She looked down at the half-inch worm of ash on the end of her cigarette and grimaced. My only vice, and I don't even enjoy it. Still, it was a good excuse to avoid the party; most of Sam's friends were into clean air and health food. She dropped the cigarette and ground the tip into the cement, then tilted her head back to stare at the sky. The moon hung overhead like an old dime worn smooth and shiny. Almost midnight. I wonder how much longer they'll go on. Dawn, probably. Can I spend another five hours smoking? I don't think I have that many cigarettes.
The music trailed off in a series of erratic crashes. After a moment's blessed silence, it began again, loud and indecipherable even at this distance. Adrian sighed and pushed away from the Lexus. Maybe if she walked farther down the drive the noise wouldn't bother her so much.
"Adrian."
Startled, she turned. "Hello, Mother. Did Dad send you—" —to get me to put in a token appearance at his favorite daughter's home-from-prep-school bash? "—to talk to me?"
"No." Her mother's voice was quiet and level, as always; Adrian almost lost the reply in a rattle of drumbeats.
"I came out to smoke." The words sounded sullen even to her own ears. Defiantly, she fumbled for a cigarette. She almost dropped it twice before she got it lit.
"Of course, dear."
Adrian looked sharply across the hood of the car. Her mother's expression—or at least as much of it as Adrian could distinguish in the dim light—was as polite and nonjudgmental as her voice had been. But she was always polite and nonjudgmental.
The drums erupted again, with the wail of a highly augmented electric guitar as counterpoint. When the sound subsided to a more normal level, Adrian's mother said mildly, "It's a bit noisy, isn't it? Adrian..."
She's going to ask me to go back in and pretend I'm as glad to see Sam as everyone else is. I'd rather stay here and pretend to chain-smoke. "What?"
"I'm afraid I haven't done as well for you as I ought."
Speechless, Adrian stared. Darkness and moon shadows combined with her mother's habitual reserve to make her expression unreadable. After a moment, the calm voice continued, "It's late to be thinking of this, I know. But when you go off to college next fall, I'd like to think..." She paused, looking up at the house.
Not knowing what to say, Adrian took a long pull on her cigarette. As she blew a thin stream of smoke that frayed quickly into nothingness, her mother began to speak again.
"I grew up poor, Adrian. Dirt poor. My father ran off when I was four and never came back. Sometimes I think I can just remember him. Mama had nothing but three babies to raise. This"—she made a sweeping gesture that took in the manicured grounds, the graceful curve of the driveway, the Lexus, the house, and somehow even the, heavy-metal band and the party inside—"this was my dream, then. Money, lots of money, and a man who wouldn't leave me and his children, no matter what."
Adrian shifted uneasily. She'd heard the story many times; her mother had never made a secret of her background. But this time there was a hard edge to the tale that she'd never noticed before. "Mother, what are you trying to—"
"Tonight is a sort of anniversary for me," her mother went on without seeming to hear. "On this night, twenty-one years ago, I started on my way to all this."
"I thought you met Dad in September."
"Oh, that. . . Yes. I did. September first, twenty-one years ago this fall." She smiled in the moonlight; then the smile faded. "But tonight is the real anniversary, though I've never told anyone. This was my dream, and when I had the opportunity to make it happen, I snatched it. I never looked beyond it, never thought there might be other dreams ..."
"Mother, are you and Dad ... I mean, aren't you happy?''
"Happy enough, dear, and it is the life I chose." She looked at Adrian. "And no, your father and I aren't contemplating a divorce, if that's what you're frowning about."
"Good." The strength of her reaction surprised her.
Her mother turned toward the house once more. "Adrian, I'd like you to do a favor for me."
"What favor?"
"Stay out here for another hour or so. There's someone I'd like you to meet, and I'm sure she'll come tonight. Almost sure. It's a seventh year. And if you are given a choice ... be careful, be wise. Don't rush to pick one dream before you've even looked at the others."
"I don't understand."
"You will." Her mother looked at her watch. "It's five minutes to midnight. I must go in. You will stay?"
"Yes."
"Good. Good night, dear. I'll see you in the morning."
