They’d rented long tables to place on the back screened porch and covered them with bright-blue paper tablecloths, paper dishes, plastic forks and spoons and the fresh flowers Lovie had brought home from the florist. Nobody wanted to spend the evening washing dirty dishes when there were fireworks to be seen. Cara and Toy twisted and taped red, white and blue crepe paper and added balloons with flags on them in the corner. Cara also strung white lights around the room, something her mother had always done. She’d thought they were like stars when she was a child and hoped Linnea and Cooper would, too.She walked into the living room in search of more tape when she spotted her mother arranging photo albums on the living room table.“What’s all this?” she asked.Lovie looked up from her task smiling with pride. “These are the fruits of my labor for the past few months. An ongoing project. I’ve gathered all the loose photographs of the family into some kind of order at last. I had no idea there were so many.
