Black Rose

her sleep tonight.”
    “Then let’s get started saving your life, and hers.”
    She had a vision in mind, and cut a swath through her own nursery as she built on it. Cissy didn’t blink when Roz accumulated plants, shrubs, ornamental trees, pots, and planters.
    “Harper, I need you to go to the house, bring my pickup on around. We’re going to load this up, and I’m going to steal you for a few hours. Stella, you tell Logan to come on by here when he finishes for the day. He’s going to be putting in some overtime. He can pick up what I’ve earmarked, and bring it to this address.”
    She scrawled Cissy’s address on a scrap of paper. “You come with him. I can use your hands, and your eye.”
    “Do you really think you can get all this done in less than two days?” Stella asked.
    “I will get it done in less than two days because that’s what I’ve got.”
    SHE LOVED A challenge. And there was nothing like digging in the dirt to take her mind off any worries.
    She measured, marked, tilled, dumped peat moss, and raked.
    “Normally I’d want to take more time to prep the soil. Starting a new bed’s an important event.”
    Cissy chewed on her lip, twisted the string of pearls she wore around her fingers. “But you can do it.”
    “Not much I can’t do with dirt and plants. It’s my gift.” She nodded to where Harper was already setting in a decorative metal trellis. “And his. And you’re going to learn something today. Put those gloves on, Cissy. You’re going to do some slaving away, then you won’t have lied.”
    “I don’t give a red damn about the lie.” But she tugged on the gloves.
    Roz explained, in basic terms, that they’d do a four-season perennial garden. One that would impress, whatever time of year the in-laws visited. Iris and dianthus, campanula. Bleeding heart and columbine for instant bloom. With spring bulbs, craftily placed annuals, and the foliage from later bloomers filling in now.
    And once the massive planters she’d chosen were done and exploding with flowers, the bed would be a showpiece even a persnickety mother-in-law would love.
    She left Cissy setting in crested cockscomb and dusty miller and moved off to reorganize and fluff up the already established beds.
    At the end of another hour, she realized they would use everything she’d brought with her, and then some.
    “Harper?” She swiped at her sweaty forehead with the back of her hand. “You got your cell phone?”
    He stopped working the vines onto the trellis long enough to pat at his pockets. “Somewhere. Truck maybe?”
    Like mother like son, she thought, sent him a wave, and went around front to find it. She called Stella, rattled off another list of needs—having no doubt her manager would record them all, invoice, inventory, and deliver.
    She planted cannas at the back fence, along with blue salvia and African daisies. Then sat back on her heels when Cissy walked to her with a tall glass.
    “I made lemonade, from scratch. For my sins. My manicure is wrecked,” she said as she handed Roz the glass. “And I’m already aching in places I forgot I owned. I don’t know how you do this.”

    “I don’t know how you play bridge every week.”
    “Well, to each his own, I suppose. I owe you a lot more than the check I wrote.”
    “Oh, you’re going to be writing a couple more before it’s over.”
    Cissy just closed her eyes. “Hank’s going to kill me. He’s going to take his nine iron and beat me bloody and dead.”
    “I don’t think he will.” Roz got to her feet, handed the empty glass back, then stretched her back. “I think he’s going to be pleased and proud—and touched that you’d go to all this trouble—ruining a manicure on top of it—to make your home more beautiful for his mother’s visit. To show her, and him, how much you value the home he’s provided you with.”
    “Oh.” A slow smile spread. “That’s damn clever of you, Rosalind.”
    “Just because I don’t have a husband doesn’t mean I don’t know how they work. I’m going to warn you, you don’t take proper care of all this, I’ll come over here and beat you senseless with Hank’s nine iron myself.”
    Cissy looked around at the dirt, the half-planted beds, the shovels and rakes and bags of soil and additives. “It’s going to look really nice when it’s finished. Right?”
    “Trust me.”
    “I am. Completely. And this is probably not the best time to tell you that son of yours is one