suspect existed, and about the life insurance policy she had overheard Dorothy mention once to Reverend Albright over the church summer fete tea urn.
She told him, last of all, about the geraniums. About the fact that grief, in her experience, did not water other people’s flowers.
Hargreaves had stopped writing by then and was looking at her steadily.
“Right,” he said.
“Yes,” said Miriam. She picked up her basket. “I thought so too.”
Outside, the October air smelled of mud and wood smoke and the first serious threat of frost. She walked home past Hawthorn Cottage. The window boxes caught the light, as red and careful as ever, keeping their quiet, faithful watch.
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