We sat at her kitchen table. She made coffee in an old stovetop pot, strong and dark, and set out a plate of poppy seed cookies without saying anything. I looked at them for a long moment before I took one.
They were very good. Of course they were. Sam ate two.
“I went to see Tomasz,” I said.
Marta went still. Her cup stopped halfway to her mouth.
“There aren’t any flowers on his grave,” I said.
She set the cup down. She looked at the table for a long time.
“I don’t bring flowers,” she said finally. “Not since the first year.”
“Why?”
“Because they throw them away.” She said it simply, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “The first year, I brought him flowers every week. Roses. He liked yellow roses. And every Monday, they went in that dumpster. I went to get them back once. I climbed in.” She shook her head. “I was sixty-three years old, Ruth, climbing in a dumpster in my church shoes. Looking for my son’s roses in the garbage.”
“Did you find them?”
“Some. Broken. Covered in coffee.” She looked out the window, toward the cemetery. “After that, I stopped bringing flowers. I couldn’t stand to see them thrown away again. So I just go and sit. And I talk to him.”
“And the others?” I asked. “The room. All those names.”
She was quiet for a long moment. Then she stood up.
“Come,” she said.
She took me back down the hallway to the room with the padlock. She opened it, and switched on the light, and this time she went to the shelves first.
She lifted a cloth near the top. Eleanor Whitfield.
Underneath was a frame. Pressed pink roses arranged in a heart, with tiny sprigs of dried lavender between them.
She lifted another. Baby Thomas Reyes.
A small round frame. Tiny blue forget-me-nots, pressed flat, arranged around the edges. In the center, a single white carnation.
She lifted another, and another. Each one different. Each one made with flowers from one grave, collected over weeks or months, pressed and dried and arranged with so much care it took my breath away.
“I started after the dumpster,” Marta said. “The first one was for Tomasz. I had a few of his roses that I saved. I pressed them in a book. Then I thought, all these other mothers, these wives, these children, every week they bring flowers. And every week their flowers go in the garbage too. And they don’t even know.”
She touched the edge of the shelf.
“So I started keeping them,” she said. “Only the ones that will be thrown away the next morning. Only the freshest, so they are good for pressing. I make something. And when it’s finished, I take it to the office, and Pat puts a little card on the grave. It says, Someone made a keepsake from your flowers. Please ask at the office.”
“How many?” I asked.
“Two hundred and twelve,” she said. “Since 2018. Most of the families come. Some don’t. Those ones stay here.” She looked at the shelves. “I keep them for them. Until they’re ready.”
I looked at Sam’s frame. At the ring of pressed sunflowers, every Saturday since April. At the one big sunflower in the middle, and the card in his handwriting.
“Were you going to give it to me?” I asked.
Marta was quiet for a long time.
“I made it the week after the funeral,” she said. “The center. His sunflower. His card. I thought, when it’s finished, I will take it to the office. But then I saw you on Saturdays. Sitting by his stone. Talking to him. Every week.” She shook her head. “And I knew if I gave it to you, you would ask about the card. Why it was here. Why I had it. And I would have to tell you.”
“So you kept adding to it.”
“I kept adding,” she said. “Every Sunday. Another sunflower. Another week of not being brave enough.” She looked at me, and her eyes filled. “I am so sorry, Ruth. He was a good boy. He was such a good boy. And it was me who called him.”
Chapter Ten: What Sam Would Have Said
I stood in that little room for a long time without speaking.
There were a hundred things I could have said. I’d thought of most of them during my long sleepless night. Some of them were cruel. Some of them were fair. Some of them were both.
But looking at that frame, at all those sunflowers, every single Saturday since April, I couldn’t find any of them.
Because I understood something, standing there. Every week for seven months, I had driven out to Oak Hill with flowers for my son. And every week, this woman had walked across the street and picked them up, so they wouldn’t end up in the garbage with coffee cups and broken pots.
She’d been taking care of my grief while I was too deep in it to see.
“Marta,” I said. “Do you know what Sam would say? If he were standing here right now?”
She looked at me. Her chin was trembling.
“He’d say, ‘Mom, why didn’t you just call me?’” I said. “That’s what he always said. Every time. Every broken faucet, every flat tire. ‘Why didn’t you just call me?’”
I swallowed.
“Because he wanted us to call him,” I said. “That was the whole point. That was who he was. He didn’t want people to sit alone in the dark with a leaking pipe because they were afraid to bother anybody.” My voice cracked. “If you hadn’t called him, and he found out you’d sat there scared all night with a bowl under your sink, he’d have been so mad at you. He’d have come over the next morning and fixed it and lectured you the whole time.”
Marta let out a sound, half sob, half laugh. She put her hand over her mouth.
“He did lecture me,” she said. “The first time. About the frozen pipe. He said, ‘Marta, you call me before it bursts. Not after.’”
“That’s my son,” I said.
