Someone to watch over me

nobody’s going to want to answer and sift around in the replies for a solution.”

    When Lily returned to Grace and Favor, she found Mrs. Prinney nearly knee-deep in seed catalogs and every single gardening book the town library owned. They were all bristling with little paper markers.
    “You changed your mind?“ Lily asked.
    “No, I’m changing my product. Not until next spring, but it’s never too early to start. I’m going to grow flowers.“
    “Flowers? Why?”
    Mrs. Prinney put another scrap of paper in between the pages of the catalog she was currently studying and said girlishly, “I’ve given this a lot of thought. What businesses are thriving around here?“ She ticked them off on her fingers. “The movie house. The hairdresser. That man who travels around the local towns giving bridge lessons is making a fortune. And I hear that some floundering local businessmen are going to put their remaining cash into one of those miniature golf courses that are all the rage. Now, Lily dear, what do these have in common?”
    Lily thought for a few moments and then grinned. “They’re not necessary to living. Just pure enjoyment.”
    Mrs. Prinney nodded smugly, her chins jiggling. “That’s right. And flowers make people happy. I’ve already got a garden plot to grow them in. I don’t need to rent a building or hire help. I don’t need to clear a big piece of land and buy lots of fancy gadgets. I don’t have to travel around the countryside giving lessons. I’ll make myself useful and other people happy. And do you know? There are flowers you can cook with. Not just the herbs and spices but actual flowers. It’s perfect for me.“
    “It’s going to be as much work as the vegetables, though, isn’t it?“
    “Not if a lot of them are long-flowering perennials. If you cut off the flowers of delphiniums, for example, when they’re in their prime in the spring, they’ll bloom again in the fall. Not so gloriously, but they will bloom. I’d never have known that without these books. And there are lots of perennials that don’t reach their peak until autumn, when all the annuals are pretty ragged.”
    Lily knew what delphiniums were—that is, she could recognize them in an arrangement. But she had no idea what perennials were. Back in the days when they were rich, her mother always had the house, whichever one of five or six they were living in, full of flower bowls and vases. She suspected her mother knew as little as she herself did about how they grew, just asked the butler to order them from whatever florist was closest.
    But if Mrs. Prinney had her way—which was inevitable—Lily would soon know more about growing flowers than she ever wanted to. The older woman wasn’t shy about discussing her enthusiasms.
    It took nearly half an hour of listening to Mrs. Prinney convincing herself about her newest project before Lily could manage a change of subject. When Mrs. Prinney finally ran down, Lily asked, “Did you know Donald Anderson well?“
    “I hardly knew him at all,“ Mrs. Prinney said. “He was never in town much. He was a salesman of some sort of equipment, they said, always traveling around the state. Then, when he lost his job, he was still gone most of the time, doing odd jobs, his wife told me. I feel so sorry for Roxanne. A woman with children needs a man around.“
    “But she still has one. Her brother Eugene lives with them, I understand.“
    “Does he? That’s odd. I thought he was only visiting for a while.“ She tilted her head, frowned, and said, “He’s been there since last summer, come to think of it. I hope he sticks around to give his sister a hand. She’s going to need all the help she can get.”
    Lily was inclined to a different view, but she didn’t express it. It seemed to her from what she’d heard that Donald Anderson hadn’t been much help to his wife for a long time. Even Roxanne admitted that the children had become wary of him and his bad moods. And he certainly wasn’t true to his marriage vows, from what Ruby and Phoebe said, and she had no reason to disbelieve them. She was reluctant to discuss this aspect of his life with Mrs. Prinney for fear that Mrs. P. would see it as spreading nasty gossip. And maybe that’s all it was. Or maybe he only made “inappropriate“ remarks and gestures when he was drunk—not that that excused his behavior.
    She wondered if Howard Walker knew what kind of man Donald Anderson had been. And whether she