Black Rose

Clerk—or anyone you might have had a relationship with otherwise.”

    “Because it never happened before.”
    “Okay. Okay.” He got up, walking back and forth as he talked. “You lived in the house when you and John Ashby were dating, when you became engaged.”
    “Yes, of course. It’s my home.”
    “And you lived here, primarily, after you were married, exclusively after your parents died.”
    She could see him working something out in his head. No, she corrected. It’s already worked out, he was just going through the steps of it for her benefit.
    “We stayed here often—my mother wasn’t well, and my father couldn’t cope with her half the time. When he died, we lived here, in an informal sort of way. When she died, we moved permanently into the house.”
    “And during all that time, Amelia never objected to him? To John.”
    “No. I stopped seeing her when I turned, oh, eleven, I’d say, and didn’t see her again until after I was married. We hadn’t been married long, but were already trying to have children. I thought I might be pregnant, and I couldn’t sleep. I went outside, sat in the garden, and I saw her. I saw her and I knew I was carrying a child. I saw her at the onset of every pregnancy. Saw or heard her, of course, when the boys were little.”
    “Did your husband ever see her?”
    “No.” She frowned. “No, he didn’t. Heard her, but never saw her. I saw her the night he died.”
    “You never told me that.”
    “I haven’t told you each and every time I...” She trailed off, shook her head. “No, I’m sorry, I didn’t tell you. I’ve never discussed it with anyone. It’s very personal, and it’s painful still.”
    “I don’t know what it’s like to love and lose someone the way you loved and lost your John. I know it must seem like prying, and it is. But it’s all of a piece, Roz. I have to know, to do the job, I have to know this sort of thing.”
    “I didn’t think you would, when I hired you. That you’d have to know personal things. Wait.” She lifted a hand before he could speak. “I understand better now. How you work, I think, how you try to see things. People. The board in the library, the pictures on it so you can see who they were. All the little details you accumulate. It’s more than I bargained for. I think I mean that in a good way.”
    “I need to be immersed.”
    “Like you were with a brilliant and twisted poet,” she said with a nod. “I also believe you have to know, and that I’m able to tell you these things, because of what we’re becoming to each other. Conversely, that may be why it’s hard for me to tell you. It’s not easy for me to feel close to someone, to a man. To trust, and to want.”
    “Do you want it easy?”
    She shook her head. “How do you know me so well already? No, I don’t want it easy. I suspect easy. I’m having a time with you inside myself, Mitchell. That’s a compliment.”
    “Same goes.”
    She studied him, standing there, vital and alive, with the arbor and its sleeping roses behind him. With warmth and sun, the roses would wake. But John, her John, was gone.
    “John was coming home from his office in Memphis. Coming home late from a meeting. The roads were slick. It had been raining and the roads were slick, and there was fog.”
    Her heart gave a little hitch as it did, always, when she remembered.
    “There was an accident. Someone driving too fast, crossed the center line. I was up, waiting up, and dealing with the boys. Harper had a nightmare, and both Mason and Austin had colds. I’d just settled them down, and was going to bed, irritated a little that John wasn’t home yet. And there she was, standing there in my room.”

    She gave a half laugh, brushed a hand over her face. “Gave me a hell of a jolt, thinking oh, hell, am I pregnant, because believe me, I wasn’t in the mood for it right at the moment after dealing with three restless, unhappy children. But something in her eyes didn’t look right. Too bright, and I want to say too mean. It scared me a little. Then the police came, and well, I wasn’t thinking about her anymore.”
    Her voice had remained steady throughout. But her eyes, her long, lovely eyes, mirrored the grief.
    “It’s a hard, hard thing. I can’t even imagine it.”
    “Your life stops right there. Just stops. And when it starts up again, it’s different. It’s never what it was before that moment. Never.”
    He didn’t touch her, didn’t comfort,