The Inheritance. Janice Carter

      CHAPTER FOUR

      ROSLYN COULDN’T remember the last time she’d felt so restless. Or could this gnawing sensation be loneliness?

      No, she thought, pushing the suggestion away. More like boredom from midweek in Plainsville, Iowa.

      She rose from the wicker rocking chair she’d found in the sunroom off the kitchen and prowled back and forth along the veranda. April was far too soon to be sitting outdoors in the evening, but the silence inside the house was pressing. She wrapped the afghan tighter around her, reluctant to head back inside for her jacket. Once there, she knew she’d simply turn out the lights and go to bed. It was only nine o’clock and she couldn’t recall the last time she’d retired so early. Maybe the day after her mother’s funeral a year ago, when sleep had been a welcome escape.

      Her mother’s pretty face flashed before her. Lucille Dutton Baines. Roslyn sighed, trying to conjure up a picture of her mother in which she didn’t have a defeated look. If Roslyn went back to the years before her parents divorced, she could almost envision a mother who smiled and laughed. Roslyn had never learned all the reasons for the breakup. She remembered a lot of arguments about money. As the years passed, other issues cropped up, and her father began to stay out at night.

      Moving into Grandma and Grandpa Dutton’s row house had ruled out any chance of reconciliation. Roslyn shivered at the very memory of Grandma Dutton’s hawklike face and thin, brittle body. Not the kind of body that welcomed a child’s embrace. Was it any wonder, she asked herself in the center of Ida Mae Petersen’s veranda, that her grandmother had never revealed anything about her family? Would any family want to claim someone like Grandma Dutton?

      That sobering question was unlikely to be answered. For here she was, in the very seat of the Petersen family, and anyone who might know the complete story was dead. The image of herself as sole survivor of the Petersen clan made Roslyn feel even worse than she had moments ago. She headed for the door, pausing to take a last look at the garden Jack had shown her that morning.

      The Iowa rose was bathed in the dim light from the front hall. If only the plant could speak, she thought. Then she shook her head. You’re losing it, Baines, she said to herself. Next you’ll convince yourself that the bush knows all kinds of secrets.

      SOPHIE PURSED HER thin lips together and frowned.

      “That rosebush,” she enunciated slowly, obviously irked by Roslyn’s question, “came to Iowa from Denmark more than one hundred and fifty years ago. They call it an antique rose, because it’s from the original stock. Not a hybrid, like most of the ones you get nowadays.” She smiled, her face softening. “Jack told me all that. Anyway, your Aunt Ida’s ancestors carried it with them when they came to America all those years ago. It must have been important to the family even then, because people didn’t have the luxury of taking a lot of stuff with them when they traveled on those little boats all the way across the Atlantic.”

      Sophie stopped then, her eyes drifting off in a kind of reverie. Imagining the voyage, Roslyn wondered?

      The other woman’s eyes blinked rapidly, then gazed across the kitchen table at Roslyn. “Sorry, I got to thinking about my own folks coming over, but they traveled in a modern boat, of course.” She took a deep breath. “As I was saying, the rose was planted in the family homestead—where we’re sittin’ this minute—and has been looked after by generations of Petersens ever since.”

      Roslyn waited for Sophie to continue. “And?” she prompted.

      Sophie raised her broad shoulders in reply. “That’s it. You asked what was so special about the rose.”

      “So they brought it over from Denmark. I still don’t see why Aunt Ida would have been worried enough about it to will it to me.”

      Sophie flashed Roslyn a look that questioned her basic intelligence. “The rose has been just as much a part of family life as any person. Every time any Petersen got married, the bride had to have roses in her bouquet. If a Petersen died when the rose was blooming, the flowers would be placed in the funeral wreaths. Whenever a Petersen moved away from Plainsville, a cutting from the rose would go with them.” She plunked her empty coffee mug down and stared at Roslyn.

      “How do you know all this?”

      “Oh, your aunt told me many times, over the years. She fussed over that rosebush as if it were her own child.” She closed her eyes for a second, then shook her head sadly. “I suppose it was, too. Poor Ida.”

      “Why?”

      “She never got to use the rose herself, her dying in January….”

      “No roses, then,” Roslyn murmured.

      Sophie gave her a sharp look, but went on. “And of course, the dear soul never married.”

      “I wonder if my grandmother had a cutting from the rose in her bridal bouquet.”

      Sophie raised an eyebrow. “Don’t you know?”

      “I know less than you, apparently. I remember a photograph of my grandma and grandpa all dressed up and arm in arm, standing in front of a building. My mother said it was their wedding picture—they got married in a registry office in Chicago, I think. I don’t know if she had a bouquet in her hand or not.”

      “Where’s the picture now?”

      “Probably in a trunk full of stuff from my mother’s flat. I—I never had the courage to go through it after Mom died. It’s all in storage now.” Roslyn’s voice drifted off.

      After a moment’s silence, Sophie announced, “Well, speaking of storage. I guess it’s time we got to cleaning out Miss Ida’s room.”

      Roslyn reluctantly followed Sophie along the hall and up the stairs. It was a bright, sunny morning. The skeletal tops of trees behind the house were visible through the transom window on the first landing, and Roslyn wondered what they’d look like in full leaf. Then she caught herself. Trees, silly. They’d look like trees.

      “When Miss Ida and her sister were young girls, they shared the big back bedroom,” Sophie said as they turned at the top of the stairs.

      “It’s a beautiful bedroom,” she murmured. “If I lived here, that’s the one I’d have.”

      “Except you won’t be living here,” Sophie reminded her gently.

      Roslyn’s face heated up. She was tempted to say something about not having made a decision yet, but was loath to spoil the easy neutrality that she and Sophie had struck together over morning coffee.

      Sophie herself seemed to regret her remark. “Maybe you should move in there for the next couple of nights—just to satisfy your curiosity.”

      Roslyn’s smile was faint. “No,” she said. “No point, is there?” She squeezed past Sophie