Their gate, a silent sentinel of their shared residence, obediently swung open upon detecting the approach of Tim’s car. Grace heard its mechanical sigh as the gate closed. She braced herself to meet him at the door.
“Welcome, darling,” she greeted, pressing an expected kiss to his cheek. Tim, ever the affectionate soul, enveloped her in his embrace. Throughout their years together, Grace had found solace in his arms, a sanctuary from the storms of life. But today, amidst his embrace, she couldn’t shake the unsettling feeling of being overshadowed, of facing an unseen adversary—a phantom threat to their erstwhile unshakeable union.
“Hungry?” she prompted after giving Tim ample time to settle in.
“Oh, yeah!” he exclaimed, his eyes lighting up with anticipation. He sat comfortably on a velvet-cushioned chair in the dining room, his arms laid out casually on their ornate ebony table, a centerpiece of elegance. Grace had meticulously set the table, adorning it with a colourful bouquet of fresh flowers and delicate cutlery that gleamed under the soft glow of the chandelier. On a side table, sat a steaming dish of fragrant pishori rice, its tantalizing aroma wafting through the air.
She had placed her chair next to his, to keep him company as he indulged in the feast she had prepared. Her fingers delicately plucked morsels from his plate, her touch playful as she fed him, a gentle smile masking the turmoil within. She offered him the remnants of each bite from her hand, her appetite forgotten amidst the charade of shared intimacy.
When he had eaten and rinsed his hands, she served him a milky mug of hot chocolate and sat across the table with hers, communicating with her demeanor that she had business to talk through.
“Tim,” she said, knowing that her voice sounded shaky and needed to control it. “I have an important discussion I need to have with you.”
“So I can see, honey,” he said. “Can I be doing something as we talk? It won’t interfere with my attention, I promise.”
The variation rattled her, but she quickly realized a casual setup might serve to maintain a less stressful air. She told him it would be okay.
Tim reached into the shopping bag he had come with and fished out two matching glass jars; one empty, and the other labeled: “Silica Gel.”
He then went into their bedroom and, to Grace’s great surprise, came back with the dry red rose that she had felt in his jacket pocket. She experienced a surge of relief for having returned the dry rose into his jacket.
Grace moved and positioned herself in another chair, facing him. Her heart raced, the weight of the impending conversation pressing down on her.
Tim carefully placed the rose inside the glass jar. With precision, he poured the silica gel around the delicate petals, until they were covered completely. Grace’s mind raced with questions, but she remained silent, fascinated by what Tim was doing.
Eventually, Tim sealed the jar tightly, his movements deliberate yet gentle. Grace couldn’t help but feel a sense of wonder as she watched him, her curiosity piqued by his unexpected demonstration of a skill she did not know he had.
Finished, Tim looked up and caught Grace’s gaze. A soft smile played on his lips, pleased by her admiration. “I was expecting you to be talking as I worked,” he said, his voice warm and accommodating.
“Where did you learn to do that?” she asked.
“Jim taught me,” he said. “We had a session at their house after we came back from Kisumu. Lina is also learning.”
She wrestled with the urge to ask him, very directly, What do you plan to do with the rose? but restrained herself, avoiding any hint of presumption. Instead, she remarked in a conversational tone, “So, you mastered drying flowers in your youth, and now you’re delving into preservation techniques?”
“Ah, that’s…very technically said!” Tim exclaimed.
Grace couldn’t help but think, “How is it that he can be so happy with himself and his wife’s appreciation of his new achievements, and be so oblivious to my inner turmoil?”
“But, yes,” Tim continued. “It’s never too late, is it?”
She turned her face away, not letting him see her. Instead, she repositioned her chair beside his as though to appreciate his handiwork from the same vantage point.
“So I see….” she said, leaning towards him so that their shoulders brushed. In her new position, Grace could steal glances at Tim from the corner of her eye, concealing the questions swirling in her mind—words she couldn’t find to express her feelings “But…. But…” she struggled to say.
“Yes, my dear….?” Tim’s expression changed as he detected the tension in his wife. Suddenly, he understood what was going on. Turning to establish eye contact with her, he asked very tenderly, “Is that… what you wanted to talk about?”
“Yes,” she said, a more meaningful dimension in their conversation becoming evident.
“Yes?” he echoed, raising his hand and churning the air with his right palm — a gesture Grace knew all too well, indicating his request for more clarity.
“I thought I knew you,” she said. She was at ease now, conversing with her husband at the normal level, with a new found confidence in making progress.
“And now you realize you don’t?”
“I certainly did not know about this…this…teenage fad, as you called it.”
“It was only a brief thing….” Tim said.
Grace, yearning for details, thought that she saw a flicker of nostalgia flash in Tim’s eyes, assuming what she saw was how nostalgia looked like. Tim paused for a long time, his mind appearing far away. Grace watched him, her feminine imagination confirming to her that this teenage fad had more significance in his life than he was letting on.
“What killed it?” she asked him.
“Time,” he said.
“And distance, perhaps…?”
No,” Tim said.
