Chapter 9: Flowers Every Day

The first bouquet came on Monday at eight.

Twenty-four white roses in a box tied with a cream ribbon, and a card in Leighton's square handwriting.

Ethan carried them into the kitchen at arm's length.

"For Miss Winslow," he said.

"A man in a cap delivered them to my front door and said 'Prescott' like it was a title."

Jocelyn looked up from her toast.

She was in her robe again, with a pencil stuck through her hair, and she did not touch the box.

"Read it," she said.

I took the card.

"The Prescott Foundation names Jocelyn Winslow guest of honor at the June Gala," I read.

"Saturday the twenty-second. A car will be sent."

"A car will be sent," Jocelyn repeated. "Like a dentist's reminder."

Ethan's grandmother came in on her cane, looked at the roses and sniffed.

"Funeral flowers," she said. "White ones. It's bad luck to accept them in the house."

She took the box in both arms and carried it out the back door.

I watched through the window as she handed it over the fence to the woman next door, who accepted it with an astonished face.

"There," said the grandmother, coming back. "Now they're her problem."

Jocelyn laughed so hard she had to put down her toast.

On Tuesday there were twenty-four more.

On Wednesday there were forty-eight, and a note that said, I'll keep asking.

By Friday the neighbors had so many roses that a woman on the corner set them out in buckets.

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