Page 64 of Cherry Picking

Hazel leans over my shoulder, reading the glowing screen.

“A well-dressed bad decision,” she says, clinking her hanger against my arm. “My favorite kind.”

My car disappears from the Sutton’s lot on Friday while I’m tied up with the Whitfield service.

Danny

Grabbed the Corolla to deal with that alternator. Don’t even start with me.

It’s back on Saturday, the engine working so quietly I keep checking the instrument cluster for a failure light. When I ask about the invoice, Danny dismisses me with a mumble regarding a family discount.

I’m well aware whose checkbook settled the account.

Monday afternoon finds Murphy waiting by the threshold with his jacket already zipped, looking like a man with an assignment.

“I need a driver,” he announces. “But we’re making a stop at the florist on Eastern first.”

He remains tight-lipped about the destination, though I don’t bother asking. There is only one type of errand a man runs with that black coat and a bouquet. I’ve navigated this exact route in a hearse more times than I care to tally.

He requests a dozen dahlias in a deep berry pink. I wait until we’re settled back in the sedan—the bouquet riding upright in his lap like a fragile passenger—to finally break the silence.

“Did Zig like them? The dahlias?”

“His mother did,” he says, his gaze fixed on the windshield. “Managed to grow them along the rear fence in caliche soil, which is a miracle. That woman possessed a talent for keeping things alive.”

I think of the black ink climbing Briggs’ throat—petals spreading over his shoulder. He performs a version of a man who barely remembers her, yet he wears her favorite flower where everyone but him has to see it.

The realization does a slow lap around my chest, but I keep my focus on the road.

“Ziggy was the one who drove me out here,” Murphy adds as we clear the next mile. “Every month since the stroke. Always made sure there were fresh ones for her stone.”

The iron gates are already open when we arrive. I’ve logged plenty of hours in this cemetery, but navigating the gravel with Murphy makes it all feel new. We approach from the main walkway, retracing the same path I mapped out for his son’s burial.

“You pick this spot yourself?” I ask, managing the weight of the chair.

“Twenty-four years ago. I was still hauling cable and climbing ladders then—spent my life wiring the big hotels downtown.” He sinks into the seat and takes the bouquet back. “Bought the pair of them the week she passed.”

Ziggy’s plot sits a dozen feet to our right, the granite still polished to a high gleam. The earth has settled since the funeral, and the grass is finally taking in stubborn, uneven patches around the border. I have to resist the professional urge to drop to my knees and start weeding the perimeter myself.

Beside it sits the Maxwell double stone—DEIRDRE and her completed dates are on the left, while MURPHY is etched on the right, his birth year waiting for a sequence of numbers that hasn’t arrived yet.

I’ve passed a thousand pre-need markers in my trade. This one still manages to find a way under my ribs.

Murphy divides the dahlias—half for his wife, half for his son. He sits between the two stones and retreats into a silence that lasts for a long, heavy stretch.

“Watching the boy play tomorrow,” he says finally. “Got good seats. Wish the two of you were there for it.”

My throat goes tight, and I find the tree line suddenly fascinating.

“Give me a minute with my people,” he says without turning around.

I retreat to the main path, staying within sight but out of earshot. He speaks. His unaffected hand moves in the same frantic gestures he uses in the kitchen. At one point, his head drops, and I stare hard at the horizon to grant him that much dignity.

When he signals me back, his eyes are bloodshot but dry.

“Your mother,” he asks while I maneuver the chair. “Where’s she?”

“Palm, on the other side of the valley,” I tell him. “My dad does a run every year on her anniversary. Buys two coffees and drinks his sitting right next to her. Some years, I join the rotation.”