Wreath by Judy Christie

had despised, its top cluttered with overdue bills and an old-fashioned adding machine. Less than a year ago, she had trusted the business and all the details of her life to her husband of thirty-six years. While she had lived her life, he had lived his, comfortable and complacent. Their marriage had not prepared her for his heart attack, quick decline, and death—or the problems that suddenly had to be solved.
    She looked to the back of the store where Wreath fished new spiderwebs out of a corner with the broom. Each of the teenager’s movements seemed intense and focused, and Faye thought for a second that the girl could do a better job running the store than she could. Something would have to be done, but she wasn’t sure what. At least Wreath could stay for now and keep it clean.

    The familiar car slowed.
    “Need a ride?” Clarice called.
    “I’m good,” Wreath said and kept walking.
    “I’d be glad to give you a lift,” she said. “Where you headed?”
    “Nowhere,” Wreath said.

    Faye turned up the radio. Now that she was a widow, she could listen to the country-and-western station, enjoying twangy tales of love and loss and cheating and hurt, music that Billy’d had no use for.
    “My mama liked that song,” Wreath said, broom in hand, on her hands and knees, bringing out dirt and litter that had been there who knows how long.
    “She doesn’t like it anymore?”
    Two red splotches appeared on the girl’s cheeks. “I mean she
likes
it,” she said. “She loves country songs. She says they tell great stories, and she likes stories. Reading, too.”
    Looking as though she’d just told a family secret, Wreath turned away and made a great show of dumping a dustpan into a trash sack she carried with her.
    Faye liked her occasional chats with the girl. She preferred their calm conversation to the inane chatter of someone who had no intention of purchasing a dining room suite with a huge china cabinet and accompanying sideboard. However, she didn’t have to worry about silly customers, since not one person had come in during the two weeks since Wreath had almost quit.
    Truth was, she wouldn’t go so far as to call the handful of lookers in the store
customers
. Some were bargain-hunters, certain she was desperate to unload her inventory; others thought she had a flea market; and a few were friends and neighbors stopping by to check on her.
    She got up from the desk, sat down in a recliner with the weekly newspaper, and gazed at the monstrosity of a store. She looked at the big round clock on the wall, two feet in diameter, its old cord plugged in. She stared as the second hand slowly made its way around, a grinding sound marking the passage of one minute, then two. Faye did not know which she feared most—that no one would wander in or that someone might, that Wreath would leave or that she would stay.
    The teen, looking clean and cute in a pair of out-of-style slacks and a knit blouse, put the broom back in the storeroom and opened the door onto the alley as though she had been doing it for years. As the girl brushed out the dust, a wasp zoomed down from its nest under the back eaves. Wreath swatted wildly at the insect before knocking it to the floor and smushing it with her shoe.
    “You picked the wrong person to deal with today, mister,” the girl muttered. Faye knew the feeling all too well.

    Faye wrestled with the heavy back door, wishing she could afford Wreath all day.
    Annoyed at the thought, she jiggled the handle again. If that little squirt of a teenager could open it, she could. When it gave way, Faye practically flew out into the alley.
    Caught between mortification and triumph, she looked around, wondering where the weeds came from and how so much trash had piled up. The only bright spot was a patch of black-eyed Susans that refused to give up, despite the heat. Something about them reminded her of Wreath.
    The screen door of the garage apartment across the alley, part of the store