Reflecting Love's Charms (Bellingwood Book 14) by Diane Greenwood Muir Page A

She turned her attention back to the woman standing in front of her. "Yes, we adopted both of them. Rebecca is in seventh grade and Heath is a junior in high school."
    "It will be nice to have more young people in the neighborhood. We got old around here. But there is another young family that just moved in last summer. They're on the next block over, though. They have two little boys who go to the elementary school. Wilkens is their last name. Say, you look like you've gotten warm. Would you like to come over for something cool to drink? I'd love to have you meet my Albert. He doesn't get around as good as me these days, but he's still a witty man. I have to do all the driving. He'd put us in a ditch, mark my words. The government took away his driving license last year. Said his eyesight was going. I think it was just an excuse to make sure he doesn't drive. But that's okay. I can get us wherever we need to go. We have a cute little golfcart to drive around down in Florida." She chuckled. "It's kind of like a playground down there for old folks. Nobody drives those carts very fast, so if we run into each other, we just play bumper cars and bounce off."
    "I'd love to stop by sometime, but not today," Polly said when the woman took a breath. "I need to go back to Sycamore House."
    "Any time you'd like to meet my Albert or say hello, please feel free. We're just around the corner there in the brown house. It has red shutters, you know. Albert painted them before he had that last stroke. He came back pretty good from it, but doesn't get around like he used to. I suppose the next time we have the house painted, we'll have to hire it out." Mrs. Lynch put her hand on the truck as she turned herself around. "Stop by sometime. We'd love to see you," she called out as she walked away.
    Polly pulled the truck door shut and breathed out, "Oh my. What a riot. And now, because I said I would, I have to leave." She backed out of the driveway, shaking her head. "I didn't talk to the people who are doing archeology in my back yard and I didn't talk to Barry."
    She drove away from the house, confused at what to do next. It wasn't often that people got the better of her, but it had certainly happened today. Going home and leaving the dogs again was not an option. Once per day was her limit on that guilt. Heading for the coffee shop wasn't a good option either. She was a mess. Between the sweat, dirt and weeds, Polly didn't feel like she was appropriate for human consumption.
    Wending her way through town to the highway, Polly headed west and then south to Boone. She dug down into the console and found a bottle of antibacterial hand wash that she'd jammed in there not long after Henry gave her the truck. That and a few napkins later, she was at least presentable enough to go through a drive-thru and make a quick trip to Hy-Vee to look at flowers.
    That was a joke. They'd probably die before she even got them back to Bellingwood. She and Eliseo had a conversation about hardy plants. If they couldn't live on their own, he'd just be subjecting them to an early grave by leaving them in her care.
    Every time she drove on this road, it brought a smile to her face. The fields were coming alive with crops, the ditches were green again and the sky was bright blue with a few puffy clouds.
    Polly slowed to avoid something in the road ahead of her and then screeched to a stop as she got closer. She turned her flashers on, jumped out of the truck, and took out her phone as she ran around the front to the person half on the road and the shoulder.
    "Hello, Polly?" Aaron asked tentatively.
    "I'm on R-27. There's someone lying on the road." Polly closed the distance, looking around to see where they'd come from.
    "Are they alive?"
    "I don't know yet," she said. "Just a second." She knelt down beside the young woman and reached out to touch her. "She's still warm. I'm looking for a pulse." Polly brushed the woman's hair back from her neck and pressed her fingers