La Lumière Des Étoiles

Alisha had received a lot of flowers through the years. Prom corsages. Pink roses everywhere for her sweet sixteen party. Red ones from the first boy who told her he loved her, presented on Valentine's day with a gleam in his eyes that she never got around to quite returning. After a new show opened, they'd litter her dressing room. Orchids. Roses. Tulips. Daisies, usually from Keelia who always remembered how much she loved them.

She loved them all. Appreciated them. Sent thank you notes promptly as dictated by Miss Manners and her mother. But she never kept them. A lot of her friends back home would dry their bouquets and hang them on their pastel painted walls. They littered their rooms, tied up with bows, memories of glories of the past that some of them wouldn't have again, settled down with their high school boyfriends and three kids by age 25.

There were two though, two that hadn't gone the way of the rest.

One was a red rose, still red, just a few months old, with a white lace ribbon tied around the stem, slipped between wax paper and pressed into her Complete Works of William Shakespeare in the middle of Romeo and Juliet.

The second was older, more fragile. A rose as well, white with pink edged petals. There was a dried drop of blood on the wax paper it was wrapped in, where the thorn had pricked her finger. The note that accompanied it was saved as well, though the ink was smudged with a couple of tears. Not many, just one or two. He'd taught her to be economical in emotion and she wouldn't dishonor him by wasting tears he'd call foolish on his gift. But it was wrapped with care. She hadn't been sure what to press it in, and had settled on the first Nancy Drew book he bought her. After his funeral, they wandered in the procession back to the old house that smelled of camphor and cedar. Her mother had clung to her father the whole time, sobbing for hers in an excessive display considering she hadn't bothered to visit him except on holidays for the last five years. Only Alisha had made the trip on her bike weekend after weekend, as often as she could. That's how she justified it when she slipped out with his family Bible with all of their names, births, deaths, marriages carefully inscribed in it by a firm hand in black ink. Next to his name she just as carefully wrote in the date with a hand that still shook a little despite all her care, smudging the purple ink. Just as carefully, she took the rose from between the covers of the Nancy Drew book and put it carefully into the Bible next to one of the illustrations of Jesus in heaven. She took it with her every time she moved, but she only opened it one day a year, reading the note, fingers tracing that firm handwriting. If she worked hard enough, she could smell the scent of the rose. Then just as carefully, she put it back and closed the Bible.

She thought he'd forgive her that one little sentimentality.