“No? But you have never —not once— mentioned it!” Grace felt bolder, able to push. “I know about your neighborhood brawls. I know the names of your childhood heroes…. Your teachers… but not this one.”
“There are other things about my childhood you don’t know of,” he said.
“Like?”
“Like the first time I cut my finger deeply with a knife,” he said. “See this?” he gestured at a scar on the middle joint of his index finger. “That injury forced me to study joints because the doctor who attended to the wound called the affected one a big name?”
Grace laughed, happy with the way Tim had generalized the conversation.
“What was the name?” she asked, curiosity getting the better of her.
“Proximal interphalangeal joint,” he said, smiling with pride.
“You’ve remembered that from childhood?”
“I could only remember that the doctor had used a big word,” he explained, clearly eager to be understood. “When I went to high school, I asked my biology teacher and he told me the name of the joint.”
“And you’ve not forgotten it since?”
“I have not forgotten it since, or ever talked about it — until now when you triggered the memory.”
Same with your dry flowers thing… Grace thought, connecting Tim’s line of reasoning.
Grace wanted to ask him about G.; and how the teenage fad was carried out. She imagined Tim and G. running around in the bountiful meadows, collecting flowers, then working side by side, guided by a teacher as they placed fresh fragrant flowers in between the pages of heavy books….Tim likely presenting a rose to G. or gently lifting one to her nose, inviting her to savour its fragrance….
If she asked about G., Grace knew Tim would realize she was envious. Instead, she asked, “How old was Lina?”
“Lina was a kid— five, perhaps?” Then, out of nowhere, he added, “G. was 14.”
The weight of the conversation got lighter. Grace’s glimmer of hope grew brighter, outshining the uncertainty that had unsettled her.
You made those dry petals on G.’s wall…. That is what she wanted to say, but did not because she knew she would sound threatened. She, a grown woman; middle-aged even, against a teenage girl. But why had G. kept the flowers? Preserved them…framed them… but that was not a question for Timothy, was it?
Oh, well, Tim was in the mix alright! Why had he given a similar set of dry flowers to G.’s daughter? And why had Tim carried one of the petals G. had dried during her stay in the hospital?
Tim and G. had known each other as kids, played with flowers, and then later, went their separate ways… they had not kept contact. Each had found other mates as mature people and had forgotten their teenage years…. hadn’t they?
“So you reconnected with G.’s family when Lina sent you an invitation to her niece’s wedding?” Grace asked, increasingly finding new ways to dig into the saga.
“A bit earlier than that…” Tim answered. “Remember the day I received a call and you asked who it was and I said, ‘A woman whose family land had been stolen?’”
“Yes, I do remember.”
“That was G., Lina’s elder sister,” he explained unnecessarily. “A few days later G. called again and requested I join them in court.”
“Why…? I mean, you are not a lawyer…”
“For my opinion on how their lawyer was handling their case.”
“Another first,” Grace commented.
“As in?”
“Your legal skills. I didn’t know….”
That was the day he came home wearing new glasses, Grace realized now. He wanted to look dignified….when he and G. met…..
Stop it, Grace, her better self scolded loudly, inside her. You have Tim. You’ve had him for 40 years. Stop moving in the direction you are headed.
Despite her probing, Tim remained composed and unaffected. It was almost as if he had anticipated this… not a confrontation, she corrected herself, but rather a deep conversation.
“So, for how long did you and G. know each other?” Grace finally asked, breathing in and out deeply, as though she was surfacing after a prolonged underwater dive in a pool.
“Ten minutes,” Tim said.
“Ten minutes?” Grace echoed his words, her eyebrows furrowing, nearly obscuring her eyes entirely as her face conveyed the shock of his response.
“Yes,” he confirmed, gesturing with his hands, displaying all ten fingers. “Just ten minutes.”
She looked at him quizzically, unable to make sense of his answer, or what it represented.
“And…and in those ten minutes, you gave her those flowers on her wall?”
“No,” he said. “No, not directly.”
“How do you mean, ‘not directly?’” She knew that her curiosity was obvious now but she did not care.
“We were both in high school. I sent them by post after the school holiday.”
“And?”
Tim smiled, a wide, mysterious smile that Grace tried to read but couldn’t quite figure out. He then added, “I waited for her reply for a long time…”
“Till the day she called you and you went to support her in court?”
“Sort of.”
“First time to meet her again in all those years?”
“44 to be exact,” he said.
“You kept count?”
“No. I counted when we reconnected.”
“Tim,” Grace’s tone changed, “I know I am being naughty now but please allow me to ask…”
“Please ask. I would like you to ask,” he implored, almost solemnly.
“You never thought of G. all those years?”
“I did,” he said. “But I did not know her. So I grew her in my mind, I think.”
“And? I mean… when you finally met… did she… sorry, I am not making any sense, I know.”
“She wasn’t the girl I met for 10 minutes when I was 16,” he said.
Suddenly, illumination came to Grace. She understood.
“But her daughter was that girl?” Grace said.
“You are sharp, my dear. Very sharp,” Tim confirmed. “I told Terry she looked like her mom when she was a girl.”
“And?”
“She sneered at me.”
“I am sorry,” Grace said, truly sorry for him.
