He nodded. “Yes. Sixteen varieties. Hybrids, teas and English. A few heirlooms she insisted on keeping alive even when they barely survived the winter. And those climbing fuckers on the big trellis? Took four years to train them properly.” His face softened. “But Mom wanted her storybook garden, and we got there.”
“And you maintain it?” I asked softly.
“Of course.” He shrank in on himself a little. “With all the reading I did, I became an expert. No use in wasting the knowledge. They’ve got to be cut back at a forty-five-degree angle, above and outward, facing bud. Deadhead in June and fertilize twice. Always watch for black spot after heavy rains.”
He paused, and I could see the tension in his jaw.
“When she got sick, we’d sit out there and enjoy the blooms. She’d quiz me about the species, about best care practices, all of that. About how to care for Mr. Lincoln or the Black Baccara while I pretended not to notice how much more drawn she looked every day.”
My heart ached. I saw it on his face, the familiar grief. The same I’d carried with me since I was a kid.
“She knew you’d take good care of them,” I whispered.
He dipped his chin. “She used to say roses were beautiful, but they’d cut you if you forgot how dangerous they could be.”
I felt that deep in my gut.
“I think the thing that stuck with me,” he said, smoothing a glob of pink across the nail of my ring finger, “was the feeling. The security and the comfort. My parents were good people. I knew it in my bones. They loved us. They loved this land and this town. And I woke up every single day of my life secure in that knowledge.”
That took my breath away. It was the thing that kept me up at night, the fear that raged inside me when things got tough.
He reached out with his left hand and tipped my chin up. “Don’t do that.”
I blinked rapidly, worried I’d start to cry again.
“Don’t get down on yourself. Your kids have that too. I see how they look at you. I see how deeply they are loved. They know that. Deep down on a cellular level. And someday, when they are well-adjusted adults, they will tell you that.”
I sniffled. “I just worry?—”
“It’s okay to worry. It’s human. But don’t doubt yourself. Or what you’ve given these kids.”
We sat in silence as he added the top coat and I put my hands under the lamp to dry.
My nails looked good. Pink and cheerful and bright.
I stared at them, processing all he’d shared with me.
“You maintain the roses for her,” I said, thinking about his mom and my own.
He held my gaze. “Yes. It’s the least I can do. She loved me so deeply I can still feel it.”
The honesty made my breath catch.
“And I’ve grown to love those fussy-ass flowers.” He leaned back in his seat. “They require patience, attention. You tend to them, even when they look dead.”
He reached out and brushed his thumb across my jawline.
“And every spring, they come back to you.”
I held his hand against my face, soaking up the sensation of his skin on mine. This touch said things my words could not.
“Roses look fragile,” he said quietly. “But they’re resilient.”
The room went impossibly still as we stared at one another, our hands connected.
He wasn’t just talking about roses anymore.
And my hands weren’t shaking.