Page 18 of Where the Roses Bloom

“That’s…beautiful.”

He nodded, slow. “Yeah. It was. Ain’t much now but weeds and memory.”

He stirred the pot once more, quieter this time. “She was somethin’ else, my grandma. Hazel Ward.”

I smiled at the name. “Hazel,” I repeated. “Pretty.”

He nodded. “She raised me, more or less. Me and my brothers, after our parents passed.”

“Brothers as in plural?” I asked, fishing a little. I’d seen the photo of the family, of course…but I’d thought maybe they were cousins. “Not just Beau, then.”

“Not just Beau,” Rhett chuckled, shaking his head. “Nah…Beau’s the middle sibling. I’ve also got Silas, the second-oldest—Whitlock, who’s a bit of a fuck-up and knows it; and the youngest, Holden, who’s been workin’ overseas with the Peace Corps for close to a decade as an environmental scientist.”

“Big family,” I said, sliding forks into place on the table. “I didn’t realize.”

Rhett shrugged one broad shoulder. “We scattered afterGrandma passed. I was the only one stubborn enough to move back in when the house came to me.”

He said it like a joke, but there was something behind it—some ache wrapped up in that soft Southern cadence. Like maybe he didn’t just inherit a house. Maybe he inherited a legacy he didn’t quite know what to do with.

“Do they visit?” I asked.

“Sometimes,” he said. “Silas lives in town, but he’s pretty solitary. Whit shows up when he wants to pick a fight or borrow money…don’t know exactly where he’s livin’ these days. Holden…he graduated high school and ran as far away from this town as he could get.”

“And Beau?”

That got me the smallest, fondest smile. “Beau’s always around. If he’s not under a hood or at the diner picking on Mabel, he’s down by the river fishin’ with the world’s worst dog.”

I laughed. “Milo?”

“The one and only.” Rhett turned off the burner and set the pot on a trivet with care. “He likes you, you know. Beau. Said you’ve got the kind of calm people pretend to have.”

I paused, surprised. “He said that?”

Rhett looked at me, steady. “I agreed.”

I didn’t know what to do with that. With the way his voice went soft around the edges when he talked to me.

With the way I wanted to bottle this moment and hold it to my chest like a candle in a storm.

I looked down at the dumplings, steam rising thick from the pot, and blinked fast.

“So,” I said, voice barely steady, “when do we start on the garden?”

Rhett passed me a bowl, his fingers brushing mine. “Tomorrow,” he said, that same faint smile tugging at his mouth. “If you’re still here.”

I took the bowl. Let myself smile back. “I’m not going anywhere.”

We ate at the little table in the breakfast nook, knees bumping under the wood, the scent of rosemary and dumplings clinging to the air. I didn’t think I’d finish my bowl—too nervous, too wound up—but the first bite undid me. The dumplings were soft and rich, the chicken slow-cooked and tender, the broth kissed with thyme.

“Jesus,” I whispered around my second bite. “This is incredible.”

Rhett ducked his head with a sheepish smile. “Hazel had a rule: if you lived in her house, you learned how to make three meals good enough to feed heartbreak.”

My breath caught for a second. “And this one’s for…?”

“Grief,” he said simply.

We didn’t talk for a minute after that.