Sunday in the garden

In the garden on Sunday she pulled weeds with the slow, repetitive precision of a woman whose body had decided, in its sixty-fourth year, that this was a thing it knew how to do and would like to keep doing.

He brought her tea. He set it on the low stone wall and did not say anything, because saying anything would have required her to stop, and stopping was not what the tea was for.

The tea cooled.

A bee, very seriously, considered the wall.

The afternoon went on the way afternoons go in places where no one is asking the time. After a while she stood up and dusted her hands and drank the tea, which by then was the temperature of the day, and they walked back inside together without making a decision about it.