Time to Love Again

I first met Rose Asbury the summer I moved in next door to her. Well, actually, I didn't meet her. I guess you can say I first saw her. She was working in her yard and I came out to say hello.  Not that she gave me a chance to. Far from it. I hardly stepped in her yard and said hello and she jumped up and went into her house. I moved in to take care of my granddaughter while my son and daughter in law served their time in the Middle East.  They were in the reserves and their units got called up. Rather than move Sarah to my house and disrupt her further, I moved in there. At least she could stay in her school and keep her friends.
It was a long time before I really got to know Rose. She rebuked me at every turn.
No matter how many times I tried to talk to her, all she did was nod a hello and hurry into the house. Her friends told me she'd lost her parents, husband, and sister all within a couple years of each other. She handled her parents death, but her husband and then her sister did her in. She turned into a recluse.
Once an outgoing, funloving, caring woman, she'd now become remote. Locking herself away from everyone but one friend. I found out later, she tried to avoid Louise too, but Louise wouldn't allow it.
Everything was going along like normal, Rose avoided me as much as possible and I still kept trying to talk to her, until that winter day she slipped on the ice. Our lives changed after that. For one thing, my granddaughter and her friends started bothering Rose. Little things, like sledding in her driveway and building snowmen. I talked to Sarah about it several times to no avail. I just couldn't stop her from bothering Rose. In fact, I was at my wits end what to do with her at all. She didn't do her homework or when she did, for some reason she didn't turn it in. I figured it had something to do with her parents being gone. I wasn't good at raising kids. My wife always handled our son. No matter what I tried, it didn't seem to work with Sarah.
To find out more about Rose Asbury and me, check out the book written by Roseanne Dowell. You can find it at Amazon. http://amzn.to/timetoliveagain