Page 28 of A Brambleberry Summer

“Your sister. She is wonderful.”

Rosa could not even put into words her deep gratitude toward Carrie.

“She is pretty terrific. Our mom had breast cancer when I was in high school and Carrie basically stepped in to take care of all of us while Mom was having treatment. She was a young bride herself but that didn’t stop her.”

“That is wonderful. My mother died of breast cancer when I was fourteen.”

She wasn’t sure why she told him that. It was another part of her past she didn’t usually share.

He gave her a sympathetic look. “I’m sorry. That’s a hard loss for a teenager.”

She had been so frightened after her mother died. She had no one to share her pain except a few of her mother’s friends.

They had been as poor as Rosa and her mother and couldn’t help her survive when they were barely subsisting. She had known she was on her own from the moment her mother had died.

That cold truth had led her to making some terrible decisions, with consequences she could never have imagined.

“Hey, Dad, can I show Rosa what I built out of Legos this week?”

Wyatt shook his head. “We’ve taken up her whole evening. I’m sure she has things to do.”

Rosa did have things to do, always. Most small-business owners never really stopped working, even if it was only the constantly turning wheels of their subconscious.

But at the disappointed look on Logan’s face, she smiled at the boy. “I do have things to do tonight but I would love to see your creation first.”

She could tell Wyatt wasn’t particularly pleased at her answer. Why not? Was he in a hurry to get rid of her? Too bad. He could survive a few more moments of her company, for his son’s sake.

Wyatt unlocked the front door. As she stood in the entryway waiting for him to open his apartment, Rosa smelled the distinctive scent of flowers that had no logical reason to be there.

Hank sniffed the air and so did Fiona. They both went to the bottom of the stairs, wagging their tails.

Apparently, Abigail was active tonight. Rosa rolled her eyes at her own imagination. She did not believe in ghosts, benevolent or otherwise. If she did, she would never be able to sleep for all the ghosts haunting her.

The dogs followed them as they went into the ground-floor apartment.

“My room is back here,” Logan said. He grabbed Rosa’s hand and tugged her in the direction of his space.

AStar Warsblanket covered the bed and toys were scattered around the room. It made her happy to see the signs a child lived there, and somehow she had the feeling it would have made Abigail happy, too.

“It’s over here. This was the biggest set I’ve ever made. It had over two hundred pieces! I wasn’t sure I could do it but my dad helped me.”

He showed her a complicated-looking brick masterpiece, which she recognized as a spacecraft from one of theStar Warsmovies, though she couldn’t have said for sure which one.

It warmed her heart to think about the boy and his father working together on the project.

“How wonderful. It must have taken you a long time.”

“Not really. It’s not that hard if you follow the picture directions. My friend Carlos got one, too, and he was able to put it together and Carlos can’t even read in English very much.”

“Can’t he?”

“He’s getting better.” Logan looked as if he didn’t want to disrespect his friend. “Anyway, he hasn’t been here very long, only a few months. He told me he speaks Spanish at home all the time. I want to learn Spanish so I can talk to him better but I don’t know very many words.”

His eyes suddenly grew wide. “Hey. You speak SpanishandEnglish. You could teach me.”

“Me?” Rosa was so shocked at the suggestion that she didn’t quite know how to respond.

“Rosa is very busy with her store,” Wyatt said from the doorway. “We don’t need to bother her. You and I can keep reading the books and practicing with the language app on my phone.”

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