Adrian watched her mother walk up the drive to the house. / wish I knew what that was all about. Well, at least now I have a good excuse to avoid the party. She flicked her cigarette and watched the live sparks scatter on the summer breeze. The band stopped. A moment later, a breathless, overamplified voice said something about the end of the set; in another few seconds, Sam and her friends would be piling out onto the patio. Adrian flicked her cigarette again, for the pleasure of watching the sparks, then dropped it, stepped on the tip to put it out, and walked toward the back of the Lexus. No sense in making it easy for them to spot her. Suddenly, she stopped.
Behind the car stood a woman. She looked very little older than Adrian and she was tall and slim as a model. Her hair was dark—chestnut, probably, though in the moonlight it looked black—unfashion-ably long and straight, with a silver sheen of moonlight across it like a veil. Her face and features were almost classic, saved from a boring perfection by a chin that was a trifle too pointed and dark eyes a hair too widely set. She wore a silk dress whose flowing and deceptively simple lines proclaimed it the work of an expensive designer.
"You are Adrian, the eldest daughter of this house." The woman's voice was quiet and full of music, and Adrian was instantly certain that she was not one of Sam's crowd. In thirty years, one or two of them might learn such self-possession, but none of them had it now.
Adrian felt a stab of envy. Quashing it firmly, she answered, "Yes. You must be Mother's friend."
"Your mother spoke of me?"
"She only said that she hoped you'd come tonight and that she wanted me to meet you." Adrian hesitated, but something made her add, "And that I should be careful."
"Ah." The woman smiled. "Good advice in many circumstances." She studied Adrian briefly, then nodded. "Her blood runs true in you."
"Most people say I look like my father."
"I was not speaking of your looks. Come; walk with me. I would learn more of you."
Laughter drifted down from the house as they started down the drive. Adrian glanced back and grimaced in spite of herself.
"Your sister's guests give you no pleasure," the woman said. "Do you dislike them? Or is it her involvement that disturbs you?"
"No, it's not like that at all," Adrian said. "Samantha is—Sam, that's all. She doesn't think how things are for other people. She just does what she wants, and it always works. She's . . . she's like the youngest child in a fairy tale, the one who goes off on a quest riding a goat and carrying ten copper pennies, and comes back with the steed of the North Wind, the apples of the sun, and the keys to six kingdoms."
"And you?"
"Oh, I'm the envious older sister, who gets pushed down a well at the end of the story.'' She had meant for it to sound lighthearted; it came out harsh, almost bitter. Hastily, she added, "Sam's my sister; I'm glad things go so well for her, I really am. I just wish, sometimes ..." She couldn't bring herself to finish the sentence. And why am I telling her all this, anyway?
"I see. But you are too wise to take her walking on the cold sea strand."
"Sam's hair is too short to string a harp. Anyway, the way her life goes, the harper would pull her out long before she drowned." Adrian shrugged. "I've always known that Sam got the looks and luck in this family; I just have to make do with the brains."
The woman turned to look at Adrian and after a moment said, "You do yourself injustice as to beauty. As for fortune, that may change, if
it has not already."
"You sound like my mother. Not that I don't appreciate the kind words."
The woman laughed, a silvery, musical sound. "You are courteous indeed. It has been long and long since any named me kind." She studied Adrian again, then half nodded to herself. "Such courtesy deserves reward. Come walk with me among the roses, and let what may be, be."
"Roses?" Adrian stopped. "I'm afraid there aren't any. Mother says they're too much trouble."
"Does she."
"Well, they have to be sprayed all the time or they get black spot or mildew or something. And they need a lot of pruning, and it's a nuisance. So Mother won't have any in the gardens."
"Your mother has more humor in her than I thought. Yet follow me, and you shall see my meaning."
Without waiting to see whether Adrian would comply, the woman moved on ahead. Automatically, Adrian started after her, then stopped. If she wants to go on a wild goose chase over half the grounds—
The distant thump of the drums began again. The set break is over already? Sam must have really charmed the band. Adrian looked at the rapidly moving figure ahead, then plunged after her strange companion. Anything was better than another two hours of sitting on the Lexus and listening to Sam's friends enjoying Sam's kind of music.
