Black Rose

have a ghost. Depending on who was talking. My father believed she was one of the Harper Brides, while my grandmother maintained she was a servant or guest, someone who’d been misused somehow. Someone who had died here, but wasn’t blood kin.”
    “Did your father, your grandmother, your mother, ever tell you about their specific experiences with her?”
    “My mother would get palpitations if the subject was brought up. My mother was very fond of her palpitations.”
    Mitch grinned at the dry tone, watched her spread some brie. “I had a great-aunt like that. She had spells. Her day wasn’t complete without at least one spell.”
    “Why some people delight in having conditions is more than I can understand. My mother did speak to me of her once or twice, in a sort of gloom-and-doom manner—something else she was fond of. Warning me that one day I’d inherit this burden, and hoping for my sake it didn’t shatter my health, as it had hers.”
    “She was afraid of Amelia, then.”
    “No, no.” Roz waved that away, nibbled on a cracker. “She enjoyed being long-suffering, and a kind of trembling martyr. Which sounds very unkind coming from her only child.”
    “Let’s call it honest instead.”
    “Comes to the same. In any case, other times, it was bearing and birthing me that had ruined her health. And others, she’d been delicate since a bout of pneumonia as a child. Hardly matters.”
    “Actually, it’s helpful. Bits and pieces, personal observations and memories are helpful, a start toward the big picture. What about your father?”
    “My father was generally amused by the idea of a ghost and had fond memories of her from his own childhood. But then he’d be annoyed or embarrassed if she made an appearance and frightened a guest. My father was fiercely hospitable, and mortified on a deep, personal level if a guest in his home was inconvenienced.”
    “What sort of memories did he have?”

    “The same you’ve heard before. It hardly varies. Her singing to him, visiting him in his room, a maternal presence until he was about twelve.”
    “No disturbances?”
    “Not that he told me, but my grandmother said he sometimes had nightmares as a boy. Just one or two a year, where he claimed to see a woman in white, with her eyes bulging, and he could hear her screaming in his head. Sometimes she was in his room, sometimes she was outside, and so was he—in the dream.”
    “Dreams would be another common thread, then. Have you had any?”
    “No, not...”
    “What?”
    “I always thought it was nerves. In the weeks before John and I were married, I had dreams. Of storms. Black skies and thunder, cold winds. A hole in the garden, like a grave, with dead flowers inside it.” She shivered once. “Horrible. But they stopped after I was married. I dismissed them.”
    “And since?”
    “No. Never. My grandmother saw her more than anyone, at least more than anyone would admit to. In the house, in the garden, in my father’s room when he was a boy. She never told me anything frightening. But maybe she wouldn’t have. Of all my family, that I recall, she was the most sympathetic toward Amelia. But to be honest, it wasn’t the primary topic of conversation in the house. It was simply accepted, or ignored.”
    “Let’s talk about that blood kin, then.” He pulled his glasses out of his shirt pocket to read his notes. “The furthest back you know, personally, of sightings starts with your grandmother Elizabeth McKinnon Harper.”
    “That’s not completely accurate. She told me my grandfather, her husband, had seen the Bride when he was a child.”

    “That’s her telling you what she’d been told, not what she claimed to have seen and experienced herself. But speaking to that, can you recall being told of any experiences that happened in the generation previous to your grandparents?”
    “Ah... she said her mother-in-law, that would be my great-grandmother Harper, refused to go into certain rooms.”
    “Which rooms?”
    “Ah... lord, let me think. The nursery, which was on the third floor in those days. The master bedroom. She moved herself out of it at some point, I’m assuming. The kitchen. And she wouldn’t set foot in the carriage house. From my grandmother’s description of her, she wasn’t a fanciful woman. It was always thought she’d seen the Bride. If there was another prior to that, I don’t know about it. But there shouldn’t be. We’ve dated her to the