The Secret Sense of Wildflower Read Free

in the evenings. Last fall it wept down gold, almond-shaped leaves on top of Daddy’s grave, and I knew he must be smiling because he always said he’d struck gold when I was born.
    “Hi Daddy,” I say to his tombstone.
    I sit under the willow tree and cross my long legs up under me. With my finger, I trace the dates, 1902-1940, feeling the coldness of the stone. Daddy is the one who nicknamed me “Wildflower” when I was ten-years-old. He said the name fit me perfect since I’d sprung up here in the mountains like a wild trillium. Trillium will take your breath away if you see a patch of them. Daddy had a way with words, like a poet, and not just with me. He could make Mama smile faster than anything. Sometimes he’d get her laughing so hard she’d hold her sides till tears came to her eyes. All us kids stood around with our jaws dropped. To see Mama laugh was as rare as snow in August.
    “We miss you, Daddy,” I say. “All of us do, especially Mama. But we’re doing all right, I guess.”
    He would want to know that we’re doing all right and sometimes I tell him this even when we aren’t.
    Daddy always put his arms around Mama in the kitchen or laid an extra blanket on the bed because he knew she got cold in the middle of the night when the fire died down. No matter if he was sweating he kept Mama warm. But there aren’t enough blankets in the world to make up for Daddy being gone. Sometimes I wonder if she ever gets mad at him for going away. I know I do. After the sadness gnawed me numb, I got pissed as a rattlesnake that he hadn’t been more careful while working at the sawmill, and that he’d left us all alone.
     
    “Louisa May, you fell asleep again.”
    The voice hovers over me and I wonder if maybe one of God’s angels has come to take me to be with Daddy. Even though I am not a little girl anymore, I like thinking there are angels. When my eyes focus on what I hope will be my first celestial visitor, I see instead my sister, Jo. She is the most beautiful of all us McAllisters. She has golden blond hair the color of the inside of a honey comb, unlike my tangled dirty mop of curls, as Mama likes to call them. Like honey, Jo is also very sweet, but she isn’t the angel I hoped for.
    “My name is Wildflower,” I say half asleep, rolling over on Daddy’s grave.
    When I was little, Daddy and I used to take naps together on Saturday afternoons like this one. He’d be folded up on one end of the sofa and I’d be on the other, our toes touching, until Mama made us get up to do our chores.
    “Mama has dinner ready,” Jo says. She taps the bottom of my shoes with hers.
    “How’s Daniel?” I ask, opening one eye. Her husband is almost as sweet as she is.
    “He’s fine, and he’s waiting on his dinner, too.” She reaches down to pull me up.
    I brush away the pieces of leaves and dirt that leave spider web patterns on my legs. Jo and I are the same height now, but I haven’t filled out like her yet.
    “Mama worries about you coming up here all the time,” Jo says. “I don’t see why you bother. It takes forever to get here.”
    I don’t tell Jo about my secret shortcut. If she knew about the old footbridge she’d probably make me promise not to come that way again.
    “Jo, do you ever think about Daddy?”
    She pauses, as if my question has surprised her. “All the time,” she says softly. She looks down at Daddy’s grave like he isn’t there at all, but instead lives in her memory. Nobody talks much about him, probably because none of us is fond of crying. I envy Jo sometimes, mainly because she had more time with him. She was eighteen when he died. I had just turned twelve.
    “Let’s go home,” Jo says, sliding her hand into mine. We lock fingers like best girlfriends.
    “Goodbye, Daddy,” I say, as we walk away.
    Goodbye, Wildflower, I imagine him saying.
    It takes nearly thirty minutes to get home. My secret way through the woods would have cut that time in half, but I’m