The woman moved rapidly, but with deceptive smoothness. Adrian found herself moving in an awkward compromise between running and walking, always a stumbling step or two behind. She acts as if she knows where she's going, but how can she? She hasn't been here before, or she'd know that there aren't any roses.
At a clumping birch on the south side of the house, the woman turned. With a sigh, Adrian followed her into the overgrown tangle of honeysuckle behind the tree. The drums were almost inaudible here; the bushes must be dense enough to absorb most of the sound. They were tall enough to cut off most of the moonlight, too. Adrian could barely see. Fortunately, her companion had slowed down a little—well, even she must have some trouble with the branches.
The bushes seemed to go on for much too long. The clump in back of the birch was only about ten feet across; surely, they should have come out onto the lawn by now . . .
And then the woman stopped and held the last honeysuckle branch aside so Adrian could step clear. As the branch swung back behind her, Adrian halted, staring.
In front of her was a rose garden, washed with moonlight and heavy with the mingled perfume of many flowers. Hedge roses, laden with blossoms, formed a thick wall around the garden. At the single gap in the wall, just in front of Adrian, two climbing roses wove their way up the sides of an arched white support to meet in a tangled spray of flower-heavy branches at the top. Through the arch, curving pebble paths gleamed between drifts of rosebushes—tree roses, floribunda roses, miniature roses, tea roses, wild roses, every kind of rose she had ever seen or heard of, all blooming madly, impossibly, in the impossible garden.
Adrian turned. "How . . . ? Where did this come from? Who are you?"
"Ask rather of my roses," the woman said. "But know that I am not required to answer."
"This is impossible."
"So have others said before you. And you are wrong. My garden contains all possibilities, however strange."
"I don't understand."
"I think that soon you will, if you look closely."
The woman's smile made Adrian uncomfortable. She turned away, back to the roses. The flowers drew her. Adrian took a step forward, toward the arching entrance of the garden. Overhead, the full moon shone clear and bright, drenching the scene with enough light to make the colors of the roses dimly visible. Adrian reached out to touch one of the blossoms on the archway, a full-blown white rose nodding just beside her head. The woman's voice stopped her.
"You may take one rose from my garden, and one only. Take care that you do not break a stem by accident and find your choice made for you. Some flowers are more fragile than they first appear."
Adrian swallowed an irritated response. "I'll be careful," she said, and put both hands ostentatiously behind her back. Leaning forward, she breathed the rose's scent.
She sat in a small, cluttered room in an apartment high above a noisy city street—cluttered because Samantha kept her house bare and Spartan, in the city because Samantha preferred open country. She combed the gray hair she refused to color because Samantha kept hers a rich brown, and listened to the classical music Samantha hated, and wondered bitterly whether she had ever done anything in all her long life simply because she wanted to and not because Samantha would have done something else . . .
Adrian stiffened and pulled back. As she stared at the rose, the woman behind her said, "I did not think you would want that one."
Unable to think of a response, Adrian turned to the other side of the archway. The roses there were dark under the moonlight. In the day they would be a rich, deep crimson, assuming day ever came to this strange place. Adrian eyed a rose doubtfully for a moment, then bent forward and sniffed.
She stood on a porch, smiling as she watched her grandchildren play in the small front yard. The littlest one reminded her of her sister, Samantha, with her dark hair and eyes and her quicksilver grace. It was a pity Sam had died so young—
Adrian recoiled. Why was her mind playing such nasty tricks on her? Did these unexpected and astonishing flowers induce hallucinations, or was she imagining it all—the woman, the garden, and everything? She reached among the leaves to touch the thick, thorn-encrusted stem, then jerked her hand back with an exclamation of pain. Ruefully, she looked at the bead of blood forming on her fingertip. Not imagination, then.
"Higher up, you will find fewer thorns," the woman said.
Slowly, Adrian nodded. Reaching up, she found another of the crimson flowers and tugged the stem gently, gently, to be certain not to break it free unintentionally. On tiptoe, she breathed a whiff of the thick, sweet scent.
