A few months after the untimely death of her husband, Mike, the first lower delivery inexplicably arrives at the door of his grieving widow. “Seeing the bouquet for the first time took me by surprise and brought back fond memories of Mike proposing at a quaint picnic spot near a fountain surrounded by flowers.”

I truly appreciate how the author weaves this story. Its brief scope is deceivingly simple. Lia Fairchild does it with the honest tone of a first-person narration, and with a skillful, tender touch that brings whole situation to mind, with an enviable economy of words, and just a few strokes of her pen. “I can still picture the bouquet of red roses he came home with, which I proudly displayed on our small kitchen table.”

The story starts out with the pain of grief, the need to recover from it. At this point, the delivery man helps her in removing the excess physical things that belonged to her late husband: “I had six huge and heavy boxes. He carried them all to my car.” You get the feeling that he is much more than a delivery man, and perhaps you consider telling her this little revelation, only to stand back and let her discover it for herself, when she comes to a point when she is ready.
“It was nice having a man around again to help out once in a while, even for an independent person like me.”

This is a wholesome story about the way life seeps in, filling a broken heart with new emotions, till it finds itself in full blossom again.

Five stars. ( )