Black Rose

to. I didn’t know what else I could do. But I kept putting it off, because I was afraid. Then one day I was with my mother, and I started bleeding, and cramping, right there in the restaurant where we were having dinner.”
    Tears spilled down her cheeks. Roz pulled a napkin from the metal dispenser and offered it.
    “I had a miscarriage. I hadn’t told her I was pregnant, and I had a miscarriage practically in front of her. She and Daddy were so upset. I was all dopey and feeling so strange, I told them who the father was. He was one of Daddy’s golf partners.”
    This time she buried her face in the napkin and sobbed. When the waitress started over, Roz just shook her head, rose, and moved around the booth to slip in beside Jane, drape an arm over her shoulder.
    “I’m sorry.”
    “Nothing of the kind. You go ahead and cry.”
    “It was an awful scene, an awful time. I embarrassed them, and disappointed them.”
    “I would think, under the circumstances, their minds and hearts should have been with you.”
    “I shamed them.” She hiccupped, and mopped at her tears. “And all for a man who never loved me. I lost that baby, maybe because I wanted it not to be. I wished it would all just go away, and it did.”
    “You can’t wish a baby away, honey. You can blame yourself some for conceiving it, ’cause that takes two. But you can’t blame yourself for losing it.”

    “I never did anything in my life except what I’ve been told. But I did this, and that’s what happened.”
    “I’m sorry it happened. We all make mistakes, Jane, and sometimes we pay a very stiff price for them. But you don’t have to keep paying it.”
    She gave Jane’s shoulders a last squeeze, then went back to her own side, so they’d be face-to-face. “Look at me now. Listen to me. The man who used you, he’s out of your life?”
    She nodded, dabbed at her eyes.
    “Good. Now you can start deciding what you want to do. Build a life or keep sliding around on the wreck of the old one.”
    “You’d really help me get a job?”
    “I’ll help you get one. Keeping it would be up to you.”
    “She... she has a lot of old diaries. She keeps them in her room, locked in a drawer. But I know where the key is.”
    Roz smiled and sat back. “Aren’t you something?”

SEVENTEEN

    “SHE’S NOT EVIL, right?” Hayley shifted Lily on her hip and watched Harper plug some portulaca into the bed outside the back door of his cottage. “I mean she’s nasty and mean, but she’s not evil.”
    “Obviously, you haven’t heard Mama describe Cousin Rissy as the Uber-Bitch Demon from Hell.”
    “If she really is, then maybe she had something to do with Amelia. Maybe she’s the one who killed her.”
    “She wasn’t born—or spawned, as Mama would say—when Amelia died.”
    “Oh, yeah.” But she wrinkled her forehead. “But that’s only if we’re right on the dates. If we’re wrong, she could’ve done it.”
    “Assuming Amelia was murdered.”
    “Well, okay, assuming that. She has to have some reason for taking the diaries, and for keeping them. Don’t you think?”
    “Other than being a selfish, tight-assed old biddy?”
    “Other than. All right, honey.” As Lily squirmed, Hayley put her down and began to walk her, holding her hands, up and down Harper’s patio. “There could be things in the diaries that implicate her.”
    “Then why didn’t she burn them?”
    “Oh, I don’t know,” she snapped. “It’s a theory. We’ve got to have a theory and a hypothesis so we can work to the solution, don’t we?”
    “If you say so, but my solution is Cousin Rissy’s just a sticky-fingered, black-hearted, selfish witch. Look here, sweetie-pie.” He plucked one of his moss roses, held it out at Lily’s level. “Isn’t that pretty? Wouldn’t you like to have it?”
    Grinning, she released her mother’s hands, reached out.
    “Uh-uh, you come on and get it,” he told her.
    And when he held it just beyond her fingertips, she took three toddling steps.
    “Oh, my God. Oh, my God! Did you see? She walked. Did you see that?”
    “Sure did.” Harper steadied Lily when she closed her fist around the flower. “Look at you. Aren’t you the one?”
    “She took her first steps.” Hayley sniffled, knuckled a tear away. “She walked right to you.”
    Always uneasy with tears, Harper looked up. “Sorry. I should’ve had you hold out the flower.”
    “No, no, that’s not it. She took her first steps, Harper. My