With a spray of snow crystals, she swung around the last pole and shot through the finishing gate. As she coasted to a stop, breathing hard, she heard the announcer giving her time. Not bad, she thought, not bad at all. I might win the whole Seniors Division, and not just the Over-70. Her family was coming forward to congratulate her in a small, happy mob. She blinked suddenly and wondered why, after all these years, she should suddenly think of her dead sister at a moment of triumph . . .
As carefully as she had pulled it toward her, Adrian released the flower. She settled back on her heels and realized she was holding her breath. It took an effort of will to begin breathing again. Hallucinations, she told herself, but she did not believe it. Whatever they were—false memories, mental pictures-—they had too sharp an edge to be hallucinations. After a moment, she looked over at the dark-haired woman.
"What is the point of all this?" she demanded in a voice that started out fierce with anger and ended on an uncertain note. "Are you trying to tell me that the only way I'll be happy is if my sister dies? What have you got against Sam?"
"I care but little if she lives or dies," the woman replied calmly. "And hardly more than that for you, if truth be told. Yet I have not spoken of her."
"But the roses—"
"The possibilities my roses show are yours to see, and yours alone. What I know of them is what you tell me, no more. If they show you your sister, it is because she is in your thoughts tonight. Another time, they might show you other things."
"Oh." It sounded as impossible as everything else in this garden, which meant it was probably true. If any of it was. "I'm sorry. I didn't understand." / still don't, not really, but I bet you won't explain even if I ask. And damn if I'm going to give you the satisfaction of asking.
The woman inclined her head in acceptance of the apology and smiled slightly as if she knew the thought that had followed it. "Will you choose your flower?"
Possibilities . . . "I—I think I'd like to look at some of the ones farther in," Adrian said. "Before I make up my mind."
The woman smiled. "You are wise for one so young. Look all
you wish, but remember: one rose, and one only, may you take with you when you leave. Some find the choice a hard one."
"No kidding," Adrian muttered as she turned away. She stepped under the arching roses and stopped at a waist-high bush covered with knots of pale flowers. Not white, she thought, glancing back at the archway to compare. Really pale pink, maybe. Or yellow. I wish the moon were just a little brighter. She eyed the bush a moment longer, then bent and inhaled.
Her footsteps echoed down the marble hall as she headed for Courtroom Five. This one was an open-and-shut case. She had two eyewitnesses to the assault, and there were no questions of admissibility of evidence. Samantha wasn't going to get her client off on a technicality this time. Adrian smiled as she pushed open the courtroom door.
Stepping back, Adrian stared at the rose. She could still feel the echo of the bitter rivalry between . . . herself? . . . and Sam. / don't hate Sam, she told herself. / don't! And her own treacherous mind whispered, But you could. Abruptly, she swung toward the next bush. Without pausing to look at the flower, she buried her nose in its petals.
The hospital room was quiet, except for the rhythmic sound of the machinery and her mother's soft weeping. She floated in a drugged haze. At least the pain had receded, though breathing was no easier. Her hands were numb and cold, and she couldn't feel her father's grip anymore. Not much longer. Somewhere in the fading distance, she heard Sam's tearful voice: "Oh, Mom, why didn't she quit smoking?"
She leaped back as if a bee had stung her nose and stood, shaking, on the gravel path between the roses. When her shivering stopped at last, she raised her eyes and surveyed the silver-shadowed garden. Surely, among so many roses there was one that held neither death nor bitterness. With grim purpose, she lowered her head and began methodically working her way along the path.
Doctor, actress, mother, executive, carpenter, psychologist, housewife, concert cellist, author, lawyer, social worker—the roses offered a hundred different lives for her consideration. Some were happy, some not; some pictured heady successes, others miserable failures. As she moved farther from the garden's entrance, the visions focused more on her work, her friends, her lovers and husbands and children, and less on her sister, but even in the happiest lives Adrian could feel an undercurrent of tension, a sense of some important thing left unresolved. Several times she hesitated, and once she started to reach for a rose stem before she caught herself and moved on.