After a long time of silence, Grace said, “I wonder where I’d be today had G. replied to your letter.”
Tim turned his seat around and faced his wife. Looking her in the eye, he said tenderly, “I don’t have the answer to that one, dearest.” He paused, then went on, “Nor to many other situations that did not happen.”
He stood and extended his hands toward her, his eyes wet. She stood also, taking his extended hand, and walked into his warm embrace.
“May I also ask you a question?” Tim asked at last.
“Yes, of course,” Grace said, nodding her head vigorously against his chest, where she was happily snuggled.
“In your youth, was there ever a guy who showed an interest in you?”
“Of course,” she said, remembering. He was tall, handsome, and funny. She had met him during a person-to-person mission in Uhuru Park. Dennis, her witnessing partner, had presented the gospel to the handsome man, but the man kept casting glances at Grace. At the end of the session, he asked them for their telephone numbers. Dennis wrote down his telephone number and gave it to the man, making sure to not include Grace’s.
“You can reach us through me,” Dennis said protectively, but the man insisted on getting Grace’s telephone number as well. She conceded as she thought, What harm can it do? He had chased her for months after that encounter.
There was also another guy, this one a believer and a friend of Timothy’s. He was vibrant and outgoing. She liked him. Timothy seemed too serious; beyond her reach. But when the two prospective young men visited her home and spent a day with her parents, Grace’s dad told her Tim was the better man.
“I wonder where I would be today had you said yes to him….” his words drifted off.
“Nothing would have been different,” Grace said confidently, a stark contrast to moments earlier when she contemplated the outcome of her fate had G. responded to Tim’s flower-laden letter.
“How so?” Tim asked.
“Because the steps of a righteous man are ordered of the Lord….” she said confidently. “Man,” she repeated. (Psalm 37:27)
They’d been standing for a long time. Tim, at last, guided his wife to the sofa set, sat next to her, and placed his hand over her shoulder, pulling her close to him.
“I am glad He ordered my steps to you,” he said.
“Me too,” she responded, smiling broadly.
After another long minute of silence, she asked, “What are you going to do with the rose?”
Before Tim could answer, there was a knock at the door. Grace sat up and said, “That is Rasha.”
“How do you know?”
“No one else knocks like her,” she said, disentangling herself from him and letting Rasha in.
“I can’t stay at my house,” the old, sick woman sobbed as soon as Grace opened the door. “There is a bad man under my bed.”
“Come in here, Mum,” Grace held her hand and ushered her into the sitting room, walking her past Timothy to a couch.
“Who is this boy?” Rasha asked as soon as she settled on the couch, pointing a finger at Tim.
“This is Timothy…. You know Timothy, Mum!”
“I hope he is not tricking you with boyish tricks,” Rasha warned.
“No, Mum. Timothy is a good boy,” Grace assured her, a smile on her face.
“Listen, you,” Rasha admonished, pointing a harsh finger at Timothy. “No boyish tricks on my daughter.”
“Yes, Mum,” Tim answered respectfully.
Grace sat Rasha down on the couch and brought her a warm duvet.
“You can sleep here, Mum. Are you hungry?” Grace asked her. “We were just about to have some tea.”
With her hand around the small woman, Grace looked like a mother. Rasha closed her eyes like a little child, letting sleep steal her away.
Grace made Rasha comfortable, stretching her to a sleeping position on the couch, and snuggled her in like a little girl. Once she was sure Rasha was comfortable, she walked back to her place beside her husband. Tim had sat still the entire time.
“I wonder where she would be had you not been here for her,” Tim thought out loud.
“I had asked you a question.…” Grace steered back to their unfinished conversation. Tim appeared to suddenly come back to the moment.
“You had asked a question. Yes?” Tim urged, snapping back to the present, doing his circular motions with his hand to ask for clarity.
“What are you going to do with the flowers?” Grace asked, her gaze unwavering.
His eyes flicked to Grace, then to the flowers, and then back to her. In her heart, she was almost certain she could feel the breeze from the wheels turning in Tim’s mind as he pondered his response. She wondered what she would do with the answer when it came.
“You can tell me,” she urged reassuringly, determined to get to the bottom of the saga.
His eyes drifted to Rasha, who was fast asleep on the couch. Wrapping his right arm around his wife’s shoulder, he tenderly caressed her cheek with his other hand, then traced an index finger around her lips.
“Tell me,” Graced urged him, “I can take it.”
“Add more gel,” he whispered softly, his voice full of love and affection.
Is anyone else celebrating? Grace finally wrestled with her doubts/ fears, but not alone. She did it the way it’s ought to be: together with Tim. What a perfect crescendo to a gripping tale!
But it’s not over yet; the next installment will be out soon, and trust me, you don’t want to miss this one. Curious: what did you think of the ending? Leave your comments below!
In case you missed the last installment, here you go: Grace Wrestles with the Dry Roses Saga, Part 1. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: All characters, locations, and events depicted in this blog post are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, or actual events or locales, is purely coincidental. This work is created for entertainment purposes only and does not intend to portray real individuals, organizations, or occurrences.
Haron Wachira 