thing that reminded him of her. He wasn’t sure what.
He would have given her anything she asked
for. But she never asked for anything, and he liked
that about her, too. She was an independent wom-
an, and strong, and those things made her more ra-
diantly beautiful than he could have ever told her. It
made sense to him that she should smell like sun-
ny afternoons and wine and oranges. And he liked
to buy her orange and yellow flowers because they
looked the way she smelled, sweet and warm and
like freshly-peeled satsuma oranges all the way from
California.
She’d never belonged in the little factory
town where they lived. Nothing smelled like oranges
or warmness there except her. Every year, when he
bought her a bottle of wine and sweet, fragrant ros-
es, he was surprised that they never left.
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