Black Rose Page 0,35

gift we've got for you."

"Another? I'm going to have to add a room on the house to hold everything I got this morning."

"This is special. You've already got a place for it. Or did at one time."

"Well, don't keep me in suspense. What have y'all cooked up?"

Harper stepped back into the hall and brought in a large box wrapped in gold foil. He set it at her feet. "Why don't you open it and see?"

Curious, she set her glass aside and began to work on the wrap. "Don't tell Stella I'm tearing this off, she'd be horrified. Myself, I'm amazed the three of you got together and agreed on something, much less kept it quiet until tonight. Mason always blabs."

"Hey, I can keep a secret when I have to. You don't know about the time Austin took your car and - "

"Shut up." Austin punched his brother's shoulder. "There's no statute of limitations on that sort of crime." He smiled sweetly at Roz's narrowed look. "What you don't know, Mama, can't hurt this idiot."

"I suppose." But she wondered on it as she dug through the packing. And her heart simply stuttered as she drew out the antique dressing mirror.

"It was the closest we could come to the one we broke. Pattern's nearly the same, and the shape," Harper said.

"Queen Anne," Austin added, "circa 1700, with that gold and green lacquer on the slanted drawer. At least, it's the best our combined memories could match the one Mason broke."

"Hey! It was Harper's idea to use it as a treasure chest. It's not my fault I dropped it out of the damn tree. I was the baby."

"Oh, God. Oh, God, I was so mad, so mad, I nearly skinned y'all alive."

"We have painful recollection of that," Austin assured her.

"It was from your daddy's family." Voice thick, throat aching, she traced her fingers over the lacquered wood. "He gave it to me on our wedding day."

"We should've been skinned." Harper sat down beside her, rubbed her arm. "We know it's not the same, but - "

"No, no, no." Swamped with emotion, she turned her face to press it against his arm for a moment. "It's better. That you'd remember this, think of this. Do this."

"It made you cry," Mason murmured, and bent to rub his cheek over her hair. "It's the first time I remember seeing you cry. None of us ever forgot it, Mama."

She was struggling not to cry now as she embraced each one of her sons. "It's the most beautiful gift I've ever been given, and I'll treasure it more than anything I have. Every time I look at it, I'll think of the way you were then, the way you are now. I'm so proud of my boys. I always have been. Even when I wanted to skin you."

Austin picked up her glass, handed it to her, then passed around the other three flutes. "Harper gets the honors, as he's the oldest. But I want it on record that I thought it up."

"We all thought it up," Mason objected.

"I thought most of it up. Go on, Harper."

"I will, if you'll shut up for five seconds." He lifted his glass. "To our mama, for everything she's been to us, everything she's done for us, every single day."

"Oh. That's done it." The tears welled into her throat, spilled out of her eyes. "That's done it for sure."

"Go ahead and cry." Mason leaned over to kiss her damp cheek. "Makes a nice circle."

GETTING BACK TObusiness as usual helped fill the little hole in her heart from kissing two of her sons goodbye.

It would be a slow week - the holiday week was, routinely - so she took a page out of Stella's book and shouldered in to organizing. She cleaned tools, scrubbed down worktables, helped with inventory, and finally settled on the style of potting-soil bag, and the design.

With some time to spare, she worked with Hayley to pour a fresh supply of concrete planters and troughs.

"I can't believe Christmas is over." Squatting, Hayley turned the mold as Roz poured. "All that anticipation and prep, and it's over in a snap. Last year, my first after my daddy died? Well, it was just awful, and the holidays dragged and dragged."

"Grief tends to spin time out, and joy contracts it. I don't know why that is."

"I remember just wanting it all to be over - so I wouldn't keep hearing "Jingle Bells" every time I went to work, you know? Being pregnant, and