A Gracious Neighbor by Chris Cander EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Author: Chris Cander
- Language: English
- Genre: Women’s Psychological Fiction
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
Martha Hale thought the first Monday in February was early to prune
the scraggly crape myrtles in her yard, but as she drove home after
dropping her son off at middle school that morning, she noted that most of
the others throughout her tidy neighborhood had been topped already. Several
years before, someone had delivered full-color flyers to homeowners
demanding they “stop crape murder,” extolling the virtues of the trees’
natural growth habits and pointing out that the ugly, swollen knobs at the
unnecessary cut sites were like arthritic knuckles they wouldn’t otherwise
develop, but that campaign went largely ignored. Residents of West
University Place, Texas, liked their gardens neat. The shaped hedges and
trimmed trees symbolized their owners’ expectations of cultivated,
undiminished beauty.
Frankly, Martha wouldn’t have minded leaving hers alone, except
perhaps a little deadheading later in the season to coax a second round of
blossoms. But she would do so only as long as everyone else did, too. Her
family stood out too much as it was. They were among the few who didn’t
retain a professional lawn crew to maintain their yard, and since her husband,
Lewis, suffered from chronic back pain—due, she thought, to his posture and
increasing belly size and not to his brief experimentation with weight lifting
as he claimed—the gardening duties typically fell to her.
But she would much
rather spend a few sweaty hours in the garden, even with an unwieldy electric
chain saw, than have her neighbors think them sloppy. Their circa 1940
bungalow might be small, but nobody could’ve accused her of not keeping it
clean and trim.
She pulled her minivan into the driveway and examined the trees for
mourning dove nests. The doves had been cooing and twitterpating lately,
and just the other day, Martha found a dropped egg on the sidewalk beneath a
live oak across the street. Satisfied that she wouldn’t inadvertently also hurt
an innocent bird as she lopped the limbs off her trees, she went inside to
change out of the pajamas she’d driven Harry to school in again.
Nearly
every day, she vowed hopelessly to start getting up early enough to put on
real clothes before it was time to leave and hoped this wouldn’t be the day
her car broke down. She put on her comfortable overalls and a sun hat to
protect her fair complexion even though the day was overcast and cool, and
went to the garage to gather the necessary tools.
By the time she trudged out to the front yard, someone—the Realtor,
presumably—had added a bright-red SOLD plaque to the for-sale sign in front
of the enormous new house next door.
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