Black Rose

walking all that way without a jacket?”
    “I forgot it, and I do have a headache. Brought on by some foolishness Cissy Pratt was obliged to carry over to me.”
    “One of these days her flapping tongue’s going to wrap around her own throat.” He flipped up his eye patch. “And when she’s in the funeral home, I’m going in and dressing her in an outdated, off-the-rack outfit from Wal-Mart. Polyester.”
    It brought on a half smile. “That’s cruel.”
    “Come on inside. I’m going to fix us a batch of my infamous martinis. You can tell me all about it, then we’ll trash the bitch.”
    “As entertaining as that sounds, I think what I need is a couple of aspirin and a twenty-minute nap. And we both know you can’t disappoint those boys. Go on now, Captain.” She kissed his cheek. “Shiver some timbers.”
    She went inside, directly upstairs. She took the self-prescribed aspirin, then stretched out on her bed.
    How long, she wondered, how long was the albatross of that joke of a marriage going to lay across her neck? How many times would it flap right up and slap her in the face?
    So much for her superstitious hope that by letting the fifteen thousand dollars she’d discovered he’d nipped out of her account slide, she would have paid the debt, balanced the scales of the mistake.
    Well, the money was gone, and no use regretting that foolish decision. The marriage had happened, and no point punishing herself for it.
    Sooner or later he’d slip again, screw the wrong woman, bilk the wrong man, and he’d slither out of Memphis, out of her circle.
    Eventually people would find something and someone else to talk about. They always did.
    Imagine him being able to convince anyone that she’d attacked him—and in her own home. Then again, he did play the injured party well, and was the most accomplished liar she’d ever known.
    She could not, and would not, defend herself on any level. Doing so would just feed the beast. She would do what she had always done. Remove herself, physically and emotionally, from the storm of talk.
    She’d indulge in this brief sulk—she wasn’t perfect, after all. Then she’d get back to her life, and live it as she’d always done.
    Exactly as she chose.
    She closed her eyes. She didn’t expect to sleep, but she drifted a bit in that half-state she often found more soothing.
    And while she drifted, she sat on the bench in her own shade garden, basking in the late-spring breeze, breathing in the perfumes it had floating on the air.
    She could see the main house, and the colorful pots she’d planted and set herself on the terraces. And the carriage house, with its dance of lilies waiting to open wide.
    She smelled the roses that climbed up the arbor in a strong stream of golden sun. The white roses she’d planted herself, as a private tribute to John.
    She rarely went to his grave, but often to the arbor.
    She looked over beyond the rose garden, the cutting garden, the paths that gently wound through the flowers and shrubs and trees to the spot where Bryce had wanted to dig a swimming pool.
    They’d argued over that, and had a blistering fight when she’d headed off the contractor he’d hired despite her.
    The contractor had been told, she recalled, in no uncertain terms that if he so much as dipped a blade into her ground, she’d call the police to scrape up what she left of him.
    With Bryce she’d been even less patient while reminding him the house and grounds were hers, the decisions made involving them hers.
    He’d stormed out, hadn’t he, after she’d scalded him. Only to slink back a few hours later, sheepish, apologetic, and with a tiny bouquet of wild violets.
    Her mistake in accepting the apology, and the flowers.
    Alone is better.
    She shivered in the shade. “Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t.”
    You did this alone. All of this. You made a mistake once, and look what it cost you. Still costs you. Don’t make another.
    “I won’t make another. Whatever I do, it won’t be a mistake.”
    Alone is better. The voice was more insistent now, and the cold deeper. I’m alone.
    For an instant, only an instant, Roz thought she saw a woman in a muddy white dress, lying in an open grave. And for that instant, only that instant, she smelled the decay of death under the roses.
    Then the woman’s eyes opened, stared into hers, with a kind of mad hunger.

NINE

    ROZ CAME INTO the house out of a nasty, sleeting rain. She peeled out of her jacket, then sat on the