Black Rose

I’d ride out and let you know it’s signed, sealed, and on its way back to your lawyer. Plus, it gave me a chance to see your place. I’m impressed. Even though I don’t know squat about gardening, I’m majorly impressed.”
    “Thank you.”
    He glanced down at her worktable. There were pots, some empty yet, some filled with soil and small green leaves. “What’s going on here?”
    “I’m potting up some seedlings. Celosia—cockscomb.”
    “I have no idea what that is.”
    “I’m sure you’ve seen them.” She brushed a hand absently over her cheek, transferring a smudge of soil. “In bloom they’re like small feather dusters in bold colors. Red’s very popular.”
    “Okay. And you put them in these little pots because?”
    “Because they don’t like their roots disturbed after they’re established. I pot them young, then they’ll be blooming for our spring customers, and only have to tolerate that last transplanting. And I don’t imagine you’re all that interested.”
    “Didn’t think I would be. But this is like a whole new world. What’s this here?”
    She raised her eyebrows. “All right, then. That’s matthiola, also called gillyflower or stock. It’s very fragrant. Those there with the yellowish green leaves? They’ll be double-flowered cultivars. These will flower for spring. Customers prefer to buy in bloom, so I plan my propagation to give them plenty of blooms to choose from. This section is for annuals. I do perennials back there.”
    “Is it a gift, or years of study? How do you come to know what to do, how to recognize the... cockscomb from the gillyflower at this stage?”
    “It’s both, and a love of it with considerable hands-on experience thrown in. I’ve been gardening since I was a child. I remember my grandmother—on the Harper side—putting her hands over mine to show me how to press the soil around a plant. What I remember best about her is in the gardens at Harper House.”
    “Elizabeth McKinnon Harper, wife to Reginald Harper, Jr.”
    “You have a good memory.”
    “I’ve been skimming over some of the lists. What was she like?”
    It made her feel soft, and a little sentimental, to be asked. “Kind, and patient, unless you riled her up. Then she was formidable. She went by Lizzie, or Lizzibeth. She always wore men’s pants, and an old blue shirt and an odd straw hat. Southern women of a certain age always wear odd straw hats to garden. It’s the code. She smelled of the eucalyptus and pennyroyal she’d make up into a bug repellant. I use her recipe for it still.”
    She picked up another pot. “I still miss her, and she’s been gone nearly thirty years now. Fell asleep in her glider on a hot summer day in July. She’d been deadheading in the garden, and sat down to rest. She never woke up. I think that’s a very pleasant way to pass.”
    “How old was she?”
    “Well, she claimed to be seventy-six, but in fact, according to the records she was eighty-four. My daddy was a late baby for her, as I was for him. I broke that Harper family tradition by having my children young.”
    “Did she ever talk to you about the Harper Bride?”
    “She did.” As she spoke, Roz continued with her potting. “Of course, she was a McKinnon by birth and wasn’t raised in the house. But she claimed to have seen the Bride when she’d come to live here, when my great-grandfather passed. My grandfather Harper grew up at Harper House, of course, and if we were right in dating Amelia, would have been a baby around the time she died. But he passed when I was about eight, and I don’t recall him ever speaking of her.”
    “How about your parents, or other relatives?”
    “Are we on the clock here, Doctor?”
    “Sorry.”
    “No, I don’t mind.” She labeled the new potted plant, reached for another. “My daddy never said much, now that I think about it. Maybe it’s a thing with the Harper men, or men in general. My mother was a dramatic sort of female, one who enjoyed the illusion of turmoil in her life. She claimed to have seen the Bride often, and with great stress. But then, Mama was always stressed about something.”
    “Did either she or your grandmother keep a journal, any sort of diary?”
    “Yes, both of them. Another fine old tradition I haven’t followed. My grandmother moved into the guesthouse when my father married and brought his own bride home. After she died, he cleaned out her things. I recall asking him about her journals, but he said